Young Woman Sewing, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1879
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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