Portrait of Paul Ranson in Nabi Costume

From 1889 the young painter Paul Ranson opened his studio, above the family flat on the boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris, to a group of friends from art school who called themselves the Nabis. They renamed the room the Temple, gave each other mock-solemn nicknames, and turned their gatherings into half-joking rituals. In 1890 Sérusier painted his host dressed for the part. Ranson wears a grey-blue robe with a broad yellow collar set with a green stone, and he grips a tall staff shaped like a bishop's crozier, with a five-pointed star in its curl. With his other hand he follows the lines of a huge open book. Behind his head glows an orange disc. Spectacles, a curled moustache and a pointed beard keep him recognisably a man of the 1890s. The Musée d'Orsay bought the portrait from a dealer in 2004.