La Parisienne

One hundred and thirty-two years ago, a reviewer visiting the first impressionist exhibition of 1874 saw Renoir's painting 'La Parisienne' and wrote:

'The toe of her ankle boot is almost invisible, and peeps out like a mouse. Her hat is tilted over one ear and is daringly coquettish... The smile is false and the face is a strange mixture of the old and the childish. One gets the impression that this litle lady is trying hard to look chaste.'

'La Parisienne' by Auguste Renoir

It is interesting that more than 100 years after these words were written, I recognise my own impression of the present day 'Parisiennes'. And not just in these words, in the painting itself as well. Her clothes might be completely different, but that doesn't matter. Last year I spent three months in Paris, and there is something about the girls I saw and met there that seperates them from every other girl. Not just from foreign girls like me, but also from the French girls that were not born and raised in Paris. That something I saw back in this painting. Its their attitude. There is no way to describe this attitude, but Renoir managed to do it with oil on canvas. Its timeless, and from all the paintings in the National Museum of Wales it left the biggest impression with me.