Description
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Parisiennes in Algerian Costume
| Year of creation: | 1872 |
| Original size: | 156.0 cm x 128.8 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo |
Parisiennes in Algerian Costume is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1872. The original measures 156.0 x 128.8 cm, is catalogued as P.1959-0182 and hangs in The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Our oil painting on canvas Parisiennes in Algerian Costume is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 60 x 70 to 120 x 150 cm.
A fair-haired woman sits at the centre on a patterned carpet in a sheer white gown, with gold earrings and a jewelled band in her hair. Behind her, from the left, a dark-haired woman leans in, bare to the waist, holding a string of beads; at the right a third kneels in an embroidered jacket with rose-coloured sleeves and looks down. A fourth figure sits further back against the wall. In the foreground, on the carpet, lie a decorated casket, a fan, a bracelet and scattered flowers.
The scene is not a document. The museum itself explains that the work only purports to show a harem: it is an imagined scene transposed into a Paris room, because Renoir had not yet travelled to North Africa. The models were Parisian women, and the precedent was Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in their Apartment. The painter’s attention is therefore entirely in the fabrics, the colour and the skin, rather than in describing a distant place.
Our version is not a print. The translucent fabric at the centre is built from thin, wet layers worked into one another, while the carpets and embroidery are set down with denser, shorter strokes. A hand-painted painting keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.
The warm red-and-gold subject works well in a living room or dining room, on a wall that can carry a strong colour. For a smaller wall 65 x 80 cm is enough; above a larger piece of furniture we recommend 100 x 120 cm. We paint to order, in a different size on request. Before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval. Every oil painting on canvas Parisiennes in Algerian Costume arrives ready to hang, with the canvas stretched on a wooden frame.
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