Séraphine is the story of Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), a simple and profoundly devout housekeeper who in 1905 at age 41, self-taught and with the instigation of her guardian angel began painting brilliantly colorful canvases. In 1912 Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), a German art critic and collector – he was one of the first collectors of Picasso and champion of naïve primitive painter Le Douanier Rousseau – discovered her paintings while she worked for him as a maid in his house in Senlis outside Paris.