Paysage du Sud de la France

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Paysage du Sud de la France (Landscape of the South of France, 1888) belongs to his southern journeys during the difficult period of his Ingresque experiment — traveling to Provence and along the Mediterranean coast while struggling with the formal problems he was working through in his painting. The southern landscape provided coloristic material different from the Ile-de-France he habitually painted: the saturated blues, ochres, and greens of Provence under Mediterranean sun. Renoir's response to southern light during these years influenced his subsequent return to a more Impressionist-inflected style.

The southern French landscape shows Renoir responding to the specific chromatic intensity of Mediterranean light — richer and more saturated than the diffused light of the Paris region. Even within his Ingresque period's more controlled handling, the southern palette demands brighter, warmer colors: the specific blues of Provençal sky, the ochres and terracottas of limestone landscape, the silver-green of olive and almond. His brushwork remains more controlled than his pure Impressionist period but is liberated somewhat by the vivid subject.