by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 2, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
One girl sits at an upright piano, hands near the keys. Another leans over her shoulder toward the open music. Their heads almost meet, while the broad green curtain behind them and the instrument's dark wood keep the small act of reading at the centre. Pierre-Auguste Renoir made Girls at the Piano (Jeunes filles au piano) in 1892. The version discussed here is the Musée d'Orsay painting, accession RF 755, acquired directly from the artist by the French state. Orsay object record. [1]
There is no single Renoir canvas behind every image titled Girls at the Piano. He made several completed versions, an oil sketch and a pastel. The Orsay work is 116 × 90 cm; the related Musée de l'Orangerie oil is 116 × 81 cm and has a different collection history. Keeping those objects separate is essential before discussing a reproduction, measurement or provenance. Orsay essay [1]; Orangerie object. [2]
At a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir
- Holder titleJeunes filles au piano; English Girls at the Piano
- Date1892
- MediumOil on canvas
- Dimensions116 × 90 cm
- CollectionMusée d'Orsay, Paris, RF 755, purchased from Renoir by the French state in 1892
This work in Renoir’s career
La Grenouillère
1869La Loge
1874The Umbrellas
c. 1881–86The Great Bathers
1884–87The Bathers
1918–19Contents
- Annotated details of the painting
- Two kinds of attention
- Colour, fabric and the room
- Why did Renoir repeat the picture?
- An unusual state purchase in 1892
- The Orangerie and Met versions
- What changes in the Met painting?
- A piano subject before 1892
- Looking again
Annotated Details from Girls at the Piano
Two young figures share an open score in the Orsay 1892 canvas acquired by the French state.
Details from GIRLS AT THE PIANO
These details show Orsay RF 755, one of several versions of the composition; they do not depict the Orangerie or Met variants.
Seated player
The blonde girl faces the open score while sitting at the instrument.
Companion leaning in
Her companion bends toward the same music, making the act of reading shared.
Hands at the keys
Hands and keyboard join the two figures to the upright instrument.
Open music
The score gathers both gazes; the picture does not identify a particular piece.
Flowers and vase
A small cluster of flowers lifts the right edge of the quiet room.
Green curtain
The broad curtain gives the figures a soft field behind their clear outline.
Pale dress
Warm pale strokes shape the seated girl’s dress below the keyboard.
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Two kinds of attention
The seated blonde looks toward the score and touches the instrument. The brunette bends over it from behind, following the same page. Their closeness turns piano practice into a shared act. Renoir does not identify a piece of music, and the painted notation is not presented as a readable programme for a real performance. The score matters because it gathers both lines of sight. Orsay image and essay [1]; Orangerie description of the related composition. [2]
The upright piano supplies strong straight edges. The girls' hair, arms and dress turn more softly around those lines. Renoir keeps the instrument legible but does not describe every mechanism or decorative feature with equal care. In the Orangerie's account of its related version, this contrast between the keyboard's geometry and the girls' curving figures is central to the motif. It also applies to the visible structure of the Orsay canvas. Orangerie object essay. [2]
The green curtain rises behind them, filling much of the top of the canvas. At the right, a vase of flowers adds a small cluster of brighter marks. Renoir gives enough household detail to place the figures in a comfortable interior without turning the room into a catalogue of possessions. The palette remains lyrical and warm even as the girls' outlines are comparatively clear. Orsay calls attention to both the supple drawing and the freedom of colour. Orsay essay. [1]
Look at where the two bodies meet. The standing girl's pink sleeve crosses behind the blonde head, while her other arm rests above the score. The seated girl's left arm rises from the pale dress toward the open pages. These gestures build a compact triangle of faces, hands and music above the keyboard. The lower half of the painting then opens out into the folds of the seated girl's skirt and the brown case of the piano. The room appears spacious, yet the important action occupies only a small area.
The painting also asks us to slow down between reading and playing. One hand is at the keys and the other is near the score; the standing girl seems to attend to the page. We cannot tell from the still image whether they are beginning a piece, stopping to correct it or simply looking through music together. That uncertainty is part of the scene's intimacy. Renoir gives us the physical arrangement of a shared task rather than a named lesson or a documented performance.
Colour, fabric and the room
The Orsay reproduction is dominated by muted green, rose and cream. Broad vertical sweeps in the curtain descend behind the faces, contrasting with the pale, more closely described skin and hair. The brunette's dress is warm pink; the pianist's dress is almost white, with yellow and blue notes. That difference makes it easy to follow each figure even where their outlines overlap. The piano's dark brown provides a firm border to the luminous cloth. This is a close reading of the image, not a claim about the exact original colours under gallery lighting. Orsay image. [1]
The flowers at the upper right and the loose sheets at the lower right balance each other across the diagonal of the score. Neither supplies the subject. They make the interior feel lived in while directing attention back to the two readers. The gilded chair and ornament near the music stand suggest comfort and taste, but the girls are absorbed in the task rather than displaying the room. Orsay describes a bourgeois interior and links the musical subject to eighteenth-century art, including Fragonard. The painting uses that familiar domestic setting to stage a moment of concentration. Orsay object essay. [1]
Why did Renoir repeat the picture?
The Musée d'Orsay describes three other completed versions using this composition: one now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and two in private collections. It also records an oil sketch at the Musée de l'Orangerie and a pastel in a private collection. The Orangerie uses a broader count of at least six other versions in its own discussion. Those statements may count studies and finished variants differently; they should be cited as each museum gives them rather than combined into a confident new total. Orsay object essay [1]; Orangerie object essay. [2]
Renoir was not mechanically duplicating a picture. He could adjust handling and finish while testing how two figures and an upright instrument filled the canvas. Orsay notes that repeated work on one composition was unusually concentrated for him and suggests he wanted to provide a fully resolved painting for a public museum. That is an institutional interpretation, not proof of what he said about each variant. The presence of several versions means a close reading should remain tied to the exact reproduction in front of us. Orsay essay. [1]
The subject itself was familiar in European art: young people making music in a domestic room. Orsay connects it to eighteenth-century paintings, including Fragonard, while noting the contemporary bourgeois interior. Renoir thus worked with an inherited theme and a modern household. Comparing another version can illuminate choices of finish; substituting its collection data would mislead. Orsay essay. [1]
An unusual state purchase in 1892
The Orsay account says that early in the 1890s Renoir's friends and admirers were troubled that the French state had not yet purchased a work from him. Poet Stéphane Mallarmé and administrator Roger Marx helped move an acquisition forward. Following an informal approach from the administration, the state bought Girls at the Piano from Renoir in 1892 for the Musée du Luxembourg. The museum calls this a pivotal moment in public recognition. It is more precise than a story that a formal jury chose one picture from all the surviving versions. Orsay object essay and provenance. [1]
The Orsay record gives 21 September 1892 as the purchase order. The painting remained at the Luxembourg until 1929, then entered the Louvre's care, later appearing at the Jeu de Paume. It was assigned to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986. These moves describe one state-owned canvas; they do not track the Orangerie version, which passed through private hands and the Walter-Guillaume collection. Orsay provenance [1]; Orangerie provenance. [2]
Orsay also lists the painting in an 1892 Renoir exhibition at Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery. The exhibition record and the state purchase belong to the same year, although the museum does not give a day-by-day sequence between them. The canvas thus circulated publicly in the year the state acquired it for the Luxembourg. Its later moves between national museums followed that acquisition, rather than a new purchase of another piano version. Orsay exhibition and provenance records. [1]
The Orangerie and Met versions
The Orangerie owns a related canvas, RF 1960 16, dated about 1892 and measuring 116 × 81 cm. Orsay calls the Orangerie work an oil sketch. The Orangerie's own record suggests that one version may have been painted in Renoir's home; the location remains a possibility, not a settled address for the Orsay painting. It says the same young models may appear in another portrait in its collection, but does not establish names for the girls in this work. Orsay essay [1]; Orangerie object record. [2]
The Met owns one of the other completed versions, titled Two Young Girls at the Piano. It is oil on canvas, 111.8 × 86.4 cm, accession 1975.1.201 in the Robert Lehman Collection. The Met describes a series of five canvases and singles out its own version together with a nearly identical variant formerly owned by Renoir's fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. That is the Met's assessment of two particular paintings, not a replacement identification or ranking for the Orsay canvas. The Met's five-canvas count and Orsay's four finished oils plus an oil sketch can be read together without treating the pastel as another canvas. Met object record [3]; Orsay object essay. [1]
| Work | Collection and accession | Date and size | Relationship here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Girls at the Piano | Musée d'Orsay, RF 755 | 1892; 116 × 90 cm | The state-purchased painting examined on this page. |
| Two Young Girls at the Piano | The Met, 1975.1.201 | 1892; 111.8 × 86.4 cm | A separate finished painting of the same composition. |
| Girls at the Piano | Musée de l'Orangerie, RF 1960 16 | About 1892; 116 × 81 cm | A related oil called a sketch in Orsay's account. |
| Woman at the Piano | Art Institute of Chicago, 1937.1025 | 1875–76; 93 × 74 cm | An earlier, separate piano subject, outside the 1892 version group. |
What changes in the Met painting?
Set the Orsay reproduction beside the Met image below. Both keep the blonde seated and the brunette leaning over the open score, with a green curtain, floral vase and upright piano. They are recognisably versions of the same arrangement. But the Met image gives more visible space to the standing girl's whole upper body and to the left side of the room; the Orsay image holds the pair closer to the viewer. In the Met canvas, her hand points more directly at the music, while the Orsay hand rests more broadly over the pages. The score is the focal point in both. Orsay object and image [1]; Met object and image. [3]
The comparison shows why finish is more useful than a simple test of similarity. In the Met image, the curtain reads as long blue-green strokes and the music stand is more sharply described. In the Orsay image, the upper curtain is warmer and softer, and the figures seem pressed more tightly into the picture plane. Reproductions also differ in scale, colour balance and cropping, so those observations should not stand in for a direct examination of the canvases. What they demonstrate reliably is that Renoir could revise a gesture and the distribution of space while keeping the same motif.
A piano subject before 1892
Renoir had painted another piano scene much earlier. The Art Institute of Chicago's Woman at the Piano, dated 1875–76, places one woman in a pale blue dress at an instrument, with a score in front of her. Its blue-green setting and piano keys invite comparison with the Orsay painting. Yet it is not a first version of the two-girl composition. The single figure, different costume and much earlier date make it a distinct work. Art Institute of Chicago, Woman at the Piano, 1937.1025. [4]
In the Chicago work, the player's gaze and hands lead us across the keyboard to the sheet music, but no second person shares the reading. The later pair changes the social meaning of the motif: their attention is coordinated across the score. The comparison cannot tell us that the 1870s painting served as a preparatory study. It can show how a domestic activity gave Renoir different ways to join a figure to an interior across his career.
Looking again
Begin with the seated girl's hand on the keys, then move up to the music and the leaning girl's face. Follow the curtain back down to the blonde hair and along the pale dress. The circuit makes the composition's focus clear: the music unites two people, while the piano and room frame their attention without swallowing it. Renoir's repetition of the scene across several canvases shows how much could change inside this modest domestic theme.
Now follow the same circuit in the Met version. The pointing hand makes the score a little more explicit, and the figures have a slightly different amount of room around them. Then look at the earlier Chicago solo player. These three images are related by subject but not interchangeable by accession. The Orsay picture's particular achievement lies in making a shared, quiet activity vivid without telling us the music's title or the girls' names.
Questions about Girls at the Piano
The main work is the Musée d'Orsay canvas RF 755, made in 1892, oil on canvas, 116 × 90 cm. It was purchased from Renoir by the French state that year.
The museum records do not give secure personal names for the two girls in this Orsay painting. The scene is best described through their positions and shared attention to the score.
Orsay lists three other finished versions, plus an oil sketch and a pastel. The Orangerie uses a broader count; exact totals depend on what is counted as a finished version or study.
At the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Another related oil belongs to the Musée de l'Orangerie. Check the current museum records for display status.
Discussion
Look closely at Girls at the Piano and use the questions below to compare what you see with the documented history.
Reader Insights
How do hands, sheet music and shared attention hold the composition?
This Orsay version must be kept separate from other piano pictures.
What changes when comparing the related versions side by side?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about Girls at the Piano. The prompts above are starting points for discussion.
References
- Musée d'Orsay, Jeunes filles au piano, RF 755, object essay and provenance View source.
- Musée de l'Orangerie, related Jeunes filles au piano, RF 1960 16, object, version comparison and provenance View source.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Two Young Girls at the Piano, 1975.1.201, separate finished version and public-domain image View source.
- Art Institute of Chicago, Woman at the Piano, 1937.1025, separate earlier piano subject View source.
- Whole-work reproduction: Commons Google Art Project Orsay file, Public Domain Mark faithful reproduction; distinct from the separately controlled Orsay/RMN website photograph View source.
