Rosa y azul

In 1881 Renoir was chasing wealthy clients who could pay for portraits, and the parents of these two girls were about as wealthy as Paris got. Their father was Louis Cahen d'Anvers, a Jewish banker, and their mother paid Renoir 1,500 francs for this. The girls are the sisters Elisabeth and Alice, about six and five, in the pink and blue dresses that gave the painting its everyday name. It is worth knowing that the family were not entirely satisfied, and the picture ended up hanging in a servants' corridor rather than a grand room. The younger sister, Alice, lived a long life and died in Nice in 1965, aged 89. The canvas itself left Europe in 1952 and has hung in São Paulo ever since.