Das Ehepaar Sisley

Renoir painted this in 1868, six years before the word Impressionism even existed, when he and his friends were poor and still finding their way. A man in a striped suit turns toward a woman in a bold gown of red and gold, offering his arm, the whole picture built around that one tender gesture between them. For generations it was known as the painter Alfred Sisley with his wife, Renoir's fellow struggling artist. Then the museum looked closely and could not match the woman to any known portrait of Sisley's wife, so today it simply calls the pair a couple, and some think the model was in fact Renoir's own companion, Lise Trehot. What is certain is the date. This is one of the earliest surviving glimpses of the loose brushwork and warmth that Renoir would spend the rest of his life perfecting.