"City Dance" by Pierre Auguste Renoir

Media: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 70.9”x 35.4”

Date: 1883

 Pierre Auguste Renoir was another French Impressionist artist. He was born in 1841 as the son of a working-class family. As a boy he painted designs on the china in a porcelain factory. He began studying art in Paris and eventually gained fame and recognition as an Impressionist artist. Renoir died in 1919 at his home in France.

 “The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which he puts forth, which sweeps you along in his passion”

 Renoir painted City Dance and Country Dance as twin pieces. The first is sophisticated, with the elegance of city dancers in a ball room. Country Dance is more loose and disorganized, with a discarded hat and a table full of dirty dishes. But the composition of each is almost identical, with the two pairs of dancers in the same position as if dancing the same song.

 In City Dance, the lady seems to float in the arms of the gentleman as they dance. This dance, like the ballet of Edgar Degas, has a dreamlike quality. Dancing in each other’s arms is perhaps the fulfillment of the lady and gentleman’s dreams as well.