Strawberries and Almonds (Fraises et amandes)

Strawberries and Almonds (Fraises et amandes), 1897, belongs to the intimate end of Renoir's still-life production — small, intensely observed paintings of fruit and nuts that served him as studies in pure colour rather than major compositional statements. Strawberries, with their intense crimson and their crowned green sepals, were ideal subjects for an artist drawn to the warmest end of the visible spectrum: the red of the berries against a white cloth and the warm neutral of the almonds provided complementary colour relationships of precisely the kind he sought in all his subjects. The French still-life tradition ran from Chardin through Manet to Cézanne, each painter bringing a different orientation to the same basic problem of rendering solid objects in light, and Renoir's contribution was the most purely chromatic and the least concerned with tonal modelling: his strawberries are light-and-colour events rather than studies in volume and substance. Barnes's acquisition of intimate works like this one reflected his conviction that Renoir's colour intelligence was fully present even at the smallest scale.

The vivid red of the strawberries is built through varied strokes of crimson, carmine, and rose, with small green sepals providing complementary accents. The almonds and dish offer neutral tonal notes that give the berries full chromatic prominence. The cloth beneath is loosely stroked in warm white and cream.