Lemons and Orange (Citrons et orange)

Lemons and Orange, 1913, is a concentrated citrus fruit still life from the Barnes Foundation's late Renoir holdings, painted at Cagnes where citrus fruits were locally grown and freshly available to the ailing painter. The cool yellow-green of the lemons against the warm orange provided Renoir with a natural exploration of adjacent-warm colour contrast, a chromatic relationship he had been pursuing since his earliest Impressionist canvases. Three fruit subjects from 1913 in the Barnes collection—this work, Oranges and Bananas, and Apples, Orange, and Lemon—suggest a sustained still-life campaign that year.

The lemons' cool yellow-green against the orange's warm orange-red creates a chromatic contrast built around closely related warm hues. Renoir models the citrus forms with soft, rounded strokes that follow the spherical and oval shapes, building luminosity through warm highlights and warmer shadow tones.