Thematic Lens:
Historical Thesis: Catherine Ostler's The Renoir Girls investigates how Renoir's luminous portraits immortalized the daughters of banker Count Louis Cahen d'Anvers, while masking intense social anti-Semitism, aristocratic exclusion, and the family's subsequent Holocaust spoliation.
Provenance Trajectory
1881 — Commission
Archival Evidence & Correspondence
Salon & Patronage
"Renoir was paid only 1,500 francs for both double portraits... relegated immediately to the servant quarters and servants' staircase rather than the grand salon."
Despite vast banking wealth from the Paris Basse-Cour and Italian railroad finance, the Cahen d'Anvers family was socially segregated by French high nobility and dissatisfied with Renoir's Impressionist finish.
Object Status:
Pink and Blue (Alice and Élisabeth) is currently held at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), donated in 1952 after wartime recovery.