The Neruda Quartet, showing some of the spectators to the left. Study

This study for Peder Severin Krøyer's painting of the Neruda Quartet (1886) documents the Danish-Bohemian violinist Wilma Norman-Neruda and her ensemble performing in Copenhagen. Krøyer was the dominant figure in Danish painting of the era and a member of the Skagen colony; his large-format music scenes — combining portraiture, interior painting, and the social documentation of Copenhagen bourgeois culture — represent some of the most ambitious figure painting of Danish Impressionism. This study captures spectators to the left of the main composition, exploring how to situate the audience within the space of the performance. The finished work belongs to the tradition of Parisian concert-scene painting pioneered by Degas.

As a study, the handling is more searching and provisional than in Krøyer's finished canvases, with free brushwork probing the relationship between figures and the concert-room space. The palette is warm, organized around the artificial light of the interior. Figures are sketched with confidence but without final resolution.