Skip to main content

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.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Rothko, 'Light Red over Black', 1957

  My eye is not drawn to the painting itself but the title of the painting, 'Light Red Over Black'. We would automatically think that the black is on top of a red background, but Rothko has flipped this around, subverting the title just like he subverting the meaning of what it was to be an artist and what Art actually was. During this time, art was going through rapid changes, with abstract expressionism coming into full force (Rothko, Pollock). But Rothko showed that all this change was for the good, even if for him, it was short lived.  The colour red in this painting is searing and the black struggles to fully cover this velvety border, especially at the bottom of the canvas. Unlike the black squares which have a hazy quality to their edges, the red is clear and impregnable. It is hard to figure out what this represents - the Tate has suggested a window perhaps, but if it is a window then what are we looking out into? Perhaps it is night, or perhaps the viewer is catching ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Egon Schiele, 'Dead Mother', 1910

  My eye is drawn to the hand. Those long, bony fingers are so characteristic of Schiele but here they are particularly skeletal and deathly – the veins seem to have been injected with poison. And they are a warning right in the foreground of the painting that keeps the viewer at bay as an outsider to this incredibly intimate relationship between mother and child, and sets the tone of death and mortality which hangs over the whole image. The mother cradles her child in a womb-like shroud, alluding to childbirth and the death of the mother explained in the title. She seems desperate to feel that bodily connection with her child, highlighted by the emphasis on her craned neck as she tries to connect to the baby. There is a clear link between the mother’s bent neck and the child’s bent neck, again emphasising their longing to be with each other. However, the darkness around the child is almost like ropes, with flecks of white in the painting making it look as though the darkness is wo...
Post a Comment
Read more

M.K. Ciurlionis, 'Funeral Symphony VII', 1903

  There are many who have been left out of the art historical canon and Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Ciurlionis is one of them. Producing over 200 musical works and 300 paintings, his career was extensive, prolific and multifaceted. Yet, he was a 'genius cursed by fate' according to artist and critic Alexandre Benois, dying from exhaustion in 1911. Praised within his lifetime, Ciurlionis is virtually invisible today, especially to a Western viewer. Describing one artwork by Ciurlionis is not enough to appreciate his diversity and synthesis of artforms - pastels, as this work shows, vignettes, oils, designs for stained glass, even abandoning the easel for cardboard. More importantly, he was indebted to the Lithuanian landscape. Ichiro Kato refers to him as 'Lithuanian in nature and national feeling...a genius from the Baltic lands', reflected in works including  Serenity depicting idyllic, peaceful settings of mountains and lakes, devoid of humanity. Like man...
Post a Comment
Read more