Renoir felt that he had greater freedom to experiment in still lifes than in figure paintings. “When I paint flowers, I feel free to try out tones and values and worry less about destroying the canvas,” he told the writer Georges Rivière. “I would not do this with a figure painting since there I would care about destroying the work.”
Artwork Details
Title: Bouquet of Chrysanthemums
Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)
Date: 1881
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 26 × 21 7/8 in. (66 × 55.6 cm)
Source: The Met