Musee Renoir in Cagnes-Sur-Mer
The Renoir Museum is located in the family home in the heart of a magnificent estate in Cagnes-sur-Mer. The property is still planted with large olive and citrus trees that he loved, and visitors can enjoy a wide panorama that extends to the sea at Cap d’Antibes.
With the museum’s current collection, including 16 original paintings, 30 sculptures, furniture, and workshop – it describes a creative and familiar universe where the artist spent the last 12 years of his life surrounded by his friends and family and producing some of the best of his 4000+ works.
The climate of Cagnes was more favorable to his health in these later years, and since having been in the old village for 3 years, Renoir decided to buy a house. He jumped on the Domaine des Collettes on a hill east of Cagnes, in order to save the huge olive trees whose shade he admired and which were threatened with destruction by another potential buyer.
In this house & workshop he began what he called his “cagnoise period” or “last period,” by drawing inspiration from his visitors like contemporaries Henri Matisse , Aristide Maillol , Amedeo Modigliani , Auguste Rodin , Pablo Picasso , and Claude Monet.
After a complete renovation in 2013, the museum now welcomes visitors to the site as it was known to Renoir in the early 20th century.
New spaces have opened on several floors, with in particular, a set of seventeen plaster sculptures (on loan from the Renoir and Guino families), two new original paintings as well as intimate archives. The museum now has around fifty paintings, including sixteen by Renoir himself.
“He didn’t hang his own paintings at home.”
Busts of his children and his wife are also placed in their respective rooms upstairs. Other spaces have been opened to visitors, such as the family kitchen.
In Renoir’s room, you can see an unfinished painting from 1905, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, which takes up his famous theme of “Large Bathers”, or an elegant painting of two sensual women (“Les Cariatides”, 1909).
In there also, the painting “Coco” 1905, (a portrait of his son Claude reading by Renoir), rubs shoulders with landscapes like his “Ferme des Collettes” of 1915. Here’s a summary with thumbnail pictures.
Creating in spite of rheumatoid arthritis
Aline Charigot built her husband’s last home there, where he spent his last days in the southern sun, although well protected by his inseparable hat. He lived there with his wife Aline, children, servants, and many friends, who helped him in his everyday life, prepare his canvases and his brushes.
Despite his failing health as a result of a bicycle accident in 1897 which led to permanent rheumatoid arthritis, he found the strength to tackle bas-relief and sculpture between 1913 and 1918 with Richard Guino and then with Louis Morel.
Bas-relief to the dancers of Renoir. Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer.
His Workshops
He had planned to live on the old rustic farm (now home to the Association of Friends of the Renoir Museum), but Madame Renoir wanted a spacious family house, so in 1908 he built a neo-Provencal style house for her, with two artist workshops for himself designed by the architect Jules Febvre.
He settled there in the fall of 1908, painted and sculpted for eleven years with his wife Aline and their three children, Pierre, Jean, and Claude , until his death in 1919 at age 78.
In 1960 , the city of Cagnes-sur-Mer bought the property from Renoir’s son to begin making it a museum of a dozen pieces “where everything has remained as is.” It isn’t a huge museum, but rather an intimate look into the artist during his last years, after ill health had limited his travels.
The park is still open to the public. Other national museums enrich the museum’s collections over time by adding works by Pierre Renoir, Albert André , Aristide Maillol , Marcel Gimond , Richard Guino , Raoul Dufy , Pierre Bonnard among others.
Tickets:
6€ for adults – but free for those under 26.
Free admission is possible with the French Riviera Pass and you can visit over twenty more of the most prestigious museums and monuments on the Côte d’Azur.
How to get there:
From Nice, take the bus #200, #217 or #500 for 1.50€ which will take 30 minutes, and get off in Cagnes-sur-mer center/Gare Routiere (bus station).
From here you can walk it in 5 minutes, or take the local bus #49 and get off at the Musee Renoir stop. Bonjour . .
Sources: Wikipedia, WikiArt, Musee Renoir, Cagnes Office of Tourism, Nice Côte d’Azur Visitors Bureau,
