File:Femmes au chien 1923 oil on canvas.jpg

The horizontal composition shows two young women, one of whom is holding a guitar, surrounding a dog. She is the perfect reflection of the feminine world that Marie Laurencin liked to paint in the early 1920s. It is also a direct echo of her work on the sets for the 1923 operetta Les Biches. The animal intervenes and seems to make the link between the female figures, dressed in dresses with bows or a scarf. The two pensive young women do not face each other and seem foreign to each other.

The somewhat lunar atmosphere is given by the cold tones: white, green, blue, gray and black. However, it is warmed up by the pink tones of a skirt and the curtain and the wide yellow band on the left of the painting, an unusual color for Marie Laurencin. The delicacy of the canvas is magnified by its spectacular and refined frame made of mirrors and glass beads. We know that one of Marie Laurencin's clients had works by the artist thus framed at home. But this is the only canvas in the collection that has it.

Original publication: It is a direct echo of her work on the sets for the 1923 operetta Les Biches. In the fall of 1923, Marie Laurencin was creating the sets and costumes for the ballet Les Biches for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
Immediate source: I photographed the painting at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

1923

Marie Laurencin
(Life time: 1956)

Made public before 1926