The Renoir museum is placed in the heart of a beautiful estate in Cagnes-sur-Mer, planted with olive and citrus trees offering a breathtaking view down the Cape of Antibes. It was the retreat and final address of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who moved to Cagnes in an attempt to improve his arthritis. The museum's collection ; painting, scultpures, artist's studio and furniture constitute the testimony of Renoir's last 12 years of life spent in Cagnes-sur-Mer.
In 1908, Renoir settled in the Collettes. Seduced by the climate, he enjoyed painting outside, reproducing on his canvas the bright colours of the olive trees, fruits and flowers of the region as well as the voluptuous bodies of the young Cagnoises that lived here. Also, it is in Cagnes that he started sculpting for the first time. The happiness that comes out of Renoir paintings is due to the exaltation and felicity that the painter kept until his last day despite the weakness that overcame his body, when he became very ill.The Renoir Museum reproduces the exact environment that the painter knew, displaying some of his canvas, furniture, and familiar objects.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.