L'Estaque

In January 1882 Renoir was on his way home from Italy, and he broke the journey at L'Estaque, a fishing village on the bay just west of Marseille, where he stayed with Paul Cézanne. The visit ran longer than planned. To Marguerite Charpentier, one of his Paris patrons, he explained that he had perpetual sunshine there and could scrape off and begin again as often as he liked, which was the only way to learn. This landscape comes from that stay. The view looks through pines toward the blue of the bay. Much of it is built from short diagonal strokes laid side by side almost like bricks, a construction close to what his host was doing. For four decades the picture belonged to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a gift of 1939, until the museum sold it in 1981. The signature, Renoir 82, is in the lower left corner.