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
Three women occupy the foreground of a richly patterned room. A fourth sits partly in shadow above them. Pierre-Auguste Renoir signed and dated this large canvas 1872. Its owner, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, titles it Parisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem. The phrasing is revealing: the models were Parisian women in costume, and the museum describes the supposed harem as an imagined scene projected onto a Paris room. The painting records a European fantasy about North Africa, not a visit to an Algerian household. National Museum of Western Art, collection record P.1959-0182. [1]
At a glance
- ArtistPierre-Auguste Renoir
- Owner titleParisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem
- Date and inscription1872; signed and dated at lower left “A. Renoir. 1872.”
- Medium and sizeOil on canvas, 156 × 128.8 cm
- CollectionNational Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Matsukata Collection, P.1959-0182
- Earlier recorded titlesIntérieur de harem à Montmartre, femmes nues and Le harem, in the museum's provenance
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Watch on YouTubeThe local URL retains an older English order of words, but the museum's title is used here for the painting itself. The canvas is tall and substantial, not a small cabinet picture. Its scale makes the figures and the textiles around them nearly life sized. Tokyo collection record. [1]
Four figures in a constructed room
At left, a dark-haired woman turns towards the centre with a thin object or chain in her hands. A fair-haired woman occupies the middle, her bent knee pointing forward as she looks down. At lower right another figure sits turned inward, dark hair falling past a pale sleeve. High at the right, a fourth woman is less distinct in the shadow near a decorated piece of furniture. Renoir gives each a different direction of gaze or turn of the body, preventing the group from becoming a single posed row.
The lower edge is crowded with patterned fabric, slippers, jewellery and other small objects. Warm orange and brown passages carry the eye across the floor, while cooler blue and grey colours mark the rear wall and the large decorated furnishing at right. A light patch behind the woman at left sets off her profile. The strongest pale area is the central figure's leg and sheer garment; it draws attention before we begin to identify the individual objects around her.
This is an interpretation of the visible composition. The image alone does not establish who any model was, what the fine object held at left is, or whether the seated figures share a particular story. The owner museum identifies the models as Parisian and the setting as staged. It does not name each woman in its public object record. National Museum of Western Art. [1]
What the title asks us to question
The word harem refers to private women's quarters in some Muslim households. Renoir's painting, however, was made before his travels to North Africa. The Tokyo museum specifically says he had not yet visited the region and calls the interior an Orientalist projection onto a room in Paris. The title is therefore evidence of how the picture was presented and understood in European collecting, not proof that it depicts real Algerian domestic life. Tokyo museum gallery label. [1]
The historical labels changed. The museum's provenance starts with a title describing an interior in Montmartre and later records Le harem. A 1921 dealer transaction calls it Parisiennes habillées en Algériennes. These names emphasize different parts of the same staged picture: Paris, costume, or the exoticized interior. The owner title now holds both ideas together rather than treating the painted fantasy as a documentary scene. Tokyo museum provenance. [1]
The models' partial undress and the crowded fabrics were meant to be looked at. Reading the work only as a display of Renoir's warm colour misses the unequal gaze built into the European harem theme. The museum's wording is a useful corrective because it distinguishes the Parisian models from the Algerian identity implied by their dress. It also avoids assigning specific ethnic identities that the public record does not support.
Delacroix in the background
The museum relates the work directly to Eugène Delacroix's Women of Algiers in their Apartment of 1834 in the Louvre. It points to the vertical composition, figures, interior mood, warm colour and costumes. Renoir studied Delacroix's work during this period, according to the owner museum. The connection is artistic and historical: the later painting reworks an earlier French image of a North African interior. It does not certify the accuracy of either picture as a record of women's lives. National Museum of Western Art, highlight text [2]; Louvre, Women of Algiers in their Apartment. [3]
Renoir's 1872 canvas departs from a simple copy. The central fair-haired figure, almost entirely in light, sits with a bent leg brought forward. The woman on the left turns towards her; the woman at lower right looks inward from a low seat. This triangular arrangement concentrates attention near the floor rather than spreading the figures evenly around the room. Rich patterns connect bodies to furnishings, so it can take several moments to separate a sleeve or foot from a rug or cushion.
The result is a particularly dense early Renoir. Short colour touches on the carpet and clothing create a sense of shimmering surface, while broader shadowed planes hold the background together. The Tokyo museum sees in this handling the beginnings of Renoir's later preference for warm palettes and lively brushwork. That stylistic observation is compatible with recognizing the picture's Orientalist construction. Tokyo museum highlight text. [2]
The painting's route to Tokyo
The Tokyo museum documents the picture first with Eugène Murer in Paris, followed by E. Fasquelle before 1912. It then passed through Bernheim-Jeune and Durand-Ruel. The museum records Kōjirō Matsukata buying it from Durand-Ruel on 31 December 1921. Those entries give a traceable early twentieth-century collector path rather than an uninterrupted history from Renoir's studio. Tokyo museum provenance. [1]
The later route reflects the history of the Matsukata Collection. The museum records French government sequestration in 1944, vesting under the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, transfer from France to Japan on 23 January 1959, and entry into the National Museum of Western Art that April. These dates concern ownership and transfer; they do not change the painting's signed 1872 date. Tokyo museum provenance and collection number. [1]
The owner record also lists exhibitions from 1913 onward. It does not, in its current public exhibition history, document an 1872 Salon appearance. Older sources have discussed a Salon rejection, but the page should not present that as a recorded event for this canvas without a directly checked period source. The inscription itself and the museum catalogue provide the secure dating used here.
Related Renoir paintings
Two years earlier, Renoir painted Odalisque or Femme d'Alger, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and exhibited it at the 1870 Salon. It shows one reclining model in a long horizontal format. The Tokyo painting instead gathers four figures in a tall interior. Both use costume and an imagined setting, but their dates, dimensions and exhibition records belong to separate objects. National Gallery of Art, Odalisque, 1963.10.207 [4]; Tokyo museum. [1]
The Tokyo work is also different from the small private-collection Odalisque of about 1895 attached to this site's separate /odalisque/ route. That later image shows a single seated woman with a red headscarf. The recurring costume theme should not collapse three distinct canvases into one record. Bridgeman, later Odalisque. [5]
Looking again
Find the central woman's bent knee, then follow the line of the rug towards the other two foreground figures. Look above them for the shadowed fourth person and the decorated furnishing. The room's warm and cool colours make a compelling composition; the museum's title and label clarify that this vivid scene was invented in Paris through borrowed ideas of Algeria.
Renoir artworks directory
Questions about Parisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem
The National Museum of Western Art identifies them as Parisian models dressed in Algerian-style costume. The scene is an imagined interior, not an observed Algerian household.
Renoir signed and dated the canvas 1872 at lower left. The museum lists it as an oil painting measuring 156 × 128.8 cm.
The owner museum points to Delacroix's Women of Algiers in their Apartment, especially its figures, interior, costume and colour.
Kōjirō Matsukata bought it in 1921. After wartime sequestration and a 1959 transfer from France to Japan, it entered the National Museum of Western Art in April 1959.
Discussion
What do you notice when you return to Parisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem?
How do the three foreground women and shadowed fourth figure direct your eye through the room?
Reader Insights
How do the three foreground women and shadowed fourth figure direct your eye through the room?
The Tokyo museum identifies Parisian models in an imagined setting, signed and dated 1872.
Which costumes and furnishings reveal Renoir’s debt to Delacroix, and what does the title ask us to question?
Join the Conversation
Share a close observation or a source-backed question about Renoir’s Parisiennes in Algerian Costume or Harem.
References
- National Museum of Western Art, full record for P.1959-0182: title, date, dimensions, inscription, interpretation, provenance, exhibitions and bibliography View source.
- National Museum of Western Art, collection highlight: comparison with Delacroix and discussion of Renoir's early colour View source.
- Louvre, Women of Algiers in their Apartment View source.
- National Gallery of Art, Odalisque , 1963.10.207 View source.
- Bridgeman, later Odalisque View source.
- Whole-work image: Daderot's independent photograph on Wikimedia Commons, 3337 × 4034 pixels, photographed with museum permission and released by its maker under CC0. The thin frame is excluded from the local web crop View source.
