Lise in a White Shawl

Emery Reves and Douglas Cooper each considered this superb - and sentimental - portrait of Lise Tréhot to be the last of many paintings that Renoir made of his favorite model. Cooper even hints that the painting may have been made as a wedding present for Tréhot, who married Georges Brière de l'Isle in Paris on 24 April 1872. The white scarf she wears over her head lends the representation an air of modesty, and her gesture focuses our attention on her face, with its large, dark eyes, rather than on her body. This character of modesty lends credence to Cooper's idea that the picture was a wedding gift.

Renoir used Tréhot as a model for a full-length portrait painted in 1871-1872 (Guggenheim Museum, New York). Called "Girl Feeding a Bird (Lise)," this work was made as part of an elaborate pictorial dialogue with Manet and Courbet. In it, Tréhot wears the same dress and earrings as she does in the Reves portrait, which suggests that the two works were painted at the same time, and that Renoir retained the more ambitious picture for exhibition and sale and gave the smaller, more intimate picture to his favorite model, who kept it throughout her life.

All evidence suggests that Tréhot was closely connected to Renoir, but that she struggled after her marriage to assure her bourgeois respectability by cutting off all connections with the painter. This, the last of Renoir's pictorial "homages" to Tréhot, is a work of utter frankness and simplicity. How they must have stared into each other's eyes as Renoir painted her this last time. His brush lingered over her shawl, exploring its patterns and folds, but his most confident strokes define her features. Her lips, gently closed, are highlighted with tiny touches of white paint that make them look moist. The dimple beneath her mouth appears almost to tremble, and her eyes seem filled with tears. If ever there was a subtler and more satisfying representation of regret and loss, it is difficult to bring to mind. One almost wishes that Renoir himself had kept this painting.

"Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection," page 51