 Hi, I'm Cindy Kang, Associate Curator at the Barnes Foundation and I am still working from home. One of the tricky things about working from home is that your home life inevitably bleeds into and interrupts your work life and case in point is homeschooling. How you are supposed to juggle homeschooling if you have a school-aged child and working out of some repurposed corner of your home is something that I think we're all still trying to figure out. I know that Renmar had it all figured out however by making his home life part of his work life and by having family help. Renmar loved to paint his children and here is an idyllic scene of his son Claude known as Coco practicing writing with his nanny Gabrielle. So let's look more closely at it. So yes that is a boy with his long hair held back out of his face by a pink ribbon. So let me tell you my son's hair is going to be this long by the end of the isolation period and he is definitely using my hair clips to keep it out of his face. Coco however was not growing his hair because he was in quarantine. Renmar loved to paint his son's golden hair and so he wouldn't let them cut it until they went off to school. This painting is from around 1905 so Coco is about four years old here and you can see how lovingly Renmar painted his blonde locks and there's even that really gorgeous wisp of hair in front of his eye. The nanny Gabrielle Renard was actually the cousin of Renmar's wife Eileen. She came to live with the Renwars when she was 16 to help watch the kids so Coco was the youngest of three boys. His older brothers were Pierre and Jean. Gabrielle eventually would become one of Renmar's favorite models and she posed for many nudes and many figure paintings but at this point she was at first mostly painted doing her job and with his kids. So let's look at how Renmar creates this tender scene. So first there is the really warm palette that is characteristic of Renmar's late paintings. They're these deep deep reds in the background that modulate into flecks of brighter scarlet or even this kind of flaming sunset orange that you see in the flowers and then as you move down into the painting you see they become this kind of peachy coral pink in Coco's shirt. So the warm palette helps to set off the flesh tones of Gabrielle and Coco. Renmar would use layers of transparent glazes and incredibly blended brushwork to create this sense of warm flesh. He really wanted to convey a kind of vitality of red-blooded people and this was something that Dr. Barnes particularly admired in Renmar's late work. Now the reds in the corals contrast with cooler colors most notably Gabrielle's white blouse. The white however is composed of many other colors. There are dots and dashes of green of blue of light pink. This is something that Renmar excelled at since his impressionist years this creation of white through other colors. And let's look at the composition. Gabrielle's body is protectively encircling and enveloping Coco. It's a very maternal kind of embrace and the way the two figures are positioned one unfolded in the other it can be a very self-contained kind of insularity right. Gabrielle is gazing at Coco while Coco is absorbed in his writing and I think in turn the painter and us as the viewers are very much absorbed into this scene. They've very much created their own universe here. The entire picture is composed of rounded forms so from Gabrielle's bun to the billowing sleeve. I mean if you look at the sleeves of Gabrielle and Coco they make their elbows look round when you would expect them to be angular. Even the flower petals around the curves of the green jug holding the flowers I mean everything is so soft and inviting. The only hint of rectilinearity is the chair back here that is supporting Gabrielle's arm. And even Coco's writing utensil which you would expect to be a sharp form actually melts into the folds of his sleeve. I want to look at the flowers too. Renoir painted a lot of gorgeous still lifes and gorgeous floral still lifes and we have a number of them in the Barnes collection. Here he has integrated the floral still life into a figure painting and these flowers to me look like anemones which was a flower that he had painted many times before and it's a flower that would become quite symbolic in his work actually. His middle son Jean Renoir recounted a story about the end of his father's life which is very poignant and relevant to tell here. Apparently on the last morning of Renoir's life when the artist was too weak to leave his room he asked for his paint brushes to be brought to him and he painted a bouquet of anemones that his maid had gathered for him and Jean Renoir writes quote for several hours he identified himself with these flowers and forgot his pain. So in looking at this painting I hope this deliberately ideal world that Renoir has created it's really his vision of beauty and happiness helps you bear some of the difficulties of this time. That wraps up today's Barnes Takeout. If you haven't already please subscribe to our channel to get your daily servings of art and you can also leave a comment below we love hearing from you so thanks for watching. I'm Tom Collins new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.