Femme en noir

Renoir painted this in 1876, right in the thick of the Impressionist years, and he set himself a quiet technical problem, how to paint a black dress without really using black. Look closely at the fabric and it's full of greys and cool blue-greys, shifting as the light catches it, with true black held back for only the deepest shadows. The young woman sits against a background he barely bothered to finish, so all the attention falls on her and on that dress. We are not even sure who she is, perhaps the wife of a music publisher the painter knew, perhaps one of his regular models named Anne. A blue scarf at her shoulders picks up the same cool notes running through the black.