Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano

Renoir painted this portrait around 1910 at Les Collettes, his farmhouse above Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Riviera, the very house that is now the museum holding the picture. He was almost 70 and badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. His fingers had seized into claws, and assistants wedged the brush between them and wiped his hand as he worked, and still the color stayed warm and full. The sitter is Gabrielle Colonna-Romano, a young stage actress of the Comedie-Francaise who was close to his son Pierre. Renoir would spend the rest of his life in this southern light, painting almost daily until his death in 1919.