Young Spanish Woman with a Guitar

Painted in 1898, this National Gallery of Art canvas shows a young woman in Spanish costume playing guitar — evoking the Spanish subject matter that French Romantic and Realist painters had explored since Delacroix, and that Manet had treated with greater directness in his own Spanish pictures. By 1898 Spanish subjects were less novel than they had been for Manet's generation, but the guitar-playing woman gave Renoir a pretext for warm, decorative colour harmonies and a natural, informal pose that suited his temperament. The subject connects to the long tradition of the Spanish or Italianate genre figure in French painting.

Renoir uses warm, saturated colour — the Spanish costume's reds and blacks set against a loosely painted warm background. The guitar provides a strong diagonal accent. The woman's hands on the instrument are rendered with careful attention to their position on the strings. Overall technique is loose and fluid, characteristic of his late 1890s style.