D'estate

In 1868 Renoir was 27 and mostly broke, and the woman he painted here, Lise Tréhot, was his lover and posed for more than 20 of his pictures over about six years. He dressed her down as a young Romani woman, blouse slipping off one shoulder, dark hair loose, sitting outdoors in the heat. In that period the idea of Romani life stood in a Frenchman's imagination for freedom from respectable rules, which is part of what he was reaching for. It worked as a career move too. A version of this subject got him into the official Salon of 1869, a rare early success. Lise was pregnant when he painted her, and within a few years she married someone else and vanished from his canvases entirely.