Leaving the Conservatory (La Sortie du conservatoire)

This large 1877 work from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia captures a crowd of students departing from a music conservatory — an unusual subject in Renoir's oeuvre that combines his interest in modern Parisian social life with the crowd scenes he explored in 'Le Moulin de la Galette' the same year. The Barnes Foundation holds the largest single collection of Renoir's paintings in the world, including major works from every period. This ambitious composition reflects Renoir's ambition in the late 1870s to synthesize Impressionist outdoor light with complex multi-figure arrangements demanding the kind of compositional control associated with academic history painting.

Renoir orchestrates a crowd of figures in an outdoor setting using dappled light effects typical of his Impressionist peak. The figures are rendered with varying degrees of finish — those closest to the viewer more carefully described, those in the middle ground more loosely suggested. Warm afternoon light unifies the composition.