Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Parisiennes in Algerian Costume

Parisiennes in Algerian Costume – an imagined scene in a Paris room

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.

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.

Sheer fabric over a patterned carpet

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.

Why hand-painted, not a print

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.

In the room

The subject is warm, red and gold, so it asks for a wall that can carry a strong colour: a living room or a dining room with pale plaster, not a space that is already busy in itself. For a smaller wall 65 x 80 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 100 x 120 cm, and on a large wall 120 x 150 cm works. Between them stand 80 x 100 and 90 x 110 cm, with 110 x 130 cm as the last step before the largest. Under 60 x 70 cm the sheer fabric and the carpet patterns merge into a single warm area.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Parisiennes in Algerian Costume arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: women in Algerian costume on a patterned carpet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 60 x 70 cm to 120 x 150 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the scene is not a document – the museum itself explains the harem is only apparent, moved into a Paris room

See also:

• La Loge (The Theatre Box)
• Girls at the Piano
• Luncheon of the Boating Party