Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Girls in Black, 1882 | Pushkin Museum

Young Women in Black or Young Girls in Black (French: Jeunes Filles en noir) is an 1880-1882 painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, which since 1948 has been in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

From 1908 to 1918 it was in Sergei Schukin's collection.

In 1918 it was moved to the 1st Museum of New Western Painting, which five years later merged with the 2nd Museum of New Western Painting to form the State Museum of New Western Art, where the painting remained until that institution was abolished in 1948.

The 1880s saw a new stage in Renoir's work.

Under the influence of scientific theories about the interaction of spectral colours, which stated that it was necessary to paint in tones of the pure spectrum only, the colouring in his pictures changed radically.

The artist renounced black completely, replacing it by a complex mixture of blue ultramarine and red madder.

Although the heroines in his pictures remained the same as ever, young Parisiennes and women of Montmartre, at the beginning of the 1880s the artist's pictorial manner lost its former Impressionist "atmospherics" and became more austere and graphic.

"I have come to the end of Impressionism", Renoir acknowledged. | © The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Gli anni Ottanta dell'Ottocento videro una nuova fase nel lavoro di Renoir.

Sotto l'influenza delle teorie scientifiche sull'interazione dei colori spettrali, secondo le quali era necessario dipingere solo con i toni dello spettro puro, la colorazione dei suoi quadri cambiò radicalmente.

L'artista ha rinunciato completamente al nero, sostituendolo con una complessa miscela di blu oltremare e rosso robbia.

Sebbene le eroine dei suoi quadri siano rimaste le stesse di sempre, giovani parigine e donne di Montmartre, all'inizio degli anni Ottanta dell'Ottocento la maniera pittorica dell'artista perse le precedenti "atmosfere" impressioniste e divenne più austera e grafica.

"Sono arrivato alla fine dell'impressionismo", ha riconosciuto Renoir. | © The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts