La Poste France Renoir's Portrait of Margot

LA POSTE FRANCE on 9 November 1968 issued a commemorative First Day Cover stamp of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Portrait of Margot or "Tête de femme de profil" (Head of a Woman in Profile) which he painted in 1878.

Margot (Marguerite Legrand), one of Renoir's favourite models, whose features appear in many of the painter's paintings from the 1870s posed for this picture. Margot was a charming young girl from Montmartre who "had skin that reflected the light" (Renoir's own words) and who died of typhoid fever in February 1879. Her death, of course, was a cause of great sadness for the painter. 

The work, which passed to the doctor Paul Gachet (a passionate collector of Impressionist paintings), entered the Louvre in 1951, before finding its definitive home in Orsay in 1986.