At the Theatre (La Première Sortie)
- Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Date: 1876-7
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the At the Theatre (La Première Sortie) painted in the French style by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. We can’t see the stage and one of the women is looking away from us, the back of her bonnet hiding most of the other’s face. This sense of mystery is enhanced by the nearer woman’s pose, leaning forward slightly as though something is absorbing her attention.
In nineteenth-century Paris, attending the theatre was just as much about social status as seeing the show. We get a strong sense of an atmosphere of people-watching in this picture. Among the audience in the background, a man in the lower tier and a woman above him stand out. They seem to have their eyes turned, either on us, the viewer, or on the young woman in the box.
Renoir was clearly conscious of the tension between being on display and viewing others. He made changes to the composition to increase our focus on her. X-radiography shows that he painted over two additional figures who were seated in the front of the box. The title ‘La Première Sortie’, which we use today, was actually applied nearly 50 years after the picture was made and may have been chosen to make the painting more marketable.
See it in person
At the Theatre (La Première Sortie) hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
