Misia assise dans une bergère dit "Nonchaloir"

In 1901 Cannes was a winter resort. Wealthy Parisians went south to escape the grey months, and the Riviera's summer beach season was still years away. The Musée d'Orsay places this small canvas there. The woman sunk into the low armchair is the pianist Misia Natanson, wife of Thadée Natanson, one of the brothers behind the Paris magazine La Revue blanche. She wears a pale dress, one bare arm raised so that her head rests against her hand. Behind her, yellow curtains hang at the windows, and between them sits a small square of blue. The odd word in the title, nonchaloir, is an old French term for indolence, a languid lack of care. The name at the lower right is a studio stamp, and the picture spent decades in a London collection before it was given to the Orsay in 2011.