PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919)

Jeune femme assise jouant de la guitare belongs to a group of works that Renoir painted of women and men playing the guitar. Renoir's appreciation for "La Belle Otéro," a dancer at the Folies-Bergère who was celebrated at the time as the embodiment of Spanish seduction, is thought to have inspired these works. Although the model in the present work lacks the overtly Spanish costume seen in Jeune espagnole avec une guitare, 1898 (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), her outfit still gives the impression of a costume piece. This dramatic clothing contrasts the modest, informal modern dresses that the painter used in his numerous scenes from this period of young bourgeois women talking, reading and sitting together.
The theme of a figure playing a musical instrument also manifests Renoir's interest in the tradition of French painting, with precedents including Le Guitariste, 1755-1760 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes) by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Le chanteur espagnol, 1860 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) by Edouard Manet. Camille Corot's figure subjects were particularly influential on Renoir at this time, and the elder painter's numerous images of women with instruments share the sense of reverie in the present work.