Bodegón con ramo de flores y abanico

Renoir painted this bouquet in 1871, in a Paris just battered by the Prussian siege and the brief, bloody rising of the Commune. Rather than the wounded city, he set down a loose spray of flowers wrapped in white cloth, a painted vase, and a folding fan with Eastern motifs behind it. The picture is a quiet nod to Edouard Manet, an older friend whose love of Spanish subjects and sharp light-and-dark contrasts Renoir admired. He handles the blossoms with quick, loose strokes, reds and yellows and touches of lilac dabbed in wet. The fan and the decorated vase are the kind of studio props the young Impressionists passed around and painted again and again.