Word: cocos
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When the California Palace of the Legion of Honor announced a showing of its most important acquisition in four years-a little-known Renoir they called Coco and Gabrielle (TIME, March 17)-TIME's San Francisco bureau suggested the exhibition as a likely art story. For further background material TIME asked its Los Angeles bureau to interview Gabrielle, one of the painter's favorite models, now living in Hollywood. She had been a nurse for Renoir's son Claude ("Coco...
...when she was shown a color print of the Renoir to be unveiled in San Francisco, Gabrielle studied it for a long time, then said she was not the woman in the picture and that the baby was not Coco. She even doubted that it was a real Renoir...
...have always been anxious," said Pierre Auguste Renoir, "to paint women as beautiful fruits." One of his favorites was Gabrielle, his son "Coco's" rosy-cheeked nurse. Over the years, gallery-goers have seen scores of Gabrielles. Last week the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco proudly put on display one it was sure the public had never seen...
...bare-bottomed little boy as he petted his cat. Renoir never titled it, but Vollard had supplied a painstakingly descriptive one: Woman Guiding a Child's First Steps Toward a Chair on Which There Is a Kitten. The legion, with the blessings of the experts, called it simply Coco and Gabrielle...
...week's end the legion and the experts suffered a mild shock. Gabrielle, now in her 70s and living near Los Angeles, announced that she was definitely not the girl in the picture. As for the little boy, it couldn't be Coco because he was never that plump. Gabrielle even wondered whether the painting might be a forgery. "Even the Louvre," said she, "can sometimes be fooled by clever people...