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Young Woman Sewing
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
1879
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 61.4 × 50.5 cm (24 3/16 × 19 7/8 in.); Framed: 84.2 × 75 × 10.5 cm (33 1/8 × 29 1/2 × 4 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The model for this elegant painting of a French bourgeois woman sewing may be Aline Charigot, whom Pierre-Auguste Renoir would go on to marry. The artist treated his domestic subject—a middle-class woman embroidering a textile—with vibrant color, light-filled atmosphere, and freely handled paint. Cobalt blue dominates the composition with striking contrasts of red and spare touches of yellow, relying on the optical effect produced by the close proximity of primary colors to enliven the composition and increase the sense of direct observation and spontaneity.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0