Woman at the Piano

Renoir's 1875 painting of a woman at the piano reflects the domestic musical culture of bourgeois Paris that he and his Impressionist contemporaries depicted throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Piano-playing was a central accomplishment of educated women in this period, and images of women at the keyboard appeared frequently in both Impressionist and Salon painting. Renoir returned to this subject numerous times, most famously in later canvases, but this earlier work has a looser, more immediate quality consistent with his rapid production during the year of the disastrous Drouot auction. Now held by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Renoir unifies the figure and the piano's warm wooden surface through a closely related warm tonality, differentiating them through the cooler, lighter tones of the woman's dress. The keyboard is loosely indicated, more evocative than descriptive.