Landscape of Cagnes

Landscape of Cagnes (1900), at Museum Barberini in Potsdam, depicts the hilltop village of Cagnes-sur-Mer above Nice where Renoir eventually settled permanently in 1908. He first visited Cagnes in 1900 — the date of this canvas — drawn by its warmth, its light, and the ancient olive trees that enchanted him. The village perched on its rocky hill above the coast became the dominant motif of his late landscape work, and this early canvas from his first year of contact with the place may represent the beginning of that long relationship.

The Cagnes landscape's characteristic elements — ancient stone buildings, silver-green olive trees, the quality of Mediterranean light on southern vegetation — require a palette quite different from Renoir's northern French work. He uses warmer, drier greens and deeper ochres to capture the Provençal landscape's sun-saturated quality.