Piano's met draperieën c. 1895 - 1910

Léon Laroche made these "Pianos met draperieën" sometime in the past, likely using printing techniques. I love the flat rendering of the fabric. It's like a kid's drawing, but with this intense attention to detail in the folds and the way the light hits. You can see that they were really trying to get the illusion of depth, but at the same time, everything is just so perfectly laid out on the page. The mark-making here is so clear, so deliberate. You can see each little line, each little choice that the artist made. The way the artist handles color is really interesting. It's very muted, very soft, but there's also a boldness to it. The composition as a whole is really eye-catching, but it's the little details that really make this piece special. The way the drapery falls reminds me a bit of early Renaissance paintings, where they were just figuring out how fabric worked. Laroche's work reminds us that art is this continuous conversation, always building on what came before, always finding new ways to see the world.