Two Women s Heads (The Loge) 1903

Pierre-Auguste Renoir made this painting of two women’s heads using oil paint sometime in the late 19th century. You can almost feel Renoir dabbing and stroking the canvas with his brush. I imagine he was trying to capture a fleeting moment, a stolen glance between the two women, maybe at the theatre. The paint is applied thinly, in layers of warm, earthy tones, like he was trying to capture the very essence of light and shadow. See how the brushstrokes around the faces are soft and blurred, giving the figures a dreamy, almost ethereal quality? It makes me think about other impressionist painters like Degas, who were also interested in capturing these glimpses of modern life. I wonder if Renoir ever felt frustrated trying to pin down something so fleeting, so transient. But hey, that's what painting is all about, right? Trying to capture the uncapturable, and in the process, saying something totally new.