Vera Sergine Renoir

In 1914 the Renoir family gained an actress. Pierre, the painter's eldest son, married Véra Sergine that year. She had won the first prize for tragedy at the Paris Conservatoire and had already appeared in silent films, and their son Claude had been born in December 1913.

Renoir painted his new daughter-in-law in a loose white blouse, a red flower tucked into her dark hair, her chin resting on one hand. The same red comes back in the cloth in front of her, against a background of loose orange and rose strokes.

The baby in that household became a cinematographer. Claude Renoir shot The River in India for his uncle Jean in 1951, and a few years later he filmed Picasso at work for The Mystery of Picasso. The portrait reached Bogotá in 2000, one of the 85 works by other artists that Fernando Botero gave to Colombia's central bank.