Renoir, Pierre-Auguste (1841-1919)
La ferme des Collettes, Cagnes (The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes)
c.1908–1914
Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 65.4 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In 1907, Renoir purchased the estate of Les Collettes at Cagnes on the Mediterranean near Nice. He moved there in autumn 1908. The estate, with its picturesque farmhouse, its groves of olive and orange trees, and the views it afforded of the hilly countryside, provided the artist with major motifs for his late landscapes. This painting, executed in a fluid manner and suffused by the bright light of southern France, is one of several representations of the farm framed by olive trees painted between 1908 and 1914. Renoir‘s use of trees as a visual screen recalls Cézanne‘s method of integrating foreground and background space. (MET)