Die lesende Gabrielle

Gabrielle Renard came to the Renoir household at 16 to help mind the children, and she stayed near the middle of the family for years. She was a cousin of Renoir's wife, nanny to his son Jean, the boy who grew up to make films, and more than 200 times over she was the woman Renoir painted. By 1906 his hands were badly crippled by arthritis and he worked slowly, the brush sometimes strapped to his fingers. Here he asks almost nothing of her. She simply sits with a book, warm-skinned and absorbed, the kind of unposed domestic quiet he could paint from someone he saw every day. She left the household a few years later, but Jean stayed close to her for the rest of their lives.