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Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg

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To our right in this vibrantly colored, stylized, nearly square painting, a woman with light, peach-colored skin and chestnut-brown hair sits slumped along a table as she sleeps, her head resting on one extended arm. The lilac-purple tabletop has round forms representing fruit scattered around a potted plant. Many of the forms are outlined with gray and filled in with mostly flat areas of color in mint and sage green, icy blue, coral red, orange, and lemon yellow. The tabletop curves around its edges and the surface is vivid purple, while the skirt and legs of the table are pale ginger brown. The woman’s head rests facing us on her bent right arm, that hand dangling over the front edge of the table. She rests her other hand, closer to us, near the crook of her elbow. She wears a white, blousy top with rows of navy-blue zigzags on the shoulder and elongated dots on the sleeves, and a light, mint-green skirt. Her brown hair seems to be pulled back and gathered into bunches of curving waves. Her stylized eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn simply with gray lines. The round orange, peach, and yellow fruit on the table are scattered near her arm and across the table to the other side, close to a plant in a brown clay pot. The plant has shoots of long, curving stems with vibrant spruce-green leaves. Two more plants are behind the woman near the back wall, in front a rectangular opening over the woman that could be a window or mirror. The glass is painted with streaks of baby blue and pale magenta pink around a field of white, and is outlined with a band of sunshine yellow and then scarlet red. The wall around it is also painted with watercolor-like, soft fields of pale blue and pink. The floor under the table and to our left is a flat field of caramel brown. Behind the table and to our left, forms suggest a wooden chair and a blue and white ceramic pot on a tall, spindly stand. In the lower left corner of the canvas, the artist signed and dated the work with dark red paint: “40 Henri Matisse.”
Henri Matisse, Still Life with Sleeping Woman, 1940, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.26

Still Life with Sleeping Woman

Henri Matisse · 1940 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.26

Henri Fantin-Latour, Self-Portrait, 1861, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.9

Self-Portrait

Henri Fantin-Latour · 1861 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1995.47.9

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Madame Stumpf and Her Daughter, 1872, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.23

Madame Stumpf and Her Daughter

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · 1872 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.23

Edgar Degas, Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing, c. 1880, charcoal counterproof on buff wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.167

Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing

Edgar Degas · c. 1880 · charcoal counterproof on buff wove paper ·  Accession ID  1985.64.167

We look down onto a plaza with a sliver of a tall building rising along the left edge of the painting, a row of verdant, green trees to our right, and a row of buildings enclosing the space in the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. The peanut-brown building to our left nearly reaches the top edge of the canvas. It has three oversized, tall stories under a high, sloping roof with a slender chimney. A promenade with carriages runs in front of the tall building. In the plaza closer to us but tiny in scale, people gather in small and large groups, along the bottom edge of the composition. They are painted with dabs and short strokes of cobalt blue, butter and golden yellow, brick red, black, and white. The trees create a diagonal line running from the lower right corner into the scene, along the edge of the plaza to our right. Beyond the plaza and trees, the corners of a formal garden with sand-white walking paths stretch back to the row of buildings in the distance, which come halfway up the painting. That long line of buildings is painted with tones of light brown with rows of tall, narrow windows. The roofs are slate gray, and several cupolas and towers are spaced along its length. The buildings span the width of the painting and disappear behind the tall building to our left. Loosely painted, white, puffy clouds float across the ice-blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1900.”
Camille Pissarro, Place du Carrousel, Paris, 1900, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.55

Place du Carrousel, Paris

Camille Pissarro · 1900 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.55

François Etienne Villeret, Rue de Rivoli and Pavillon Marsan, watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.69

Rue de Rivoli and Pavillon Marsan

François Etienne Villeret · · watercolor over graphite on wove paper ·  Accession ID  1995.47.69

Gustave Courbet, La Bretonnerie in the Department of Indre, 1856, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.8

La Bretonnerie in the Department of Indre

Gustave Courbet · 1856 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1972.9.8

A woman plays an upright piano as two boys play checkers at a table in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of flat color and pattern. The people have pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair. Their facial features are painted with dots or short strokes of black. The piano is against the wall to our left. The woman wears a short-sleeved, lemon-yellow dress with a long skirt. A music book is propped on the music stand, and loosely painted objects line the top of the instrument. The wall behind the piano is patterned with white and pale yellow flowers under and around arches against a cranberry-red background. The table where the boys play is in the middle of the room. The players sit in wooden chairs and wear black and white striped jackets with white collars. The boy to our right looks at the board while resting his left cheek, closer to us, in his hand. The other boy looks on with his arms on the table in front of him. The checkerboard sits on a red and white striped cloth, which has lines of black dots in the white strips. Beneath the table is a floral rug with blue and black flowers against a red background. The border is painted loosely with leafy shapes against bright white. Beneath the area rug the floor or another carpet is garnet red with a diamond-shaped grid painted in orange. A petal-pink, upholstered chair sits in front of a tall wardrobe in the back corner of the room. A picture with two violins against a blue background hangs on the side of the furniture to our right. A chest of drawers next to the wardrobe holds a few bowls or objects and a white statue, about half human height. The statue is of a person standing with one knee bent in front of the other, one elbow tucked by the side with that hand held to the chest, and the other bent elbow raised overhead. Pictures hang on the wall around the statue, and the wallpaper there is ivory white with a dark yellow pattern. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner, “Henri Matisse.”
Henri Matisse, Pianist and Checker Players, 1924, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.25

Pianist and Checker Players

Henri Matisse · 1924 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.25

About a dozen men and women gather around three men hanging from wooden crosses, all against a deep landscape beneath a shiny gold sky in this horizontal painting. All the people we can see have pale or tanned skin. The men on the crosses wear only white loincloths, and a gold halo encircles the head of the man in the middle, Jesus. Jesus hangs with his hands and feet nailed to the cross, and a man on the ground has pierced his right side with a lance. Blood drips down his face from a ring of thorns. Four winged angels, small in scale to the rest of the people, catch the blood pouring from the nails in his hands and feet, and the wound on his side in golden chalices. The crosses to either side angle in toward Jesus, and the men are tied to them with their arms hooked backward over the crosspiece. Their legs are tied to the vertical beam of the cross, and they bleed from wounds on their thighs. Near the head of the man to our left, an angel hovers and holds up a miniature man, like a doll. The man on the cross to our right turns his head away from the demon holding out another miniature man. Across the bottom of the composition, the people in the crowd wear garments in ginger brown, cranberry and burgundy red, and olive green. Three women, two young men, and a man on horseback are tightly clustered on the ground in the left half. The woman closest to us, Mary, wears a marine-blue gown and a white head covering. She is partly slumped to one side, supported by a woman on her left, to our right, and a young man standing just behind her. The third woman kneels on Mary’s other side, near the lower left corner of the composition, with her hands clasped together. Behind the women, the horse and its elderly, bearded rider and the cleanshaven man piercing Jesus’s side with a spear both look up at Jesus. The rider touches his left eye with the index finger of that hand, and short, red rays emanate from his eyelid. Near the back end of the horse, a man holds a bucket and a long pole supporting a sponge in a U-shaped crook at the top. A cluster of eight men are gathered in the lower right half. Two are on horseback, and the rider closest to us wears peanut-brown armor and helmet. He holds a tall staff with a red pennant bearing the letters “SPQR.” Beyond the crosses, pale green hills topped with trees and bushes lead back to a town skyline painted in shades of baby and teal blue. Scenes with people, tiny in scale, are scattered across the city and landscape. There, a crowd greeting a man entering the city on a donkey is seen in the distance to our left. A group lowers a man from a cross on a hill to our right, and a man hangs from a tree along the right edge of the composition. The gold sky fills the top quarter of the scene.
Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster, Calvary, c. 1470/1480, oil on panel, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2001.70.1

Calvary

Master of the Death of Saint Nicholas of Münster · c. 1470/1480 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2001.70.1

Edgar Degas, Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing, c. 1880, charcoal on tan laid paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.88

Three Studies of Ludovic Halévy Standing

Edgar Degas · c. 1880 · charcoal on tan laid paper ·  Accession ID  1985.64.88