Lise con sombrilla

Renoir was in his mid-twenties and still struggling to get past the Salon jury when he painted Lise in 1867. The model was Lise Trehot, his companion and favourite model in these early years. He shows her life-size in a plain white summer muslin dress, standing in dappled shade with a black parasol, a red ribbon in her hair and red earrings, the light falling through leaves and staining the white fabric with soft shadow. The Salon accepted it and hung it in 1868, though one critic sniffed that she looked like a big soft cheese. Years later a German collector, Karl Ernst Osthaus, bought it for his museum, and it hangs today at the Folkwang in Essen.