Portrait in Red: A Paris Obsession

The quest to uncover the history of a mysterious painting, and a joyous exploration of art in the twentieth century and beyond.

While wandering the streets of Paris in 2015, L. John Harris finds an abandoned, unfinished, and strangely compelling painting. The subject: a girl wearing a bright-red head covering, fixing her viewer with a foreboding gaze. The painting bears no signature, only the date: January 12, 1935. Harris, a journalist and illustrator, embarks on a multi-year quest to uncover the story behind this painting. His sleuthing has given birth to Portrait in Red, a wide-ranging exploration of art and its enduring mysteries.

With wit and a contagious enthusiasm, Harris traces unexpected connections between Paris on the eve of World War II, his bohemian life in the San Francisco Bay Area, the aura of original paintings, the magic of found objects, and the aesthetics of a perfect croque monsieur. Portrait in Red will delight lovers of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes or Michael Finkel's The Art Thief. By turns heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, it is an existential detective story, set among world tragedies, art-historical epiphanies, and comic hijinks.