Oranges and Bananas (Oranges et bananes)

Oranges and Bananas, 1913, belongs to Renoir's late series of tropical fruit still lifes at Cagnes, where the warm southern climate made oranges and bananas locally available and personally significant subjects. Both fruits offered rich colour rewards—the deep orange and vivid yellow set against each other and against the neutral cloth beneath. By 1913 Renoir's arthritis required him to strap brushes to his wrists, yet his still lifes retain their characteristic sensuous colour and relaxed handling. The Barnes Foundation collection holds numerous examples of his late fruit painting as a sustained genre.

The complementary relationship between orange and yellow-green banana skin provides the chromatic tension in this composition. Renoir builds the fruit's rounded forms with soft, curved strokes following their surface contours, using warmer tones for the lit surfaces and purple-brown shadows for the receding planes.