Sucrier et timbale

This is a tiny canvas, barely larger than a sheet of writing paper: a sugar bowl and a small metal cup, a timbale, standing on a table. Renoir painted still lifes all his life, often quick studies made between larger pictures or when no model was on hand, and he had a real fondness for plain domestic things like these. Nothing is being narrated here, only the weight of the objects and the light sitting on them. The painting reached Basel in 1960, in the collection the Basel connoisseur Richard Doetsch-Benziger left to the museum.