Pastels were used extensively for portraits in eighteenth-century France. The pastel portraits Renoir created in the 1880s employ pale colors and a gentle style that reveal his consciousness of Rococo art. Recent research has identified the model for this painting as Suzanne, daughter of Hippolyte Adam, a banker. Suzanne who was born in 1877, was the youngest among four sisters. Adam family descendants long owned a pastel very similar in composition (1887, Yoshino Gypsum collection), but this one never left Renoir’s side. Matsukata Kojiro purchased it in 1923.