Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Rocks of L’Estaque, 1882 *****

This is one of a small series of radiant landscapes that the Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted during a stay with Paul Cézanne in L'Estaque, a small fishing port just west of Marseilles.

Renoir, who was travelling back to Paris having spent the previous months in Algeria and Italy, was immediately captivated by the raw light and rich beauty of the Provençal landscape.

"How beautiful it is!" he wrote to a friend, "It's certainly the most beautiful place in the world, and not yet inhabited… There are only some fishermen and the mountains…so there are no walls, no properties or few…here I have the true countryside at my doorstep".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Pan’s Party, 1879

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this florid allegorical canvas, La fête de Pan, in the summer of 1879.

Commissioned to adorn the drawing room of the Bérard family’s country home, the Château de Wargemont, La fête de Pan depicts a spring festival devoted to the ancient Greek god, Pan - a rare example of a mythological subject in Renoir’s oeuvre.

This jubilant painting combines the artist’s careful observations of nature en plein air with his imaginative fantasies of beauty, both feminine and floral.