Séverine

When this portrait was shown at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1895, Séverine was already a well-known name in the Paris press. Born Caroline Rémy, she had started as secretary to the socialist writer Jules Vallès, and from 1885 to 1888 she ran his paper Le Cri du Peuple, writing in defence of working people. Her hands are clasped beneath her chin over a heap of letters, a quill stands in the inkpot, and a sealed envelope lies in a wicker basket. Her name is lettered across the gold ground, split in two by her head, which the Musée d'Orsay reads as a nod to Italian Renaissance painting. On the pink book at the lower left, the spine carries the painter's own signature. Séverine kept the picture for three decades and gave it to the French state in 1926.