La Sargantaine (portrait de Júlia Peraire)

Around 1905 Ramon Casas, a wealthy Barcelona painter in his late thirties, met a lottery-ticket seller barely 18. Her name was Júlia Peraire, though on the street she was known as la sargantana, the lizard, and that street nickname became the title of this 1907 portrait. She was the one lasting attachment of his life, and his family was appalled by it. His mother's disapproval weighed on him for years, and it was only in 1922, after the family matriarch had died, that Casas and Júlia finally married. Here she is a few years into that long, scandalous courtship, painted with a directness and warmth Casas gave to almost no other sitter.