The Sad Fate of the Renoir Girls

October 26, 2026 in Library Corner, Scroll

By Robin Jacobson

In the early 1880s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted luminous portraits of three French Jewish sisters from the prominent Cahen d’Anvers family. Today, the paintings continue to enchant; viewers are captivated by the little girls’ radiance, charm, and innocence. Pink and Blue is a delectable double portrait of five-year-old Alice and her six-year-old sister Élisabeth. The sisters wear frothy lace dresses; Alice’s satin sash is pink and Élisabeth’s is blue. Little Irène, painted the year before, depicts the girls’ elder sister, Irène, age eight, in the family’s garden.

Critics praised the Renoir portraits for capturing the freshness and preciousness of childhood. If the images of the sisters look familiar, that is because they have been reproduced everywhere – on greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, calendars, and tote bags. What is less well-known is that the paintings portray a short-lived “golden age” in French Jewish history. The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War, & Betrayal by Catherine Ostler traces the downward trajectory of the Cahen d’Anvers family from wealthy societal leaders in the late 19^th and early 20^th century to despised pariahs during World War II.

France’s Belle Époque

The Cahen d’Anvers portraits reflect a time of Jewish flourishing and prosperity in the early days of France’s Belle Époque (beautiful era), the interwar years between 1871 and 1914. The girls’ father, Louis Cahen d’Anvers, belonged to a wealthy banking family originally from Bonn. Their erudite mother Louise was renowned for her famous salon frequented by celebrated artists, writers, and musicians.

Other Jews in the family’s social milieu were prominent in the French government, the justice system, and the military. Proud to be French citizens, Jewish art lovers began collecting furnishings and historic homes that had belonged to French aristocrats before the French Revolution.

As a project of national pride, Louis bought and meticulously restored the storied 18^th century Château de Champs-sur-Marne near Paris. During World War I, the family temporarily converted the château into a hospital where the Cahen d’Anvers women worked as nurses. Meanwhile, Louis’s sons, Robert and Charles, served valiantly in the military, becoming decorated war heroes. In 1935, Charles made a gift of the historic property to the France state.

Yet no matter how loyally Jews served France, there were disquieting, antisemitic rumblings. The bestselling book, La France Juive (“Jewish France”) by Édouard Drumont, decried Jewish ownership of France’s cultural treasures as a kind of defilement. (E.g., Drumont found it “heartbreaking” to see Marie Antoinette’s harpsichord in a “house of Jews.”) At the same time, false rumors about Jewish financial corruption and international conspiracies proliferated, exploding into the Dreyfus Affair.

The Dreyfus Affair and the Road to Vichy France

When a Jewish military officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely convicted of treason in 1894, the scandal split the country into Dreyfusard and Anti-Dreyfusard camps. (Sadly, Renoir, known for expressing antisemitic opinions, was an anti-Dreyfusard.)  Although Dreyfus was vindicated in 1906, the societal divisions never healed. To the contrary, French antisemitism intensified as Jewish immigration to France increased between 1906 and 1939.

During World War II, antisemitism became state policy. The French Vichy government openly collaborated with the German occupiers. Alice (the girl in pink) daringly escaped France for England with her two grandchildren. Other members of the family were less fortunate.

France deported 76,000 Jews, including Élisabeth (the girl in blue) and Irène’s daughter, Béatrice, along with Beatrice’s ex-husband and their two children. All died in Auschwitz. In a final cruelty, the Germans converted the Cahen d’Anvers’ elegant Paris townhouse into a labor camp for Jewish prisoners forced to sort looted Jewish property for shipment to Germany.

The sparkling Renoir portraits are remnants from the shattered world of the Cahen d’Anvers family. They are a testament to a complicated French Jewish history of belonging and betrayal.

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Author Catherine Ostler will discuss The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War, & Betrayal, in a virtual program on Sunday, January 24, at 11:00 am. Register here.

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And don’t miss the November Author Chat with Michelle Brafman.  She will discuss her new novel, Draw Near to Me, inspired by the biblical story of Joseph, in the Adas Israel Library on Sunday, November 15, at 10:30 am. Register here  for this Beth El-Adas Israel program. Here’s the Scroll review of Brafman’s book.