About this work
— Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881 Oil on canvas, 100.5 × 81 cm — Art Institute of Chicago
The elder of the two figures anchors the composition at center — a young woman in a female boater's blue flannel who gazes absently beyond the frame — while the younger companion seems, in a charming visual conceit, to have just dashed into the picture.
Her glowing scarlet hat commands the eye immediately, its resonance of color expressively set off by the fresh green of the background, drawing the gaze to her pure oval face and the beautiful eyes of a dreamer.
Renoir juxtaposed these solid, almost life-size figures against a landscape that — like a stage set — seems a realm of pure vision and fantasy.
Over the terrace railing, shrubbery and foliage give way to the River Seine behind.
Light plays an exceptionally important role throughout, glistening on the water, playing in agglomerations of flowers and foliage, and finally freezing in sparks in the eyes of both figures. A small basket of wool in the lower left corner adds a wry domestic note to a scene that otherwise belongs entirely to sunlight and open air.
Renoir painted the work on the terrace of the Maison Fournaise — a restaurant on an island in the Seine at Chatou, a western suburb of Paris — where he spent much of his time in the spring of 1881.
With its elevated point of view over a verdant landscape and its glimpses of rowing and sailboats moored at the quay, *Two Sisters* brings to a close Renoir's sustained period of painting leisure and boating along the Seine, a series that had begun at this very location in 1875.
It was painted in the immediate aftermath of *Luncheon of the Boating Party*, which Renoir had completed on the same terrace the previous year.
Despite the title, the two figures are not related; the elder is modelled by Jeanne Darlot, who would go on to become an actress.
The painting was presented to the public for the first time at the 7th Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1882.
*Two Sisters (On the Terrace)* is one of the most popular paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago — and it's easy to understand why it translates so powerfully as a fine art print. The warmth of its palette, the intimacy of its scale, and the easy confidence of its light make it equally at home in a bright dining room or a sun-touched study. It speaks to a viewer drawn to paintings that feel inhabited rather than merely observed — where the figures seem genuinely present, the afternoon genuinely
