Junge Frau, ihren Ohrring richtend

By 1905 Renoir was 64 and rheumatoid arthritis had twisted his hands. He had moved south for the warmth and was working near Nice. The Salon d'Automne had given him a room of his own the year before, and in the autumn of 1905 one of its galleries held the canvases by Matisse and his friends that got them called wild beasts. Renoir was heading the other way, towards heavier, rounder figures learned from the old masters in the Louvre. The sitter is Gabrielle Renard, a cousin of Renoir's wife who came from the village of Essoyes to help with the children and stayed on as his steadiest model. William Mather, a Cleveland iron-ore man, left the picture to the city's museum, which has had it since 1951.