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Your galleryWoman at the Piano
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Compare the pale dress spreading across the foreground with the dark piano, and follow the player’s arms toward the keys.
This is Renoir’s first treatment of a woman playing the piano, a subject he would return to much later. The setting turns musical practice into an intimate scene of everyday life. Color and light soften the contrast between the instrument’s solid shape and the dress’s shifting folds.
Oil on canvas · 93 × 74 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Impressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Woman at the Piano
- Artist
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Date
- 1875–76
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 93 × 74 cm (36 9/16 × 29 1/8 in.); Framed: 111.2 × 98.8 × 11.8 cm (43 3/4 × 38 7/8 × 4 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.