"And just before Christmas he did a portrait of Calvino's seven or eight year old niece, Mopsy. Everyone in the family, he wrote us, thought she was homely until he revealed her beauty to them in her portrait, and he also believed it was one of his better things. And then on Christmas Day Calvino drove him out to Versailles where he sketched a coach house, which was to be his first "French" painting. And as a Christmas present he gave Calvino the portrait of Mopsy."