Madame Henriot "en travesti" (The Page)

Renoir's eighteen-year-old model, Marie-Henriette Grossin—an actress who later adopted the stage name Madame Henriot—appears before a red velvet curtain, with a glimpse of the theater behind her. She is playing a boy's role, as we can see from her costume, and wears a long-sleeved doublet with buttons fastened tightly down the center, reminiscent of a troubadour. Eager to make his mark as a painter of theatrical celebrities, Renoir may have posed Henriot as the beautiful page Urbain, who serves Queen Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots, an immensely popular opera set in the sixteenth century. Henriot had no training as a singer and could never have appeared in this opera; she was performing supporting roles in one of Paris's minor theaters at the time.