Ao piano (Au piano) - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ao piano (Au piano) - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Pastel sobre papel - 63x47 - 1892

This vibrant pastel, executed with pigments of an unprecedented freshness, is directly related to one of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s most famous compositions but also one of his favorite themes, La Leçon de piano or Jeunes Filles au piano, 1892. The latter is also one of the most significant compositions in Renoir’s oeuvre as it marked a true-turning point in his artistic career: finally, the institutional recognition of his artistic status by the French State despite having reached artistic maturity. Indeed, by the early 1890s, Renoir was close to fifty years old and had already completed almost thirty years of artistic career: by then he had participated to four of the eight Impressionist Exhibitions (in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882), painted the undisputed masterpiece Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876, made the headlines following the controversy surrounding his so-called Ingres period (1881–1888), and had produced a mature body of work in which he had successfully reconciled classical draftsmanship with the luminous palette of Impressionism.

Yet one striking fact remained - one that his friends and admirers regarded as nothing short of scandalous: the French State had never commissioned a single work from Renoir. Monet, Pissarro, Morisot, Cassatt all praised his talent and he benefited from a financially sustainable private market – very much fueled by Paul Durand-Ruel’s support - with collectors such as Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Charpentier and Charles Ephrussi acquiring works by Renoir. However, by 1892 no national museum owned one of his paintings. Not a single work had entered the public collections through official acquisition. A combination of continued resistance of the academic establishment - that still regarded Impressionism as a frivolous movement -, a lack of institutional support for avant-garde artists and museum administrators’ cautiousness towards contemporary artists partly explain this institutional neglect. This deeply troubled Stéphane Mallarmé, the Symbolist poet who had become one of the most respected figures in Paris's artistic world. Mallarmé had known Renoir personally since the 1870s. He had been a close friend of Édouard Manet - who painted his portrait in 1876, now in the Musée d'Orsay - and admired Renoir's work profoundly. He resolved to intervene.

Working with Roger Marx, a progressive official in the Fine Arts administration, Mallarmé discreetly set about securing a place for the Impressionists in the national collections during the spring of 1892. Alongside his administrative duties, Roger Marx was an influential art critic and had recently been appointed Inspector General of Museums, a position that gave him sufficient authority to initiate official commissions. The result of this quiet campaign was an informal commission in 1892 offered to Pierre-Auguste Renoir for a painting destined for the Musée du Luxembourg, then France's museum of living artists and the country's principal museum of contemporary art, housed until 1937 in the former Orangerie of the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris.

Proud to receive his first official recognition after thirty years of waiting, Renoir chose his subject: Jeunes filles au piano. As he had simply been asked to produce a work representative of his art—one worthy of entering the French national collections – he settled on this thoroughly respectable bourgeois subject of two young girls at a piano. Recalling a classical theme that was very popular with French 18th century painters, notably Fragonard (and particular his masterpiece La Leçon de Musique at the Musée du Louvre), Renoir sought to paint an ideal world, peopled with graceful young girls. But, scorning mere imitation, he also wanted to be a painter of his time, and presents us with an elegant, comfortably furnished, bourgeois interior. In addition, painting an interior scene would be more easily accepted by the Fine Arts Academy rather than a lively popular dance or riverside café scene. At the same time, these intimate domestic scenes allowed him to explore his characteristic treatment of luminous flesh tones and richly textured fabrics, anchoring this theme of the Jeunes filles au piano in his so-called ‘pearly period’ (1890–1897). Finally, to ease his self-imposed psychological pressure, Renoir selected a subject he had recently explored three years earlier in 1889 in Jeunes filles au piano, (Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha), yet changed the models, dresses and background in the 1892 versions.

Renoir devoted himself to the work with extraordinary determination—so much so that he ultimately produced seven versions of the same composition - five oil paintings and two pastels, all measuring more or less the same dimensions 116 x 90 cm. Yet Renoir – whose biographers often mentioned his relentless self-perfectionism - remained dissatisfied with every single one. The version that is today considered as the most definitive is the one that was eventually acquired by the French State for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1892 and which is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The other six versions were then dispersed in some of the most important collections: Robert Lehman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Walter-Guillaume (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris), Durand-Ruel Collection (private collection), Gustave Caillebotte (private collection), and two pastels (on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The present pastel from the Durand-Ruel collection is a preparatory work – considered as a work on its own by the artist given he signed it – for the two sitters in the Jeunes Filles au piano series.

The composition in the five oil paintings and two pastels depicts two young girls in a comfortably appointed bourgeois interior, absorbed in making music together. Seated at an upright piano, a blonde adolescent in a white dress studies the sheet music before her while her companion, a slightly younger brunette in a warm pinkish-orange gown, stands beside her, following the score. Their quiet concentration and close proximity create an atmosphere of intimacy and domestic harmony. In the present pastel of the Durand-Ruel Collection, Renoir zoomed in onto the two young girls, exclusively focusing on the scene’s almost tangible psychological dimension. It is the only work from the Jeunes Filles au piano series in which the brunette warmly wraps her right arm around the blonde girl to encourage her, as she is deeply absorbed in deciphering the music score. Renoir omitted all other extraneous details - background and objects - in this work on paper. In fact, the context of the piano lesson is hinted by the blonde girl’s hand touching the music score and is confirmed when relating the pastel to the two larger pastels and the five paintings. As such, the pastel stands out as the most spontaneous and intimate version of the two girls seated at the piano, and to some extent, the most modern in its photographic snapshot view.

Although the sitters have never been securely identified, Renoir frequently drew his models from families within his circle. The two young girls have often been associated with the Lerolle sisters, whom Renoir would portray in Yvonne et Christine Lerolle au piano a few years later in 1897. In 1892, Yvonne would have been 15 years old and Christine would have been 13 years old, possibly corresponding to the age of Renoir’s sitters in his compositions of the two young girls at the piano. Furthermore, their resemblance to the Lerolle sisters captured in an anonymous photograph dating from the 1890s could confirm their identity in Jeunes Filles au piano. In this exquisite work on paper by Renoir, firm drawing, inherited from his so-called ‘Ingres period’, is combined with the freshness and spontaneity of the pastel medium, conveying also the atmospheric softness of Impressionism, emphasizing Renoir’s remarkable achievements as a draughtsman and the importance of preparatory sketches for ambitious compositions in his creative process – a topic that was recently and rightfully put into the spotlight in the last Musée d’Orsay exhibition, Renoir dessinateur (March–July 2026). Texto da Christie's.

Nota do blog: Data 2026 / Crédito para Christie's.