Renoir

Pierre Auguste Renoir (25th February 1841, - 3rd December 1919) was a French impressionist artist. Renoir moved to Les Collettes, near the Mediterranean coast in 1907 in an effort to improve his health, after developing rheumatoid arthritis some years before.   

                          This poem explores a possible moment in time, with Renoir wheel- chair bound, upon a hilltop over looking the Mediterranean coast; re-living a time when he first met his wife, Aline Victorine Charigot, (23rd May  1854 " 15th June, 1915 ) in the summer of 1879. Aline was the love of the artist's life; and has been immortalized in many of Renoir’s paintings, most notably ‘The Luncheon Of The Boating Party’ where Aline can be seen holding a small dog.

 

 

 

With eyes closed upon a hill,

my inner beating fell to chill,

so still - so still in sudden mistral.

 

Compositions upon the Mediterranean stars

sang down to olive leaves and grass;

o memories of my gentle lady passed.

 

Aline! Aline! what bewildered road do you now tread?

o red flowers that graced once your perfect head;

Aline ! Aline! sweet furnace from that summer dead;

that summer I shall always tread. 

Reviews

[Glen Yumang Manese]

A nice tribute of a verse here...I liked how you present the evidence and then tell us the life of the artist in the lines of this...for his beloved wife...