Renoir, 'At the Theatre', 1876-7

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | At the Theatre (La Première Sortie ...

My eye is drawn into the painting by the profile of the girl and then through her gaze back out of the frame towards the unseen stage. The lightness of her flesh, the black point of her eye, which seems the most sharply drawn part of the painting, and above all the curving gilt frame behind her all focus our attention on her expression. She is leaning slightly forward, out of the seclusion of the box she sits in. Her lips are slightly parted and her face is hard to read, which emphasises the ambiguity of the piece in general. We do not know what has got her so captivated, but we too are mesmerised, not by the stage but by her features in desperation as we try to read her. Meanwhile, the quick Impressionist brushstrokes that make up the left of the painting mean that the viewer cannot connect with anyone else in the painting. It is almost as if the woman in the foreground will at any moment turn to us and ask ‘did you see that?'

Thanks to Renoir’s composition, the viewer is effectively sitting in the theatre too, crammed into the seat next to the girl, who they can see clearly, and other woman behind who is mostly obscured from view. There is a sense that the scene curves round, as the blurred figures of the background recede in size, but at a first glance the painting actually looks quite flat, the picture surface emphasised and bisected by the strong curving vertical and the horizontal on the left. These, both behind the girl, and the size of the foreground figures are what push them towards us and bring us into the painting.

There is a middle class refinement about it – this is a smart, fashionable theatre, not like one of Sickert’s music hall scenes – and Renoir emphasised this with the colouration. The violet-blue of the girl’s outfit is mirrored in the woman behind and repeated throughout the canvas, suggesting both the suits of the gentlemen and the understated elegance of the women. But there is also a depth and softness: the girl’s bonnet in particular seems to be made up of layers and layers of colour, and the blue tones are warmed with the inclusion of pinks and lilacs. The freshness and softness of the palette suggests her youth and the fact that this is her first outing to the theatre; even her skin has pigments of blue in it, giving it a translucent quality. The almost halo-like effect of the gold partition behind gives her a ‘gilded youth’ quality, safely enclosed but able to see the world. Her rapt stillness contrasts with the restless movement of the rest of the audience for whom this is a regular pastime and Renoir has enable us to share her excitement and wonder.

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