This beautiful bust portrait shows Denise Gence in profile, her huge eye wide open with its large pupil, dressed as a Spanish duenna – the one in Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas – all in black satin except for a white headscarf around her face ending in a scarf. Wearing an original headdress, she shows her white mask, haloed in lace, to declare her love for Ruy Blas with her characteristic voice.

All in shades of colour, but only in black and white (sometimes bluish), this painting, with its only two faces shining on backgrounds or in a costume painted “à la Soulages”, reminds us of the actress’s immense gift for the metamorphosis of elderly, cantankerous or unreasonable women.

A theatre enthusiast, Germaine Lacaze painted a whole series of portraits of actors in 1965, including Georges Chamarat as Harpagnon, Bérangère Dautun as Rodogune, Catherine Hubeau as Agnès and Paule Noëlle in a role by Labiche.

The portraits of Georges Chamarat and Denise Gence have been hanging since 2011 on the Samson floor of the Comédie-Française.