In this portrait, Colette’s cropped hair, dark lips, and gleaming eyes suggest her taste for provocation. Her career began when writing under duress to provide her husband with material he published as his own. After their divorce, she performed in music halls across France, having affairs with women performers, most prominently Mathilde “Missy” de Morny, the Comtesse de Belbeuf. Colette’s novels and essays, remarkable for their ability to convey sensory experiences, often defied convention, exploring sexuality and identity through a semiautobiographical lens. As a journalist, she reported on everything from domestic violence to the front lines of the First World War, from anorexia to literature, from fashion to faking orgasms. One of France’s greatest writers, Colette was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1948.