“Collette’s House in Cagnes” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir was painted by Renoir at the age of just over 70-year-old, during a time when Renoir lived at a farm on the hill Les Collettes in Cagnes-sur-Mer, the area he lived in until his death. Renoir died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, seven years after this painting. Renoir’s paintings are notable for their light and color, as in this painting. The warm of Renoir’s style made his paintings some of the most famous works in the history of art. Renoir used the trees as a visual screen to integrate the foreground and background space.
La Ferme des Collettes
In 1907 Renoir purchased the estate of Les Collettes at Cagnes on the Mediterranean near Nice. The estate included a farmhouse with olive and orange tree groves. The property provided views of the hilly countryside and provided Renoir with significant motifs for his late landscapes. This painting was fluidly executed and suffused by the bright light of southern France and is one of several representations of the farm painted between 1908 and 1914.
Musee Renoir, Cagnes Sur Mer
Renoir lived at La Ferme des Collettes with his family from 1908 until his death in 1919. Renoir moved to Cagnes-Sur-Mer for the warm climate, in the hopes that it would improve his arthritis, which eventually confined him to a wheelchair. The house in which he spent the last 12 years of his life is full of citrus and olive trees, looking out along the coastline to the Cap d’Antibes. Today the house is a Museum of his time at the estate.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir, was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As one who celebrated beauty and especially feminine sensuality, Renoir’s paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with their surroundings.
At the age of 51, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis, which in his last twenty years of his life, severely limited his mobility. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to change his painting technique. Renoir remained positive and passionate about his art and did not let his condition affect his painting or diminish the beauty that he saw around him. In the advanced stages of his arthritis, he required an assistant to place his paintbrush in his hand. His hands were also wrapped with bandages to prevent skin irritation. Renoir applied a variety of effective coping strategies and used his ingenuity to come up with different ways to continue painting even as his arthritis weakened him.
Renoir was a prolific artist who created several thousand paintings. The single most extensive collection of his works, about 181 pictures, is part of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Collette’s House in Cagnes
- Title: Collette’s house in Cagnes
- Español: La casa de Collettes en Cagnes
- Français: La maison de Collette à Cagnes
- Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Date: 1912
- Style: Impressionism
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 47 × 55.5 cm (18.5 × 21.9 in)
- Museum: Museo Soumaya
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Name: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Born: 1841 – Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France
- Died: 1919 (aged 78) – Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France
- Nationality: French
- Movement: Impressionism
- Famous Paintings:
- Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette
- Dance at Bougival
- The Large Bathers
- The Theater Box
- Collette’s House in Cagnes
- Luncheon of the Boating Party
- In Summer
- Country Dance
- Two Sisters
- Portrait of Misia Godebska-Sert
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A Tour of the Museo Soumaya
- “Woman Washing” by Edgar Degas
- “Collette’s house in Cagnes” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- “The Virgin and the Child in a Niche” by Sandro Botticelli
- “The Tears of Saint Peter” by El Greco
Reflections
- What makes me happy? – Imagining Renoir at his estate, painting this scene at age 70.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Quotes
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“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
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“I’ve been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.”
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“When I’ve painted a woman’s bottom so that I want to touch it, then the painting is finished.”
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“It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.”
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“Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.”
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“I’ve been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.”
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“It’s with my brush that I make love.”
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“We are in a period of searchers rather than of creators.”
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“The more they measure, the more they realize how much the Greeks departed from regular and banal lines to produce their effect.”
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“Why should beauty be suspect?”
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“There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.”
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“One must, from time to time, attempt things that are beyond one’s capacity.”
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I think I’m beginning to learn something about it.”
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“There’s nothing more absurd than a “connoisseur.”
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“You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them all flat.”
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If it [dabbling in art] didn’t amuse me, I beg you to believe that I wouldn’t do it.
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“Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained, it is no longer art.”
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“I have been for forty years, discovering that the queen of all colors was black.”
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“What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.”
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“I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honors shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable. But I don’t seem to have a single real friend!”
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“The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.”
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God, the king of artists, was clumsy.
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Why should beauty be suspect?
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Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.
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They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it and that a nymph inhabits it.
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“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
– Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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Photo Credit 1) Pierre-Auguste Renoir [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons