Woman at the Piano

With its elevated vantage point giving an unobstructed view of the woman’s hands on the keyboard, Woman at the Piano invites the viewer to associate the sensual act of listening with the visual harmony of the beautiful redhead wearing a luxurious, brilliantly lit peignoir. The woman—likely Renoir’s favorite model of the late 1870s, Nini Lopez—plays an upright piano appropriate for modest living quarters. The interior furnishings depicted in this painting are not opulent but are typical of a bourgeois home of the 1870s: an oriental carpet, subdued wall coverings in dark colors, and a fringed portiere to divide rooms. In the background on the left, a large, glazed ceramic planter with a footed base, remarkable for its iridescence, may be of chinoiserie design. Above the piano hangs a pastel or print framed in a mat, another sign of middle-class living... Read more


Notes from the contributor: This work is featured in the online catalogue Renoir Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second volume in the Art Institute’s scholarly digital series on the Impressionist circle. The catalogue offers in-depth curatorial and technical entries on 25 artworks by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the museum’s collection; entries feature interactive and layered high-resolution imaging, previously unpublished technical photographs, archival materials, and documentation relating to each artwork.