Young Woman Sewing (1879): Artwork and History

Young Woman Sewing (1879) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The model for this elegant painting of a French bourgeois woman sewing may be Aline Charigot, whom Pierre-Auguste Renoir would go on to marry. The artist treated his domestic subject—a middle-class woman embroidering a textile—with vibrant color, light-filled atmosphere, and freely handled paint. Cobalt blue dominates the composition with striking contrasts of red and spare touches of yellow, relying on the optical effect produced by the close proximity of primary colors to enliven the composition and increase the sense of direct observation and spontaneity.

Object facts

• Title: Young Woman Sewing
• Date: 1879
• Artist attribution: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 61.4 × 50.5 cm (24 3/16 × 19 7/8 in.); Framed: 84.2 × 75 × 10.5 cm (33 1/8 × 29 1/2 × 4 1/8 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.452

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.