Gabrielle Renard

Gabrielle Renard (August 1, 1878 – February 26, 1959) was a French woman who became an important member of the family of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, first becoming their nanny, and subsequently a frequent model for the artist.

[2] Born in Essoyes in the Aube departement of France, she was a cousin of Aline Victorine Charigot Renoir, who had married the painter, Pierre-Auguste.

At age sixteen, Gabrielle Renard moved to Montmartre to live and work as a nanny in her cousin's household, where the second of the three Renoir sons was about to be born.

[citation needed] Following the occupation of France by the Germans during World War II, Gabrielle and her family moved to the United States, her husband's native country.

He wrote, "She taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes", and he concluded with the words he said he had often spoken as a child, "Wait for me, Gabrielle".