Madame Hector France

Irma Clare posed for this portrait while she was married to someone else. Her husband was Hector France, a novelist who had sided with the Paris Commune in 1871 and had lived in exile ever since. Henri-Edmond Cross painted her at full length, on a canvas more than two metres tall, and dated it 1891. She stands on a terrace at night in a dark blue gown and long gloves, a folded fan in her hand, with a row of white Japanese fans behind her and a rhododendron in flower in the foreground. Everything is built from small, separate touches of colour. In 1893 she divorced him and married the painter. The museum lists the picture under her later name, Madame Henri-Edmond Cross, and keeps Madame Hector France as its second title.