Solange Listening to Chopin 

Maria Bozoky rendered “Solange Listening to Chopin” in watercolor, likely in Hungary, where she spent much of her career. The image presents a scene of bourgeois domesticity. A woman, presumably Solange, sits in an armchair, listening to a man at the piano. The composition invites us to consider the social conditions that might have shaped this artistic production. We can imagine the artist moving in circles where music played a central role in social life. The scene suggests the value placed on leisure, cultivation, and the arts within a particular social class. The visual codes speak to cultural references that were instantly recognizable to its intended audience. To understand this artwork better, we might look to biographies of Bozoky and studies of musical culture in mid-20th century Hungary. The meaning of this image is contingent on its social and institutional context.