Twenty-four years ago, I found myself wandering the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. There, I encountered many magnificent works from the usual suspects… Picasso, Stuart Davis, Pollock, El Greco — by all accounts, a nice little Saturday.

As I dove deeper into the collection, I stumbled upon “The White Hat” by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. This work stopped me dead in my tracks. The painting itself was magnificent. The brush strokes, the tonality, the chiaroscuro. Her gaze is both seductive and haunting. Painted around 1780, history maintains this figure was a figment of the artist’s imagination… an invented woman. I reject this notion. She struck me as real. Visceral.

Free-flowing, revealing outfits were en vogue in the late 1700’s… yes, and still — there is a staggering vulnerability on display. A salacious Mona Lisa of sorts. And so, 24 years later, White Hat found her way to my easel in first Minnesota, then Idaho, and became Re-Mastered.

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