Two Young Girls at the Piano

In 1892 the French state finally agreed to buy a picture by an Impressionist for a national collection, the Musee du Luxembourg, which showed the work of living artists. It was a real change after years of official coldness, arranged in part by the poet Stephane Mallarme and a sympathetic young official named Roger Marx. Renoir took the commission and, anxious about how closely the result would be judged, painted the same scene of two girls at a keyboard around five times over, adjusting a gesture, the light, the fall of a sleeve. This is one of those fully worked versions. Everything is soft and warm, the two heads bent together over the sheet music, one hand poised just above the keys.