‘The Umbrellas’ by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The Umbrellas by Renoir is a painting I rediscovered, thanks to a friend who told me it reminded her of me…
Maybe, because I am a pluviophile and I adore the intoxicating, blue nuances of it.
Owned by the National Gallery in London, it was depicted in 1880-1 and it shows two women as the main protagonists.
On the right, a mother glancing at her daughter and covering another female figure who is about to open or close her umbrella, suggesting the rain has just started or stopped.
However, it is the woman on the left, who catches the viewer’s attention, with her gloomy gaze.
Renoir chose his lover, Suzanne Valadon, as his model for the painting and in the way she faces the world and our eternal curiosity, we can read the whole Impressionist creed: single details given to recreate a whole era.