Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano

Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano of 1913 belongs to Renoir's late series of formal commissioned and semi-formal portraits at Cagnes, demonstrating his continued engagement with portraiture as a genre even when his primary energies were focused on the bather, landscape, and still-life subjects of his final period. Commissioned portraiture had supported him financially since the early 1870s when Parisian bourgeois clients like the Charpentier family had recognized his particular gift for capturing character through warm, living likeness rather than formal stiffness. The late portraits maintained this quality while gaining the increased freedom and warmth of his late handling generally: faces more freely modeled, clothing more atmospherically applied, backgrounds more loosely indicated. The Italian surname of the sitter suggests the cosmopolitan world of Cagnes and Nice society, where international residents mingled with French visitors and local families. Renoir's ability to attract portrait commissions at seventy-two, despite severe physical limitation, testifies to the sustained reputation his portraiture maintained among French and international collectors.

A formal 1913 portrait would employ Renoir's late mature figure approach: warm, blended flesh modelling in the face and hands, more loosely applied treatment of clothing and background, with the sitter's personality conveyed through colour warmth rather than psychological penetration.