The piano lesson

There is a rarity to works by Julie Delance-Feurgard due, in part, to her untimely death at the age of thirty-three.

Delance-Feurgard studied at the Académie Julian, where she became friends with fellow artist Louise Breslau, who painted a portrait of her (Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland). Delance-Feurgard exhibited at the Salon between 1880-1889, and Jane R. Becker observes “For submissions to the Salon, starting in 1884, she declared herself a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Léon Bonnat” (L. Madeline et al., Exhibition catalogue, Women Artists in Paris 1850-1900, New Haven, 2017, p. 247). Delance-Feurgard would go on to exhibit at the salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculptures.

It has been suggested that the model for the present work, attentively and cautiously concentrating on playing the piano, is the same model as in Delance-Feurgard’s work November (Museum of Fine Arts of Liège collection).