Pierre-Auguste Renoir – The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes

The Farm at Les Collettes – two olive trunks dividing the view

The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made between 1908 and 1914. The original measures 54.6 x 65.4 cm, is catalogued as 61.190 and hangs in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Our hand-painted painting The Farm at Les Collettes is worked in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 70 x 60 to 150 x 130 cm.

Les Collettes was Renoir’s own property at Cagnes-sur-Mer, bought in 1907; the old farmhouse stood among the ancient olive trees. This is therefore not a travelling motif but the view from his own garden, painted in the last years of the painter’s life, when he was living on the estate.

The house behind the trees and a tiny blue figure

Two heavy olive trunks rise through the foreground and divide the view. Behind them, among the trees, stands a pale ochre farmhouse with dark shutters; beside it, at the centre, a small figure in blue. The ground is broken scrub in green, rose and cream, and the sky shows between the leaves in patches of violet-blue.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The trunks are built from dense, swirling strokes, while the foliage is made of small separated touches that let the ground show through in places. A hand-painted canvas keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

The subject is soft, green and pink, with no sharp centre, and it settles well where a painting should quiet a room: a living room, a bedroom or an office. Because the trunks in the foreground divide the view, the painting works as a look between trees rather than a vista, and for that reason it takes a wall with little space in front of it. For a smaller wall 80 x 70 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 120 x 100 cm, and on a broad wall 150 x 130 cm works. Between them stand 100 x 80 and 130 x 110 cm, with 110 x 90 cm as the middle step. Under 70 x 60 cm the tiny blue figure beside the house disappears, and with it the measure by which the size of the trees can be read.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: farmhouse among olive trees, with two trunks in the foreground, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 70 x 60 cm to 150 x 130 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the tiny blue figure beside the house is the scale of the scene – without her you cannot see how big the trees are

See also:

• Promenade Undergrowth
• The Swing (La Balançoire)
• Luncheon of the Boating Party