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France in the Nineteenth Century

From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”

Introduction

 

The story of the National Gallery’s rich holdings of 19th-century French paintings began in 1942 when a small but choice selection of impressionist works entered the collection among Joseph E. Widener’s bequest of more than 2,000 objects. Many people since have helped the Gallery acquire outstanding paintings in this area, notably Chester and Maud Dale, who assembled a sensational collection from the 1920s through the 1950s, and both children of the Gallery’s founder, Andrew W. Mellon – Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce. The latter bequeathed her impressive cache of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings to the Gallery in 1969.

 

On January 29, 2012, the National Gallery of Art reopened 14 galleries devoted to 19th-century French paintings. During the nearly two years that these galleries were closed for renovation, many of the works were on loan to museums in Houston, Tokyo, and Kyoto. The reinstallation provides fresh interpretive insights in a newly conceived exhibition design. Thirteen of the paintings have been recently restored, allowing audiences to have a more accurate understanding of artists’ original intent. Gustave Courbet’s The Black Rocks at Trouville, a recent acquisition, also makes its debut.

 

The reinstallation uses thematic, monographic, and art historical groupings to organize the paintings. By avoiding strict chronology in laying out the design, the installation explores the idea that artistic production and creativity in the 19th century was influenced as much by contemporary artistic and social trends as by earlier painting traditions.

Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.29

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A man sitting in a tall, upholstered armchair reads a newspaper in this vertical portrait painting. The man and the room in which he sits is loosely painted with bold, visible strokes throughout. He holds the paper close to his face, and the top edge falls over so we can read the title, “L’EVENEMENT.” He has a light, olive-toned complexion, and his white hair peeks from under a close-fitting black cap. He wears a high-necked white shirt under a chocolate-brown jacket, steel-gray trousers, white socks, and camel-brown shoes. The fabric on the chair is painted with broad brushstrokes to create a loose floral pattern on a white background. The man and chair are outlined in black. The man sits in the corner of a room with a closed door behind him to our right. Hanging on the wall over his head, and partially obscured by it, is a small, possibly unframed, still life painting with what could be kelly-green fruit and a royal-blue cup against a black background.

Paul Cézanne, The Artist's Father, Reading "L'Événement", 1866, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1970.5.1

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Against a hilly landscape and on a patch of dirt, five people wearing tattered clothing gather around a bearded man who holds a violin in his lap in this horizontal painting. Most of them have pale skin. Starting from the left is a barefoot young woman holding a blond baby to her chest. She faces our right, and her chestnut-brown hair hides her profile. She wears a black shirt over a calf-length skirt streaked with slate and aquamarine blue. To the right two young boys face us. The boy on the left of that pair wears a loose white shirt tucked into tan-colored pants and an upturned wide-brimmed hat. The boy next to him has short brown hair and is dressed in a black and brown vest and pants over a bone-white shirt. His right arm, to our left, is slung across the shoulders of the blond boy and he looks off to our right with dark, unfocused eyes. The man who holds the violin is to our right of center. He sits on a stone with his body facing our left, but he turns to look at us with dark eyes under heavy brows. He has tan skin, dark gray, curly hair, and a trimmed silvery gray beard. A wrinkle under one eye suggests he may smile slightly at us. He wears a loose brown cloak with a ragged bottom hem, teal-blue stockings, and black shoes. He holds a violin on his lap like a guitar. One hand fingers a chord on the neck of the violin, which comes toward us, and the other hand holds the bow and plucks a string. A sand-colored bag with a strap lies at his feet. Two men stand to our right of the musician. One wears a tall black top hat, a brown cloak, gray pants, and black shoes. His face is loosely and indistinctly painted but he has a beard. Finally, the sixth person is a man who stands along the right side of the painting and is cut off by that edge. He wears a turban, a black polka-dotted scarf, and a long black cloak or coat. One hand clutches the scarf and the other rests on a wooden cane by his side. His chin and long, light-colored beard tuck back against the scarf, and he looks off to our left with dark eyes. There are loosely painted olive and forest-green leaves in the upper left corner. The landscape beyond is painted with indistinct areas of muted green, blue, and brown. Bits of azure-blue sky peek through puffy white and gray clouds overhead. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “ed. Manet 1862.”

Edouard Manet, The Old Musician, 1862, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.162

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Four light-skinned ballerinas with russet-orange hair tied back in buns adjust the straps of their bodices as they gather close together, their bodies and wide, knee-length tutus taking up the left half of this horizontal painting. The background or backdrop beyond them shows a grove of deep green trees to our left and a sunset view of meadows leading back to trees to our right. Three of the dancers stand in a row that extends from the lower left corner to our right and away from us. All three wear rust-orange bodices over tutus that are painted loosely with flecks of pale celery green and buttercup yellow against a muted royal-blue background. Their bodices and upper bodies are outlined with black. The woman closest to us stands with her body angled to our right. Her face turns away as she looks to her left and adjusts that shoulder strap. The two dancers farther from us stand with their backs to us, their bodies angled away from us to our left. The middle dancer looks back over her right shoulder as she lifts the other elbow to adjust that strap. The third dancer in the row holds both hands to her right strap as she looks off into the distance, to our left. The fourth ballerina, to our far left beyond this trio, stands with the arm we can see, her left, lifted with her hand held high as she looks off to our right. Her bodice is a brighter carrot orange, and is more loosely painted. The green foliage behind the dancers extends off the top edge of the painting. The pale sage-green field to the right stretches before puffy, rounded trees daubed with mauve-pink highlights. The coral-pink and golden yellow sky is streaked with lavender-gray clouds. The artist signed his name in red paint with tiny, almost illegible letters in the lower right corner, “Degas.”

Edgar Degas, Four Dancers, c. 1899, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.122

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We look slightly down onto a man riding a white horse away from us on a dirt road winding through a sun-drenched, rocky landscape in this horizontal painting. The man wears a cobalt-blue jacket and soft black hat, and the rutted path he follows cuts along the side of a steep hill or mountain peak. The path extends from the bottom center of the composition and stretches up the right side toward a grove of sage-green trees with brown trunks. The trees fill the upper right half of the composition, and the tallest ones almost brush the top edge of the canvas. Closer examination reveals a person in a brown coat in the shade of the trees, just off the path ahead. Seen from the hips up, they face our right in profile. Scrubby plants, bushes, and saplings in tones of kelly, pea, and fern green sprout among the boulders that line the road. A broken, bare, segment of a silvery-gray tree trunk lies along the path to our left. Lit with brilliant sunlight coming from the lower left, the horse and rider, and the boulders lining the path cast mauve-purple shadows along the ochre-brown road. The rocky terrain to the left dips down into a valley and is in deep shadow. A mountain across the valley is also deep in shadow, painted dark brown. The landscape becomes steel gray and then hazy blue as it recedes into the deep distance. The horizon comes about halfway up the canvas. Gray and white clouds are scattered across a sky that deepens from pale blue along the top edge to nearly white at the horizon. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower left, “COROT. 1838.”

Early Decades

 

The 19th century opened with new leadership and vision in France. Napoleon Bonaparte dramatically changed the political and social landscape, using art to promote his military and civic achievements (see The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries). Artists like Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres embraced the neoclassical style promoted by the official French art academy, which groomed artists for the prestigious annual Salon exhibition. Rigorous academic practices were a source of contention throughout the century, striking many as restrictive and stifling. As the years went on, more and more artists defied convention in an effort to be original and inventive.

 

Academic standards rewarded elevated historical, mythological, and biblical themes as subject matter. Now, however, many painters became motivated to depict the world around them. An artist’s own life was far more accessible than a historical battle or story from the Bible. Barbizon artists, such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet, began actively exploring landscapes they knew in the 1830s, like the forest of Fontainebleau. Their quest to capture the underlying beauty of a rustic woodland clearing or the humbling splendor of a natural vista prefigured the realist movement, which was driven by artists' observation of actual things, real places, and current events rather than imaginary or abstract scenes. Other painters, roused by the bold work of realist Gustave Courbet, enlivened their canvases with expressive and vigorous brushwork, imparting a tactile and physical quality to their pictures.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, A View near Volterra, 1838, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.111

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A young woman reclines and reads a book near a stream that winds through a wooded landscape in this horizontal painting. Painted with rich pine green, trees tower along the riverbanks and fill most of the painting. The olive-colored water seems to have cut straight down over time, creating high banks painted with tones of caramel and honey brown. Steel and slate-gray boulders are scattered in intervals near the river. Deep in the hazy blue distance, mountains line the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. In the lower left corner of the painting, close to the river, the woman lies on her stomach as she props herself up on her elbows to read. She has pale white skin and her long, dark hair falls over her shoulders. Her white shirt hangs low over her shoulders, and her rose-pink skirt falls just short of her bare feet.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Forest of Fontainebleau, 1834, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.109

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Dark, nickel-gray clouds encircle a spot of bright blue sky above a river and forest in this horizontal landscape painting. The tops of the clouds are creamy white in the sunlight and steel gray beneath. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the painting, and on the land below, a tall, deep green, leafy tree nearly reaches the top edge of the painting to our right of center. More trees cluster around it on a spit of land that runs along an olive-green body of water. Along the shoreline, across from us, several wooden rowboats have pulled up to a low dock. One person holding a tall, thin rod sits in one of the boats. A woman and child walk toward the boat, away from another pair of people under the trees. The woman with the child looks over her shoulder toward the clouds. On our side of the water, a man, also with a tall rod, climbs onto a dock in the lower left corner. Flat meadows meet rolling hills in the deep distance, beneath streaks in the clouds above, perhaps falling rain far away. The artist signed and dated the painting with red in the lower left corner: “C. TROYON 1849.”

Constant Troyon, The Approaching Storm, 1849, oil on canvas on board, Chester Dale Fund, 1995.42.1

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A leafless, ash-white tree trunk has fallen from a broken stump into the wide V of a neighboring tree at the edge of a body of water near a verdant forest in this horizontal landscape painting. The fallen trunk creates a diagonal from near the lower left corner to the upper right. As it fell, it sheared off a substantial branch from a neighboring tree with a dark trunk. The bark where the damaged branch has pulled away is honey-orange, the same color as the leaves at the canopy, which has been pinned under the fallen trunk. Trees, vines, and other vegetation fill the space around and beyond this pair. In the lower right corner of the painting, vines grow over a broken stump, which deep in shadow. Between the stump and fallen tree, the peanut-brown surface of the water is smooth. Tiny in scale beneath the fallen tree and easily overlooked, there are two men and a dog in a boat. One man stands at the back of the boat and pushes it along with a long pole. He wears a tall, brown, cloth hat, a white shirt rolled up to the elbows under a blue vest, and loose-fitting pants. A second man wears a flat-topped, white hat with a black brim, a long, forest-green jacket, and tight-fitting slate-blue pants. He braces a rifle against one shoulder and shoots into the forest. The dog is white with brown spots, and it stands with its front paws on the edge of the boat, presumably ready to spring after the target. A patch of blue sky with puffy white clouds is seen above the trees in the upper left corner. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower right corner: “H. Vernet Rome 1833.”

Horace Vernet, Hunting in the Pontine Marshes, 1833, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 1989.3.1

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Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing us as she turns her head to look off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has pale, peachy skin, deeply shadowed, hooded eyes, and a straight nose. Shadows fill the hollow of her high cheekbones, and she has a thin face. Her black hair is plaited and tied up and back under brown bands. Earrings hang from each ear, and she wears two strands of white and gray pearls and three red necklaces. Her shoulders slope down, and her arms hang by her sides. The garnet-red bodice of her dress is cut low over a white undergarment. Red straps loop up over her mostly bare shoulders. Sapphire-blue sleeves leave the shoulders exposed and have black bands at the cuffs, which fall short of her wrists. An apron tied around her waist is loosely painted with deep red flowers and dark green leaves against a parchment-brown background. Her long skirt is midnight blue in the shadows. She holds a shimmering object in her right hand, to our left, and rests her other hand on the brown stone wall that runs behind her thighs. A tree edges into the scene along the right, and a few white stucco houses with flat, red roofs cluster on a rocky hill in the distance behind the woman, to our left. The cliffs span most of the background and end in a sheer face near the right edge of the canvas. The sky is tinged with peach at the horizon glimpsed at the foot of the cliff but is mostly steely gray. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Agostina, 1866, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.108

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About three dozen men and women sit, stand, or stroll along a sandy beach beneath a sunset-streaked sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The people are small in scale within the landscape, taking up about a quarter of the canvas's height. The scene is loosely painted so many of the facial features are indistinct, but the faces we can see have pale or olive-toned skin. The area closest to us is a strip of sand, and, a short distance away, a brown and white dog sits facing away from us to our left of center. The women all wear dresses with long sleeves, tight bodices, and ankle-length hoop skirts in shades of baby blue, smoke gray, butter yellow, chocolate brown, crimson red, black, or white. Some wear jackets, capes, or shawls, and veils flutter off some of their hats and bonnets. The men wear suits with long tails and rounded hats. Most of the people sit in wooden chairs, and a few stand or walk along the beach. The walking women carrying long sticks or canes. Smudges of ruby red, slate blue, and a touch of straw yellow could be the form of a child crouching in the sand, to our left. Two ladderback chairs sit near the crowd to our right. The horizon comes less than a quarter of the way up the composition. Thin screens of pale gray clouds above are touched on the undersides with petal pink, and they break to show peeks of soft yellow along the horizon and topaz blue a bit higher up.

Painting Outdoors

 

By the middle of the century it had become common practice to work out-of-doors, or en plein air. New types of paint containers allowed greater mobility, so artists could set up easels outside and paint from direct observation of nature. Painters traveled to scenic towns and beaches, such as those on the Normandy coast or along the Seine, where they were captivated by skies and water. They painted sites in varying weather conditions and bathed in different types of light.

 

Eugène Boudin was particularly masterful in his maritime depictions at Deauville and Trouville, Normandy beach resorts. His vignettes, set beneath atmospheric and pulsating skies, influenced many artists, including Claude Monet, who worked with him on the Normandy coast in the summer of 1865. Courbet, too, saw these coastal scenes and undertook his own marine series, infusing his works with spontaneity and often painting with a brusqueness synchronized with irregular oceanic conditions. He had been a pioneering figure for his unapologetic portrayals of common people and places on a grandiose scale, as well as his daring painterly style, and his focus on the mercurial atmosphere of the coast was another testament of his commitment to realism.

Eugène Boudin, The Beach at Villerville, 1864, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.4

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Eugène Boudin, Coast of Brittany, 1870, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.11

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We look slightly down onto a silvery-gray beach nestled in a hilly, curving coastline to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. A flat expanse of beach stretches in front of us to meet the water to our left. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and the sky above is nearly filled with heather-gray and white clouds, with only a few patches of light blue sky. Several earth-brown and black boats are pulled up onto the beach, to our left. A few poles and one anchor lie among them. A single, light gray and white pole lies perpendicular to the rest, coming toward us in the sand, higher up on the beach. Along the beach, beyond these boats, a man stands next to a woman holding a baby. The man wears an aquamarine-blue shirt and black pants and cap, and the woman wears a dress with a gray shirt and black skirt, partially covered by a cream-white apron. Several other adults and children stand and sit near boats to either side of the pair. The people are loosely painted, with only a few swipes and touches of paint, so details are indistinct. To our right, moss-green and camel-brown dunes rise from the beach, which lead to higher hills along the shoreline. The beach curves away from us to our right and then back out to our left, like a backward C. A sailboat with a fawn-brown sail sits along the beach at the curve, in the distance. A few buildings, painted with gray, yellow, red, and navy blue perch atop some hills, and more are suggested with dabs and strokes of slate blue and parchment white in the valley between hills. Farthest from us, the land rises to a high, long, flat promontory that extends about two-thirds of the way across the painting. The water in the bay is frosty, seafoam green, and a few strokes of white along the shore suggest waves. The water’s surface is mostly flat with a couple small, ink-black boats floating near the left edge and more along the horizon. The artist signed the work in brown paint in the lower right corner, “Claude Monet.”

Claude Monet, Sainte-Adresse, 1867, oil on canvas, Gift of Catherine Gamble Curran and Family, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990.59.1

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We stand on a beach lined with black rocks and boulders looking out onto the water below a brick-red sky that dominates this nearly square landscape painting. The sky along the top edge of the canvas is turquoise but it quickly fades to rich, salmon pink and then to deep red along the horizon, which comes only a quarter of the way up the composition. Steel-gray clouds ripple across the width of the painting. Two sailboats float in the water in the far distance. The water is painted the same turquoise of the sky with some reflections of the deep pink and red. Close to us, water breaks around the jagged black rocks beyond the a strip of mustard-yellow and tan sand that lines the lowest edge of the canvas. The artist signed the work in dark red paint in the lower left corner: “G. Courbet.”

Gustave Courbet, The Black Rocks at Trouville, 1865/1866, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 2011.51.1

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A bearded man with light skin, wearing a black costume and holding a plumed hat, stands in front of mottled brown background in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left but he turns to look off to our right from the corners of his dark brown eyes. He has heavy, furrowed brows and high cheekbones. His dark mustache curls up at either end over a full beard, and his wavy chestnut-brown hair is swept back from his forehead. His black jacket has puffed sleeves with narrow ruffles of white at his collar and cuffs, and a peek of the white shirt at his chest where the row of buttons are undone. His puffy pants gather at the thigh over black stockings, and he wears black slippers. He crosses his wrists in front of him, and he wears a gold ring with a square, scarlet-red stone on his right ring finger, to our left. In that hand, he also holds a black hat with a long, feathery plume that falls to knee level. A saber lies on the floor to our left near the man’s feet, with the grip and elaborately twisting guard facing us. The background lightens from coffee brown along the top edge to light beige along the lower edge of the composition. The portrait is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout, especially in the costume and background. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Manet.”

Modern Paris

 

Many innovative styles emerged throughout the 1850s and 1860s, with the rougher techniques of realist painters blazing the way toward the informal compositions and loose brushwork that characterized much output from this period forward. Artists explored new methods of applying paint and color to generate vivid, compelling effects. Edouard Manet began capturing the public’s attention with his Spanish-themed works, influenced in part by frequent trips to the Louvre where he copied old masters like Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya. But critics soon began attacking his treatment of paint – calling it inartistic and unfinished – and his subject matter – deeming it inappropriate or inconsequential. Fazed, but determined, Manet developed his technique and painterly brio, distinguished by bold and spontaneous brushwork and paint that was not blended, but rather laid down in touches side by side. He became a leader of the avant-garde and a critical figure in the development of modern art in Paris.

 

Artists had new subject material close at hand: a fresh and revitalized Paris. In 1853, Napoleon III appointed a new city official, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who initiated a renewal project that turned Paris into a modern urban center. From an essentially medieval city, Paris became, in a matter of years, a well-organized capital with wide boulevards, regulated architecture, new parks and standardized public areas, and extended railway lines. The transformation intrigued many artists, including Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir, who were inspired and dazzled by the crowded streets and metropolitan scene. Some, like Manet, were more ambivalent about the modernized city, noting a sense of anonymity and dislocation that came along with the transformation.

Edouard Manet, The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet), 1866, oil on canvas, Gift of Edith Stuyvesant Gerry, 1959.3.1

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From a low perspective, we look at a man wearing black and white, lying on the ground with a pink flag beside him in this long, horizontal painting. We look onto the top of his head and his feet reach into the upper left corner of the composition, so he nearly fills the painting. His dark hair is cut short and gleams softly in the light from the upper left. His head has fallen toward his left shoulder, and his eyes are closed. He wears a black jacket and knee-length black pants. His jacket falls open to show white lining, and he wears a wide, white cummerbund and white stockings. His black, loafer-style shoes have pointed toes and possibly a bow at the bridge of each foot. He man’s right hand, farther from us, rests on his chest, and a black-handled sword or dagger is tucked into that elbow. That hand and his white tie are speckled with red blood. More blood seeps on the peanut-brown floor near the man’s left shoulder, closest to us. The man wears a gold ring on the pinky ring of his left hand, which lies along the ground and rests on or near the pale pink flag, which continues off the bottom left corner of the painting. The brown ground is lighter along the bottom of the painting and deepens to peat brown farther back, along the top edge. Brushstrokes are visible in some areas, especially in the white parts of the costume and the flag. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, “Manet.”

Edouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, probably 1864, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.40

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Holding a bunch of peonies in one hand, a woman with brown skin leans forward, toward us from behind a large basket holding dozens of flowers in this horizontal painting. The basket holding the flowers spans the width of the canvas, and the woman is shown behind it from the chest up. She wears a cream-white, long-sleeved blouse with scalloped trim around the high neck. She wears coral-red earrings, and a plaid cloth in tones of rust red, slate blue, pale purple, and black is tied tightly over her black hair, which is visible over her ears. Her brow is slightly furrowed, and she looks at us with large, dark eyes. Her full mouth is closed, the corners faintly downturned. She reaches her right arm, on our left, toward us with a bouquet of three pink-and-white peonies and greenery. Her basket is filled with yellow and red tulips, pink roses, white and purple lilac, and other white, pink, yellow, and blue flowers, and it takes up the bottom third of the composition. The woman and basket are shown against a dove-gray background. The artist prominently signed and dated the work with red letters near the upper right corner, near the woman’s head: “F. Bazille. 1870.”

Frédéric Bazille, Young Woman with Peonies, 1870, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.6

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We look down on a few dozen people walking along the sidewalks of a wide, sunlit bridge in this almost square painting. The scene is loosely painted, which gives it a hazy, sun-dappled look and makes some details indistinct. The people wear black, white, light blue, or pale green jackets and pants or long dresses as they walk in all directions. Some wear hats, and a few women carry parasols. The bridge opens into a wide boulevard close to us, as the sidewalks angle into the lower corners of the composition. Several horse-drawn carriages move across the bridge alongside the people. The deck of the oyster-white bridge is lined with black gas lamps. The river beneath shimmers with lapis and turquoise blue. The far side is packed with four and five-story buildings, which are mostly tan with rows of windows painted as blue rectangles. The rooflines bristle with chimneys. Another structure or boat sits on the water near the lower right corner of the painting, and a flag with vertical bands of red, white, and blue flies from a flagpole there. Opposite the flag, on the far bank, is a statue of a man on a horse, both on a tall plinth. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and the azure-blue sky above is dotted with puffy white clouds tinged with dove gray and mauve. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “A. Renoir. 72.”

Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf, Paris, 1872, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.58

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To our left, a young woman sits facing us on a low stone wall at the base of the vertical, black bars of an iron fence and a young girl stands facing away from us to our right in this horizontal painting. Both have pale skin. The woman looks directly at us with dark eyes as she holds an open book, a closed red fan, and a sleeping brown and white puppy in her lap. Her long auburn hair falls down over her shoulders. Her navy-blue dress is accented with white piping on the skirt, collar, and sleeves, and has three large, white buttons down the front and her black hat is adorned with two red poppies and a daisy. The girl wears a sleeveless white, knee-length dress belted with a marine-blue sash tied in a large bow at her back. The girl’s blond hair is pulled up and tied with a black ribbon. She raises her left hand to grasp the bar of the fence she faces. A bunch of green grapes lies on the low wall to our right. A plume of steam fills much of the space beyond the black fence, which spans the width of the painting and extends off the top edge. A few details can be made out beyond the fence, including a stone-gray building with two wooden doors to our left and a bridge along the right edge.

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havemeyer, 1956.10.1

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We look down onto a wide, bustling, tree-lined avenue filled with buildings, people, and horse-drawn carriages in this horizontal painting. Muted, warm browns, sage green, slate blue, and brick red dominate the urban scene, which is loosely painted with short and long dotted brushstrokes so some details are difficult to make out. The street extends diagonally up from our lower left with wide gray sidewalks on either side, which are lined by slender trees sparsely dotted with brown leaves. Dozens of pedestrians meander individually, in pairs, and in small groups on the sidewalks in coats and hats. Across from us, multi-storied buildings with store fronts at street level stretch across the width of the canvas. Rows of windows line the facades. Horse-drawn carriages move in both directions on the street and two omnibuses have pulled to the curb closest to us, where passengers have lined up. Two brick-red, hexagonally shaped kiosks stand opposite each other on either side of the street about halfway along the boulevard. Sunlight filters onto the scene, creating a dappled effect in some areas, especially over to our right. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark green in the lower right corner: “C.Pissarro.97.”

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard des Italiens, Morning, Sunlight, 1897, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.198

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Close to us, a woman and two men stand on a grassy riverbank looking out at the expanse of the river that nearly fills this horizontal landscape painting. A fourth person sits in a long, narrow canoe that angles from the riverbank near the lower left corner to our right, and it extends off the right edge of the canvas. The people all have pale, peachy skin. The man closest to us, to our right of the trio, wears a white hat and jacket and dark pants as he gazes across the river with his hands in his jacket pockets. The other man and woman, to our left, look toward us. The woman wears a royal-blue hat pulled low over her eyes. Her dress has a blue skirt, and her petal-pink corseted bodice is trimmed with white. The third standing person, along the left edge of the painting, wears blue and brown, and a straw-colored hat. The man in the boat wears a white long-sleeved shirt with a blue cravat at his neck, a crimson-red cummerbund at his waist, blue pants, and a brimmed, straw hat. He turns to look over his right shoulder, and he holds the end of a long oar in his right hand. The surface of the water is painted with short touches of vibrant blue paint. A sailboat, barge, and two other sculls float on the river between us and the far bank, which comes three-quarters of the way up the composition. A few white houses and buildings line the water amid tall grasses on the opposite bank on the right half of the painting. The blue sky is painted with long strokes in blue and white. The brushstrokes are loose throughout, creating a blurred, feathery texture.

Impressionism

 

The Salon continued to exert influence over artistic production by determining whose works were exhibited, thereby confering prestige and publicity. Frustration over refused submissions led a group including Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley to organize the Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc., a cooperative for artists of all kinds to exhibit independently. Between 1874 and 1886 the group organized eight independent Salons, establishing a place for avant-garde art never before known in France.

 

These artists, dubbed impressionists, defied the Salon in various ways. For one, they disregarded the jury’s attachment to historical or religious subject matter. Instead, they studied objects and figures from modern life, using domestic interiors as well as landscape vistas as stimulation. Family members and friends were painted with heightened energy and dynamism. Sparkling scenes of enjoyment and leisure became backdrops for studies of sunlight and its resplendent effects on different surfaces. Painters sought to convey direct visual experiences and translate passing optical impressions into lasting aesthetic statements. The evenly painted surfaces historically praised by the Salon gave way to textured canvases, marked by dabs, wipes and smears. Monet’s sustained interest in conveying the magic of light led him later in his career to paint in series, catching objects and structures, such as the Rouen Cathedral and the Waterloo Bridge in London, at different times of day.

Auguste Renoir, Oarsmen at Chatou, 1879, oil on canvas, Gift of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951.5.2

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Shown from the lap up, a young woman with pale skin, rosy cheeks, dark eyes, and upswept chestnut-brown hair sits in an upholstered chair angled to our left and she looks in that direction in this vertical portrait painting. Light falls directly on her oval-shaped face, and she has a pointed chin and a straight nose. Her dark eyebrows are arched and though her eyes initially look dark as well, closer inspection reveals a sliver of silvery blue iris around the eye closer to us. Her full, pink mouth is slightly parted. She wears a brown, perhaps fur, shawl behind her shoulders over her long black dress. A few touches of rust red on the sleeve closer to us suggests a floral pattern but details are mostly lost in this dark area. She wears parchment-white gloves and her left hand, closer to us, appears to be tucked into a pocket or into a fold of her skirt so only the wrist is visible. She cups her opposite hand, perhaps cradling a small object. The fabric of the chair is painted with touches of burnt orange and ivory. Canary-yellow and white flowers dance around her head, presumably cascading from a vase on a table behind her. Most of the background, especially along the left edge, is painted with a field of stone blue but an area of loosely painted terracotta red above her head suggests a patterned wallpaper or more flowers.

Edgar Degas, Mademoiselle Malo, c. 1877, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.18

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A small brown dog and a pale-skinned little girl wearing a white dress sit in matching celestial-blue armchairs in this horizontal painting. To our right, the girl sits with her legs angled to our left. She slumps back with her legs spread, and her left elbow, on our right, is bent so that hand rests behind her head. Her other elbow is draped over the armrest. Her dark brown hair appears to be pulled back, and tawny brown eyes under faint brows gaze down and to our left. She has a small nose set in a round face and a coral-pink mouth closed in a straight line. Her white dress has touches of gray, soft pink, and powder blue with a wide plaid sash around her waist. The pine-green, black, and sapphire-blue sash is accented with overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of burnt orange, light blue, and mustard yellow. Her socks match her sash and come up to mid-calf, over black shoes with silver buckles. The small dog has scruffy black fur and a russet-brown face. It lies curled in the chair opposite the girl, to our left, with its eyes closed and ears pricked up. The rounded backs of the upholstered chairs curve down to become the low arms. The vivid and light blue fabric of the chairs is scattered with loosely painted strokes of avocado and forest green, peach pink, cherry red, plum purple, and white. Beyond the chairs closest to us is another armchair and an armless loveseat, both covered with the same fabric. They sit at the back of the room, in a corner flooded with silvery light coming through four windows on the right side. The furniture is arranged on a peanut-brown floor. The artist signed in the lower left, “Mary Cassatt.”

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.18

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Two sailboats and a rowboat float on a glistening, azure-blue river spanned by a stone bridge to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible strokes and dashes throughout so some details are indistinct. An area of asparagus and moss-green dabs creates a patch of grassy riverbank in the lower right corner of the painting. The rippling, sun-dappled surface of the river is created with short parallel strokes of pale pink, caramel brown, white, sage green, and light blue. An empty sailboat, with its sails tightly furled or removed all together, floats near us to our left of center. It has a single tall, pale wood mast. A similar pole rises from the bottom edge of the picture, presumably the mast of another ship below us or out of our view. Farther out on the water and to our left is another sailboat with full white sails catching the sunlight. The final vessel is loosely painted with a few swipes of goldenrod yellow, black, white, and pink to suggest two people sitting in a rowboat, one of them holding a pink parasol. The gray stone bridge is shaded on our side with denim blue along the faces of the four arches we can see. Several people, painted with a few touches of peach and black, stand at the railing. The bridge angles from near the upper right corner of the canvas to almost the middle of the composition, where it meets a narrow, three-story coral-pink and light gray building. A two-story, white building sits a short distance to its left. They bask in warm sunlight against a row of emerald and olive-green trees. A baby-blue sky scattered with puffy white clouds spans the upper half of the composition. The artist signed the lower right with dark red letters, “Claude Monet.”

Claude Monet, The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.24

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A pale-skinned young girl with blond hair, wearing a blue dress, stands in a garden in this vertical painting. The girl and background are painted with blended strokes, giving the scene and especially the girl a soft look. She faces our right and stands in the middle of the composition. Her shoulder-length cloud of hair is topped with a red bow, and long bangs frame her round face. Under faint brows, her sapphire-blue eyes look to our right. She has a petite nose, and her coral-pink mouth turns up in a slight smile. Her cobalt-blue dress is trimmed with wide, blue-white lace on the neckline, across the bottom hem, and down the front to either side of a row of white buttons. The white edges her petticoats come down to just below her knees, peeking out from under the flaring skirt. She wears white socks over blue ankle boots, which also have a row of white buttons down the side we can see. Her near hand is raised with her index finger hooked in the handle of a green watering can, and she holds two daisies by her side in her other hand. She stands on a path flecked with ivory white, pale purples, greens, and pink that curves up and to her left. A bush with emerald and pine-green leaves dotted with pink blooms fills the lower left corner. Behind her, green grass runs back to meet a profusion of pink, purple, and poppy-red plants and flowers that run along the top edge of the composition. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Renoir. 76.”

Auguste Renoir, A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.206

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We look up at the exterior of a church that soars the height of this vertical painting. The church is painted with visible dabs and strokes of sky blue, cream white, golden tan, and a few touches of pale, shell pink to create a blurred look, as if seeing a reflection in the rippling surface of a puddle. The church façade is angled to our left, away from us. The main door and its surround takes up the center of the composition, where a rectangular door is set within nested, pointed arches that lead up to a narrow, tall, triangular gable. The point of that gable overlaps the round rose window, which is the same width as the portal surround below. Spires flank the central section and rise steeply off the top edge of the painting. The sky above is painted as a field of pale lapis blue. A few dabs of darker blue and green suggest people, tiny in scale, standing near the lower left corner. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Claude Monet ‘94.”

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight, 1894, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.179

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Three light-skinned girls hold hands to create a loose ring with their arms extended, in a grassy field in this horizontal painting. All three girls wear white headdresses, ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses, and clogs. Each dress has a wide white collar that extends beyond the shoulders. A ruby-red flower is pinned to the brown apron on the two girls whose fronts we see. Their features and clothing are outlined in cobalt blue and filled in with parallel, often visible strokes. To our left, a girl stands with both arms stretched out, one holding the hand of the girl next to her, to our right. The first girl looks off into the distance to our left with dark eyes. She has a button nose, and her peach-colored lips curve down at the corners. Her auburn-red hair is tucked back under her bonnet. Her dress is navy blue, and her stockings are brick red. She steps forward onto her right foot, to our left. The second girl, holding the first girls’ hand, stands facing our right in profile, looking slightly down. Her features are indistinct, but she also seems to have a snub nose and her pink lips are closed. She has blond hair and an emerald-green dress. Her hazelnut-brown stockings match her apron. She also steps forward, but onto her left foot. The third girl stands with her back to us, seen between the first two, as she looks over her shoulder to our right in profile. Her left arm is also raised but her right arm is hidden behind the second girl. The third girl has brown hair and a pointed nose. Her dress is black, and she steps forward onto her right foot. A small dog with brown and white speckled fur sniffs at the grass to our right of the girls. Piles of long grass or hay dot the lemon-lime green field, which dips down behind the girls and to our left to meet a low, stone gray wall. Buildings in plum purple, ivory white, terracotta orange, and ocean blue span the width of the painting beyond the wall. One narrow spire reaches above the other rooflines. Tall, narrow, dark green trees are interspersed among the buildings, and a hill climbs nearly to the top of the canvas to our left. A few thin slate-gray clouds float across a narrow band of shell-pink sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in lower right corner, “P. Gauguin 88.”

Post-Impressionism

 

In the 1880s, many artists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh, wanted to move beyond painting what the eye perceived. No defined mission unified this group, but they were galvanized by the efforts of the radical impressionists before them and sought to extend their quest for meaningful self expression and innovation. Seurat used dots of color; Cézanne played with the underlying geometry of forms; and Gauguin painted large patches of unmediated color. All pursued artistic purity. They often abandoned narrative and naturalist impressions, emphasizing instead brilliant optical effects or emotional passion. Although they were figural artists, their work can also have an abstract quality.

 

These artists self-consciously pushed boundaries and questioned convention. Gauguin and Van Gogh in particular aimed to transform public awareness through their art, identifying societal ills and believing strongly in their ability to effect change. Many sources provided inspiration, including indigenous cultures and spirituality, non-western art, and intellectual contemplation.

 

Edgar Degas, older and more classically trained than either Gauguin or Van Gogh, was active with the impressionists early in his career, but later adopted more enigmatic qualities. His scenes of ballet dancers, laundresses, and bathers frequently exhibit techniques and compositions that are jarring or seemingly unfinished in their execution - and seem as modern as the work of any of his younger colleaugues.

Paul Gauguin, Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven, 1888, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.19

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Green hills roll back to a turquoise-blue sea in this almost square painting. The scene is built with layers of small dots in lavender, lilac, cool blue, warm green, yellow, and peach. The hill angles from nearly the top left corner of the canvas to the lower right, filling the bottom left half of the canvas. It is mostly variegated shades of green but there are two cliff-like, purple surfaces to our left and a lighter patch of yellow to our right. A pole and a cross-shaped structure atop the hill to the left could be utility poles. An object on the water in the distance to our right may be a buoy or a boat. Peach lines the horizon, which comes just over halfway up the composition, and straw yellow and cornflower blue ripple across the sky above.

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.21

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A cleanshaven man wearing a black and red diamond-patterned costume and holding a white wooden sword tucked under one arm stands in a room with a blue background in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes that make patches of mottled color. The man stands with his body angled to our right and seems to look down in that direction, though the dark eyes are loosely painted. His right eyebrow, closer to us, is a dark, curving arch. Touches of pink suggest rosy cheeks, and only a subtle swipe of pink suggests a mouth, which appears to be missing when seeing this work from afar. An arctic-blue cap curves widely down over the ears like an upside-down crescent moon. Some transparent swipes of black could be a lace or feather collar around the costume’s neckline. The hand we see, near the end of the sword, is oversized and painted in tones of fog blue and beige. The right foot steps in front of the left. He wears black shoes, and the toes are turned out. The wall behind the man is dappled with spruce blue, laurel green, and some touches of pinkish tan. A darker baseboard separates the wall from the floor below, which is made with patches of sky blue, rust red, pale pink, and olive green. The swag of a curtain, in shades of goldenrod yellow and muted teal blue, hangs on the wall behind the person’s head.

Paul Cézanne, Harlequin, 1888-1890, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.7

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Two nude women with brown skin and long black hair stand with their backs to us at a riverbank in this stylized horizontal painting. The body of the woman to our left is angled to our left with her hands raised, presumably about to plunge into the teal-colored water. The woman to our right unwraps a cloth patterned with bright yellow flowers on a deep purple background from her waist. Between the women and farther away, a bare-chested man, also with brown skin, wears a tomato-red garment across his hips as he stands hip-deep in the water holding a long spear. The top of his head is cropped by the top edge of the painting. Along the left edge of the canvas, a gnarled tree is painted as a flat field of dark, charcoal gray, and it rises off the side and top of the composition. An area of the same color, perhaps a thick root or the trunk growing nearly horizontally, spans the width of the painting, separating the women from us. The area around the trunk to our left and right is painted with fields of evergreen and cool mint. Closer to us, along the front of the root, a field of rosy pink swirls with grape purple to suggest sand. This area is dotted with harvest-yellow and pumpkin-orange vines and stylized flowers. A bunch of vivid orange flowers with pine and spring-green leaves sits on the root near the trunk, to our left. Most of the painting, especially the landscape, is painted with areas of mostly flat color. In the bottom left corner, the artist has written the title of the painting in darkred paint: “Fatata te Miki.” In the lower right corner, he signed and dated the work with periwinkle blue: “P. Gauguin 92.”

Paul Gauguin, Fatata te Miti (By the Sea), 1892, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.149

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A long, brightly lit room is filled with at least nine young ballerinas in robin’s egg-blue dance costumes and pale pink shoes in this wide, horizontal painting. They all have light skin and brown or dark blond hair. The studio is lit from the left, and more light pours in through two windows toward the back. The wall closest to us is mint green with brown wainscoting covering the lower half, and a small mirror hanging a short distance down the wall. The walls of the space farther from us and the scuffed, worn floor are both painted with tan layered with washes of moss green and denim blue. A dancer in the lower left faces us and sits near a cello lying on the floor. The instrument’s curved upper body and neck emerge from the tutu near her left hip, on our right. She leans forward with her right arm, on our left, draped across her lap, and she rests her head on the other hand, propped up on her elbow. We look slightly down on her so only see the top of her head and the point of her nose. She wears a red jacket with her ice-blue, knee-length tutu spread around her. Her splayed feet are cropped by the bottom edge of the canvas. In the center are two dancers, one seated and the other standing. The seated girl is perched on a wooden chair with the back of her tutu draped over its top. She also wears a petal-pink jacket dotted with darker mauve. She gazes at the girl in front of her. That girl stands with her back to us, bowing her head slightly as she adjusts the bow of her emerald-green belt at the small of her back. At least six more dancers sit or stand along the far wall, in the upper right corner of the composition. One looks down at her tutu spread wide between her hands, and another holds a canary-yellow fan up to her face. The features of this group are loosely painted, making them indistinct. The artist signed the lower right, “Degas.”

Edgar Degas, The Dance Lesson, c. 1879, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.6

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Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

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Set in a valley carpeted in sage green, about a dozen armed men, on foot and horseback, close to us, line up and face off against an attack advancing from the back left in this vertical painting. The men, clothing, and horses closest to us are painted with dashes and swirling brushstrokes, which contrasts with the soft look of the approaching crowd and landscape beyond, which are painted indistinctly with loose and blended brushstrokes. All the men we can see have medium brown skin and are armed with rifles. The men close to us wear long tunics and boots in shades of teal blue, ivory white, crimson red, earth brown, and golden yellow. Most of them wear turbans and some have straight or curved daggers hanging from their waists. Closest to us in the bottom left, a chestnut-brown horse with a black mane collapses on its rider, who sprawls along the ground with arms overhead. The horse lifts its head and twists back toward us facing our left, so the white blazes down its nose are visible. Near the horse’s legs and along the left edge of the painting, a man wearing a mustard-yellow tunic kneels and leans his forehead against the barrel of his rifle, which he braces like a walking stick. His other hand rests on the hilt of his dagger at his waist. To our right of the fallen horse, six men line up along a low rise that angles to our right and into the distance, where it meets a grove of green trees. At the front of that group, near the lower center of the composition, a rider on a dark horse charges the approaching men. Those men emerge from a line of emerald-green trees and growth at the foot of a steep, rocky hill. These men are more loosely painted so details are difficult to make out, but several are backlit by white smoke, presumably from firing their rifles. The hill above is mottled with warm taupe, light gray, cinnamon-brown, and moss-green growth. Atop the hill and to our left, a walled building complex with thick, square towers faces a row of sheer cliffs that march in from the upper right to enclose the space. Their jagged faces are shadowed with cool tones of slate blue, pewter gray, and touches of rust red. An azure-blue sky, scattered with thin layers of steel-gray and white clouds, spans the top of the composition. Bright sunlight flows in from the upper right, illuminating the fallen horse and the men near it. Sunlight also warms the face of the terracotta building and the hill, as well as the peaks of the mountains on the right. The artist signed and dated the work in black in the lower center: “Eug. Delacroix 1863.”

Exoticism and Symbolism

 

Many painters of the latter half of the 19th century exulted in pleasures of the senses and the mind. For the impressionists this meant saluting visual delight. They drew encouragement from the mid- and late-century fascination with exotic cultures and foreign places, which stimulated both artistic and literary originality. Eugène Delacroix was France’s foremost romantic painter in the first half of the century and spent time in North African French colonies, which inspired him to paint scenes of animal hunts, foreign soldiers, and brightly-adorned alluring women, often set in orientalist locales. Not only did his work reflect the era's attraction to the unfamiliar, but it also sparked the interest of later artists such as Auguste Renoir (see Odalisque) and Henri Matisse (see Odalisque Seated with Arms Raised, Green Striped Chair) who were drawn to the brilliant color and bodily sensitivity of that artistic manner. These pictures show off color, flesh, and painterly bravado.

 

Instead of visual or sensual delight, some artists elected to focus less on contemporary subjects and surface appearance, instead meditating on interiority and emotion. Their contemplative pictures often privilege subjectivity over rational order, and their themes frequently address myth, the Bible, or another literary text. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Odilon Redon were two artists who sought to find and express symbolic meaning. Their work can be cryptic, but no less evocative, and its otherworldly quality often draws on viewers’ subjectivity and imagination.

Eugène Delacroix, Arabs Skirmishing in the Mountains, 1863, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 1966.12.1

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This horizontal painting shows a daylit, covered terrace, where two women with pale skin and wearing long dresses lounge and recline along a ledge as a turbaned man with dark brown skin plays a musical instrument. To our left, behind one of the women, the musician's white turban drapes around his neck. His white shirt has wide, salmon-pink cuffs. His head is bent over a stringed instrument with a light yellow rounded body and a long, narrow wooden neck. His features are mostly lost in shadow but his closed lips are dark pink. Behind and framing the musician, a dark green drapery with gold edging cuts across the top left corner of the painting and is drawn back to reveal a bright sea view beyond. Close to us, one woman wears an orange-red dress with gold embroidery and a low-cut transparent blouse that shows her pale skin beneath. She lounges on her back, head near the musician, and body splayed along the ledge out toward our right. Her eyes are half-closed, and her head rests on a large gold pillow with green and pink embroidery over which her long, dark red hair cascades. Her left arm is bent and thrown back behind her head while her right arm hangs limply toward the floor. Her extended legs are bent, and feet with red and gold pointed slippers emerge from the bottom of the dress. Beyond her legs and to our right, the second woman reclines in a gold and cream-white dress with a filmy top and gold jacket. She rests her head in her hand, propped up by a crooked elbow resting on the ledge, while her body extends to our right. She gazes at us with dark eyes. She has dark brown, wavy hair that flows behind her shoulders, and she wears a gold headband with round, coin-like links. Beyond the group of three, another man stands to the far right in the background, in a corner of the terrace patio next to a pillar. Like the other man, he has dark brown skin and wears a turban, a loose white shirt under a yellow vest, and light blue, loose trousers. The back of the terrace opens to a bright and sunny day, the light blue sky scattered with thin white clouds above a vivid blue sea, where three sailboats approach the port. Distant mountains are bathed in light and appear pink, beyond the white roofs of the port or village along the water's edge, to our left.

Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant, The Favorite of the Emir, c. 1879, oil on canvas, Courtesy of the United States Naval Academy Museum, 2010.95.1

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A nude woman with long, dark brown hair and peach-colored skin reclines against a denim-blue cushion in this stylized, horizontal painting. The painting is done mostly with areas of mottled color outlined in delicate black lines. Shown from the knees up, the woman lies with her legs to our right, and her hips tipped forward so her body faces us. She looks at us with dark, almond-shaped eyes under thin, arched brows. Bangs gather across her forehead, and her dark hair seems to be pulled back. Her head is tipped to our right, and she has an upturned nose, smooth cheeks, a pointed chin, and her smiling coral-red lips are closed. She holds the back of her left hand to her cheek and props herself up on her other elbow. Her rounded breasts have rust orange-colored nipples, and the contours of her body are smooth. There is a patch of dark hair at her groin, and her legs are pressed together. The blue pillow she rests on overlaps a white cloth or second pillow. The rest of the background is painted a terracotta brown with loose brushstrokes, so the setting is undefined. The artist signed the painting in dark letters in the upper right corner: “modigliani.”

Amedeo Modigliani, Nude on a Blue Cushion, 1917, oil on linen, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.46

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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Rest, c. 1863 oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.54

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A pale-skinned young woman with copper-orange hair, wearing a turquoise-blue robe, stands in a pastel-infused landscape in this stylized, vertical painting. The woman fills most of the left half of the composition. She faces our right in profile with her head bowed as she looks down at the silver and brown box she holds in her right hand, closer to us. Her body angles away from us so we see her back. Her hair is held back under a gold-colored headand, and her blue robe falls over a white skirt. Beyond her, rocky mountains in ice blue and pale lilac purple span the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up the painting, beneath a pale, rose-pink sky. An area of mottled parchment-white to our right of the person could be a field. Along the bottom edge of the canvas, rounded and organic shapes in scarlet red, turquoise, lapis blue, golden and lemon yellow, and pumpkin orange could be abstracted earth or flowers at the woman’s feet.

Odilon Redon, Pandora, 1910/1912, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.56

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A man and woman standing with their backs to us face a room where others stand or pose in this vertical painting. Though made with oil on cardboard, the paint is applied loosely with visible strokes so the painting looks more like a pastel drawing. The people have peach-colored or mint-green skin. Cut off by the left edge of the painting, the man wears a black top hat and suit. We only see the short blond hair behind one ear and the jutting cheekbone and jaw of his profile. The woman takes up almost the left half of the picture. She wears a flat, brown coat outlined in royal blue, a fur stole around her neck, and a blue hat with flowers. Her brown hair is pulled up, and she looks to our right in profile with pale, nearly ash-white skin. Across from the couple, to our right and farther into the room, a woman wearing a teal-green dress stands with her feet planted wide so her feet flare out and her hands on her hips. Her body is squared toward the couple, and she looks off to our left. A black hat perches on her yellow hair, which is piled atop her head. She cocks one eyebrow over green eyes, and her lips curl in a lopsided sneer over a double chin. A tawny-brown corset under her bust cinches her waist. She gathers the skirt in fistfuls with each hand to reveal white petticoats and black boots or shoes. Two more people stand facing away from us behind her and to our left. Seen between the first pair and this woman, the man here also wears a black top hat and suit, and he has orange hair. The woman has brown hair. Her bodice is vivid pink, and the skirt is dark brown. An arc of white from the hem of her skirt up to her head suggests she has flung that side of the skirt up. Another woman’s face cast with green is tucked between the heads of the first couple. That woman looks off to our left under lifted brows with a drooping mouth. The two couples face a structure with columns supporting a roof, probably a bandstand, in the upper right quadrant of the composition. The ground in the lower half of the picture is streaked with sable brown and olive green. The rest of the background behind the bandstand is filled with sea green against the brown board on which this was painted. An indistinct red mark in the lower right corner has the artist’s initials intertwined, “HTL.”

Late Century

 

By the end of the 19th century, Paris had become the heart of avant-garde activity and experimentation. Created for the Exposition Universelle held in Paris and completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was a resounding symbol of ingenuity and technical advancement. Modernity reigned; fashion and entertainment illuminated Paris, and districts like Montmartre became particularly well-known for the dance halls and café-concerts that animated them. Depicting both the more disreputable side of social amusement and the showy side of celebrity, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrayals of cabarets and performers are pulsating illustrations of bohemian life in the 1890s.

 

Non-French artists, such as Amedeo Modigliani (Italian), Chaim Soutine (Russian), and Pablo Picasso (Spanish), came to Paris, joining French counterparts like Henri Rousseau, and invented new and modern forms of expression. Electrified by the creative energy and the public love of art, these painters prompted one another to achieve. A look at their work reveals both an engagement with earlier art forms and an indication of 20th-century modernism.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge, 1892, oil on cardboard, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.221

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We look slightly down onto a stage, at a woman who dances at the center of this square painting. The pale, white skin on her face is tinged with slate-blue shadows and heightened noticeably with pink blush at the cheekbones. She wears crimson-red lipstick and her dark brown eyebrows are peaked over blue eyes. Two flaring pink flowers, each about the size of the woman’s face, are pinned in the woman’s flame-red hair. The black bodice of her dress has puffed, elbow-length sleeves and a low-cut square neckline. The lime-green skirt flares around her dancing feet to billow up and reveal layers of bubblegum pink underneath. Her body is angled to our left as she points her left, black-stockinged foot and holds her arms by her sides. Behind her, thirteen people dressed in sapphire-blue, ocean-green, and black costumes suggest a royal court, including a dark-haired man who wears a brick-red bolero style suit. He stands near the woman to our right, watching her dance.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in "Chilpéric", 1895-1896, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1990.127.1

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A group of three men, two children, and one woman gather in an empty, dusky rose-pink landscape under a blue, cloudy sky in this nearly square painting. Most of the people have muted, peachy skin, and the woman and the youngest boy have cream-white skin. The woman sits on the ground to our right, apart from the rest of the men and children. She wears a coral-red skirt, a beige shawl, and straw hat, and she looks into the distance to our right. The others stand in a loose semi-circle on the left half of the composition. A man wearing a multicolored, diamond-patterned costume stands with his back to us to the left. He looks to our right in profile and holds the hand of a little girl who also stands with her back to us. She wears a pink dress and white stockings, and her right hand rests on the tall handle of a white basket. A portly man wearing a scarlet-red jester’s costume and pointed hat stands opposite this pair, facing us to our right. Next to him to our right a young man wears a tan-colored leotard with a black bottom. He holds a barrel over his right shoulder and looks over to our right. The sixth person is the youngest boy, who wears a baggy blue and red outfit, and he looks toward the woman. The eyes of all the figures are deeply shadowed.

Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection © 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 1963.10.190

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Shown from the lap up, a cleanshaven man with black hair and dark clothes faces us as he sits with his hands resting together in his lap in this stylized, vertical portrait painting. The man's features, clothing, and the room are painted with areas of mottled color with visible brushstrokes, so many details are indistinct. The man has peach-colored skin, and his facial features are outlined. He has dark eyes that look at us or slightly up, under thin, arched brows. One eye is a little higher than the other, and the two halves of his long face do not quite match. He has a wide nose, and his full, dark rose-pink lips are closed. His hair is parted down the middle and is brushed down to meet his ears. He has an elongated neck, and his narrow shoulders slope down. He wears black pants and a black coat over a dark teal-green vest. A white shirt is visible along his neckline, and an area of black could be the knot of a tie. He holds the fingers of one hand in his other, both hands resting in his lap. A loosely painted, brown table sits next to the man to our right, and an area of slate blue and white could be a glass on the table. A vertical line in the background behind the man, to our right, probably indicates the corner of the room. The walls are painted with strokes of smoke gray, ocean blue, and some parchment white. The artist signed the work in dark letters in the upper right corner, “modigliani.”

Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, 1917, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.47

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Five monkeys rest and play amid a lush jungle landscape in this horizontal landscape painting. Painted with areas of flat color, thick vegetation fills most of the scene, with giant leaves overlapping in shades of green. At the bottom center, a large brown monkey sits upright on a rock, looking directly at us. To our left, two gray and black monkeys climb in trees, and also face us. To our right, two rust-orange monkeys swing in trees. The orange of their fur is echoed in spiky, pumpkin-orange flowers to the right. Dark red leafy plants with spiky white flowers fill the lower left corner of the painting. A cloudless, pale blue sky stretches across the top of the composition. The artist signed and dated the painting with white letters in the lower right: “Henri Rousseau 1910.”

Henri Rousseau, Tropical Forest with Monkeys, 1910, oil on canvas, John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.7

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