Portrait in Red: A Paris Obsession

Join us for a conversation with L. John Harris, author of Portrait in Red: A Paris Obsession (Heyday Books). The book covers L. John Harris’s captivating, ten-year quest to uncover the story behind an anonymous 1935 portrait found discarded on a Paris sidewalk. Blending investigative art sleuthing, novelistic memoir, and rich color photography, Harris takes readers from his discovery of “The Girl in Red” on a journey that merges historical intrigue, aesthetic theory, and personal revelation—connecting the painting to his own life as an art student, food writer, and memoirist. Along the way, he weaves in themes of Parisian culture, world history, and family heritage, showing how art can unexpectedly change the course of a life.

L. John Harris, born in Los Angeles, studied art and literature at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. Seduced by Berkeley’s food revolution in the 1970s, Harris worked at several iconic shops and restaurants and wrote The Book…