Who Are Renoir’s Mystery Girls? With Catherine Ostler

Could one of Renoir’s most iconic paintings conceal one of the most astonishing true stories of scandal and tragedy in Golden Age Paris?

In 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking dynasty at their home in Paris’s grand 8th arrondissement. Pink and Blue, a portrait of Elisabeth and Alice Cahen d’Anvers, is one of Renoir’s most celebrated works. But behind the evoked glamour of the Belle Époque, a darker story was unfurling.

In this episode, journalist and author James McAuley speaks with writer Catherine Ostler about how Renoir’s Impressionist masterpiece hides both a family secret and the tensions of an era poised for rupture.

Drawing from her new book The Renoir Girls, Ostler’s new archival research unveils an intimate story of family betrayal which came to embody both the glamour and the vulnerability of Jewish life in Europe, as rising antisemitism and political upheaval reshaped the continent.

Catherine Ostler is a writer and historian. She is the author of The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal.

James McAuley is a journalist and author of The House of Fragile Things, and a Global Opinions contributing columnist for The Washington Post.

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