Girls at the Piano

Two girls lean together over a piano: one plays, the other watches the music. Renoir painted this tender domestic scene several times, and this is the version made for France's national collection.

The story behind the painting

Renoir completed this painting in 1892 as an informal commission for the Musée du Luxembourg, and it marks the start of his late period, which ran from 1892 to 1919. The composition clearly held him. He painted three other variations in oil and two sketches, one in oil and one in pastel. He called them repetitions, and they were made to satisfy dealers and collectors. This is the Luxembourg version, the canvas now in the Musée d'Orsay, measuring 116 by 90 centimetres. Renoir had explored a similar arrangement a few years earlier in The Daughters of Catulle Mendès of 1888, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What to look for

We are inside a bourgeois home. One girl, in a white dress with a blue sash, sits at an upright piano and plays. The other, in a pink dress, stands beside her and leans in. Follow the sheet music: both girls seem drawn to the same page, and their heads form the warm centre of the picture. Notice the long hair, falling to the waist. Look around them, too, for a vase with a bouquet of flowers, details of a comfortable interior. The canvas is taller than it is wide, which lets the standing girl rise above the seated one and gently close the group together.

Meaning and intent

Renoir's repetitions are different from the series made by Pissarro and Monet. Those painters created variations meant to be seen side by side, recording changes of light and atmosphere. Renoir's versions were independent essays in composition, each complete in itself. From one to another, details and poses shift subtly, while the sketches leave out most of the background. So this painting is less about a passing moment of light and more about arrangement: how two figures, a piano and a sheet of music can be balanced into one harmonious image of shared attention.

Legacy

The Luxembourg version entered public view through the commission and today hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Its siblings are spread across collections: one version is in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, measuring 111.8 by 86.4 centimetres, the Caillebotte version and another remain in private hands, the oil sketch is at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, and the pastel sketch is privately owned. Seeing several of them, if you can, is a lesson in how a painter returns to an idea and keeps finding something new in it.

Lo sapevi?

Completed in 1892 as an informal commission for the Musée du Luxembourg (Wikipedia)
This version: 116 × 90 cm, Musée d'Orsay (Wikidata, Wikipedia)
Renoir made three other oil versions plus an oil and a pastel sketch (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia · Wikidata