Renoir at Cagnes-sur-Mer

Musee Renoir

And so we get to our third artistic exploration. This time we went to Cagnes-sur-Mer & the Musée Renoir. The artist Renoir, too, was drawn to this area in 1907. In his case it was more to do with his health than the light, as he was increasingly in pain with rheumatoid arthritis & it was thought the climate in the south of France would help ease it a bit for him. This museum was largely focused on the man himself & his family, although there were several of his paintings on display & a bronze of his in the garden.

Renoir's "Venus Victrix"

I tend to associate Renoir particularly with paintings of people, not necessarily of portraits as such, sometimes of people dancing for example or sitting in a bar.

This museum was in the house Renoir lived in. It had a lived in feeling, a place of light & fun. I felt you could almost see the children playing in the grounds.

 

The farmhouse next door & his painting of it in the foreground

The kitchen

His studio with wheelchair

The museum also displayed photos of the artist & his family. Towards the end of his life, he had become a wheelchair user & there was one photo in which you saw him painting with the brush strapped onto his hands. How he could paint with such lightness of touch strapped up in this way is beyond me. He continued painting to the end. He had a sort of sedan chair with hinged handles at the front so he could reach his easel from the chair to paint. He must have been really driven by the need to express himself in art.

From our earlier visit to Nice, we knew Matisse frequently visited him.

There was also some photos of his sons, Pierre who became known for his great theatre acting in France, & Jean, the film director. 

The view from his house & garden across to old Cagnes-sur-Mer