La loge

At the Paris theatre, the show was often in the boxes. In Renoir's La Loge a young woman offers herself to every glance, while her companion turns his opera glasses elsewhere.

The story behind the painting

Painted in 1874, La Loge, The Theatre Box, shows a young couple seated in a box at a Paris theatre. Renoir's model for the woman was Nini Lopez, who had just begun posing for him and would appear in fourteen of his paintings over the next few years. The man was his brother Edmond, a journalist and art critic. Between 1873 and 1880 the theme of the theatre box let Renoir explore scenes of modern Paris and the interplay of fashion and display, for going to the theatre in nineteenth-century France was as much about being seen as watching the performance. An X-ray reveals that the woman may first have worn a hat, and that the man's arm was slightly adjusted; otherwise Renoir changed little.

What to look for

Let the stripes pull you in. The woman's gown of bold black and white bands is the first thing you see. Look closer: the black areas are mixed with blue, and the whites carry tones of blue, green and yellow for shadow and highlight. Ropes of pearls circle her neck, a gold bracelet sits at her wrist, and an ermine stole drapes across the back of her seat. In her lap rest a black fan and a white lace handkerchief; pink roses adorn her hair and bodice, their softness matching her skin. Behind her, Edmond lifts his opera glasses to look at something above. The railing in the lower corner places you in the neighbouring box.

Meaning and intent

La Loge blurs portrait and genre painting: named people, Nini and Edmond, play roles in a modern scene of everyday Parisian life. The theatre box was still a novel subject in fine art, more familiar from caricatures and fashion plates by artists such as Daumier and Guys. The fashion matters too. Aileen Ribeiro identifies the gown as white silk gauze with black ruched tulle in the fashionable polonaise style, while the man's understated dress recedes, as men's clothes were meant to. Because Renoir left the theatre's class unclear, the picture raised questions about the woman's respectability. Compared with Eva Gonzalès's Une loge aux Italiens or Mary Cassatt's In the Loge, Renoir's woman appears more passive, looked at rather than looking.

Legacy

According to Wikipedia, La Loge was included in the Salon of 1874, where reactions were mixed. It then travelled to London in an exhibition organised by Renoir's dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, making it one of the earliest Impressionist paintings seen in England. It did not sell at either exhibition, and was bought the following year by the dealer Père Martin. The critic Charles Blanc remarked on how the black brings out the white of the dress and the woman's face. Today the painting hangs in the Courtauld Gallery in London.