Woman in Tulle Blouse and Black Skirt c. 1917

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this image of a woman in a tulle blouse and black skirt, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, likely in France. Renoir was a key figure in the Impressionist movement, which challenged the established academic art world by focusing on fleeting moments and the effects of light, often depicting scenes of everyday life and leisure. This particular image, with its soft brushstrokes and focus on the figure in a natural setting, is a perfect example of those principles. But the image is not without its politics. Impressionism offered a new vision of modern life, one in which traditional hierarchies of subject matter were abandoned in favor of capturing the immediacy of experience. This was an inherently progressive move, as it democratized art by representing the lives and landscapes of ordinary people, thus breaking from the established norms of the French art institutions. To truly understand Renoir's work, we need to delve into the social and institutional history of his time, and ask what were the public roles of art at the time.