The Concert

Renoir painted The Concert in 1918, in the last full year of his life and the last year of the First World War. He was 77, living in the warmth of Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France, and so crippled by rheumatoid arthritis that his fingers had curled shut. Assistants wedged the brush between them, and he worked with his whole arm. None of that hardship shows in the picture. Two young women fill the canvas in glowing reds and golds, caught in a quiet moment of music-making. It is the world Renoir kept returning to at the end, warm-skinned figures and rich colour, painted while much of Europe was still at war. The painting is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.