Vision

When this canvas, almost two and a half metres tall, went on show in Paris in 1892, it was called simply Vision. Visitors saw a barefoot girl in a plain white blouse and a blue skirt, hands clasped, face lifted, a pale halo round her head, with a sheep pressing against her side and a flock far off. Everything is steeped in blue. Only when the picture was shown again in 1899 was its subject spelled out as a vision of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, who according to legend kept sheep as a girl at Nanterre. People who saw it at the time read it as the image of a state of mind more than a scene. It came to the state in 1977 as a gift from the painter's daughter Yolande, who kept the use of it during her lifetime.