Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Maison Cagnes (House at Cagnes)

Details
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Maison Cagnes (House at Cagnes)
signed 'Renoir.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
18.1/8 x 21 in. (46 x 54.7 cm.)
Painted circa 1905
Provenance
Adelade Milton de Groot
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 22 October 1972, lot 4 (illustrated in color)
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 16 November 1983, lot 47
Exhibited
Massachusetts, Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, 1939 (on loan).

Lot Essay

During the last twenty years of his life, Renoir spent most of his time in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, moving there permanently in 1907. During this period, views of the village constituted one of his principal subjects, rivalled in importance only by portraits of his family and the nude. Most of these views are of Renoir's own houses--the villas he rented every year up to 1907, and his farm Les Collettes thereafter. Indubitably, for Renoir, as for Monet at Giverny, the artist's own home ever more represented a place of repose, reflection and leisure, nourishing to creativity. The present picture, with its glowing palette and its protective umbrella of trees, is a classic example of this genre.

Franois Daulte will include this painting in the forthcoming volume IV (Les paysages) of his Renoir catalogue raisonn.