Colonna Romano

In the spring of 1918 Paris was under fire. Since March, German guns more than 100 kilometres away had been dropping shells on the city. On 7 May the French state signed the order buying this canvas directly from Renoir for the Musée du Luxembourg, the Paris museum of living artists. He was 77. The war leaves no mark on the picture he sold. A young woman leans on the back of a chair in a blue blouse with white ruffles and a gold sash, one hand lifted to a blue hat heaped with dark plumes and roses. She is Gabrielle Colonna-Romano, an actress who joined the Comédie-Française in 1913, around the time this was painted. The museum's other title for it is Young Woman with a Rose, and a rose lies near her hand at the bottom of the canvas.