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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