Ritratto di Jeanne Durand-Ruel (Ritratto della signorina J.)

By 1876 the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had staked much of his fortune on painters almost nobody was buying, the young Impressionists, and Renoir was among the artists he kept afloat. Here Renoir paints the dealer's daughter Jeanne, about six years old, in a striped dress with a small gold cross at her throat. He gives her the upright, full-length pose of a grand 17th-century court portrait, then loosens it with modern, unexpected colour, streaks of violet run through her hair. It was a way of honouring a family that had become his lifeline. Durand-Ruel went on selling Impressionist work for another 40 years, and much later an American collector, Albert Barnes, bought so heavily from him that this portrait of Jeanne ended up in Philadelphia.