Portrait de Stéphane Mallarmé

In 1892 the French state agreed to buy a painting by Renoir for the Musée du Luxembourg, the museum of living artists. It was a slow, official kind of recognition for a man who had been exhibiting for 30 years, and it happened partly because Stéphane Mallarmé called on the director of fine arts on his behalf. Mallarmé was the most admired poet in Paris, a schoolteacher of English by profession, and the host of the Tuesday evenings where writers and painters crowded into his flat on the rue de Rome. Renoir painted this small portrait and gave it to him in thanks. Mallarmé's response was to complain that he had been turned into a wealthy financier, in a suit, a white shirt and a loose tie.