Poissons sur une feuille verte

Renoir painted this in 1915, and it helps to know what that year was for him. He was in the south, at Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he had settled for the mild air. Rheumatoid arthritis had locked his hands so badly that a brush had to be wedged between his fingers before he could work at all. The war was on, both his sons were at the front, and the younger, Jean, had been badly wounded. That June his wife Aline died, worn out after rushing to their son's bedside. Even so, small things kept being set on a table within his reach. Here it is a few fish laid on something green, painted in the warm, light touch of his final years.