Young Woman Seated

Renoir painted this in 1876, in the thick of the Impressionists' great gamble. Shut out and mocked by the official Salon, the group had begun mounting their own independent shows, and Renoir was among the busiest of them, contributing to the second exhibition that year and the third the following spring. This is not a commission. The sitter is Nina Lopez, one of his favourite professional models, posed in the studio with her chin resting on her hand. Later the picture picked up the nickname "La Pensée," meaning "Thought," as if she were lost in deep reflection, though what we are really looking at is a paid model holding a pose. The soft, flickering brushwork and the warm light across her face are the very things the Salon juries had been rejecting.