Description
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – At the Theatre (La Première Sortie)
| Year of creation: | 1876 |
| Original size: | 65.0 cm x 49.5 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | The National Gallery, London |
At the Theatre (La Première Sortie) is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1876. The original measures 65.0 x 49.5 cm, is recorded under inventory number NG3859 and is held by The National Gallery in London. Our hand-painted painting At the Theatre is made in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 60 x 80 to 120 x 160 cm.
A young woman in a dark blue coat and a pale bonnet trimmed with blue sits in a theatre box. We see her from the side and slightly behind, her face in profile, her look directed down into the auditorium; a small posy is held in her gloved hands. Beyond the front of the box the audience is painted as a dense flicker of unfinished faces and colour, and a second figure sits at her right. Only the girl is sharp — everything else is movement.
Our version is not a print. In this subject the difference is easy to see: the auditorium behind her is not a printed blur but a run of quick, separate strokes of oil colour laid side by side with a brush, while the face is built from fine, soft ones. The paint keeps that difference in handling, which printed paper cannot imitate, so an oil painting on canvas reads differently under changing light than a flat printed surface does.
The blue-grey, quiet subject works well in a living room, a bedroom, or a hallway, where the picture should not take over the space. For a smaller wall 70 x 90 cm is enough; above a larger piece of furniture we recommend 90 x 120 cm.
We paint to order, and in other sizes on request. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval. Every hand-painted painting At the Theatre arrives ready to hang, stretched on a wooden frame.
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