Die Küste von Cagnes, Meer, Berge

By 1910 Renoir had moved to the warm hills of Cagnes, on the Mediterranean coast, chasing a climate his body could stand. He was in his late sixties and badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. His hands had seized into claws, and helpers would wedge the brush between his swollen fingers so he could keep working. None of that struggle shows here. The coast, the sea, and the mountains dissolve into warm, loose colour, painted by a man who said he wanted pictures to be pleasant things to live with. He kept at it almost to the end, in 1919. The painting later passed through a wartime sale and reached a museum in Bristol.