Roses et jasmin dans un vase de Delft

Renoir said that flowers let his mind rest. Facing a paying sitter he felt the strain of getting a likeness right, but with a bouquet he could try daring tones and loose strokes with nothing at stake. He painted this around 1880, a decade into the Impressionist experiment and just before a trip to Italy would pull his work toward something firmer and more classical. The vase is Delft, the blue-and-white tin-glazed earthenware the Dutch had been making for two centuries, and he lets its cool pattern steady the warm tangle of roses and jasmine above it. It hangs now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.