Bouquet of tulips

By 1905 Renoir was 64 and wintering in Cagnes on the Riviera, where the warmth eased hands that rheumatoid arthritis was slowly closing. He kept working for another 14 years in that condition, and flowers were part of how he managed it. He told the dealer Ambroise Vollard that painting them rested his brain, that he could lay colour on and try values boldly without worrying about spoiling the canvas, something he would never risk with a figure in front of him. A bouquet like this one, tulips and other blooms in a green vase against broad strokes of red and beige, came out of that freer end of his work. It stayed in his studio until he died in 1919. Paul Guillaume, a Paris dealer, bought it ten years later, and in 1963 the French state acquired it from his widow, by then Madame Jean Walter.