클레망틴 발랑시 스토라 부인

Renoir painted this in 1870, months before France stumbled into war with Prussia and the empire fell. He was 29 and still poor, and the commission went wrong. The sitter was Clementine Stora, 19 years old, born into a Jewish family from Algiers and married to a Paris antiques dealer. She wears the festive dress of the Algerian Jewish community, gold-embroidered velvet and a striped scarf wound into a cap. Renoir, half in love with Delacroix's dream of North Africa, painted her skin in daring blues and greens. The Storas were appalled, called the picture horrible, and sold it off cheaply. It drifted through other hands and ended up with a fellow painter who prized it, Claude Monet.