Misia Sert

Misia Godebska sat for this in 1904, the year she turned 32 and ended her first marriage. Parisians called her the Queen of Paris. A gifted pianist, she kept a salon where composers, writers and painters gathered, and half the artists in the city wanted to paint her. Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard and Vuillard all did. Renoir was 63 here and his hands were stiffening with the arthritis that would soon force him to work with a brush half-strapped to his fingers. By her own account he painted her seven or eight times, each portrait costing weeks of sittings. She leans back against her seat with a look that is hard to read, caught in the season her marriage was coming apart.