A Photographer’s Forgotten Muse on the French Riviera

MESSYNESSY

There was definitely something about Renée. When the legendary French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue met her while strolling the streets of Paris in 1930, he fell in love instantly. Tall, chic and hiding coquettishly under a wide elegant hat, he nicknamed her the ‘parasol’. Together they embarked on what Lartigue remembers as an “eternal vacation”, a dreamlike two-year holiday in the South of France, where he documented her riviera style and endlessly photogenic form. She became his Mona Lisa, but just like Da Vinci’s muse, we know very little about Renée Perle. After the couple’s affair ended in 1932, it’s as if she vanished from the world, having only existed in that beautiful but brief snapshot of time through the lens of her lost lover…

We know that Renée came from a Romanian-Jewish background and when she arrived in Paris, she started out as a model in Paris for the French couturier, Doeuillet. She appears to have escaped the Nazi invasion of World War II, later married, and according to records, Renée passed away in 1977 in the South of France where her young romance had been immortalised. In the year 2000, her descendants quietly released 340 unseen photographs documenting her relationship with Lartigue for auction. Renée had preciously held onto them for nearly 50 years up until her death.

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