Provenance

Mrs. Alfred Chester Beatty

Stone, Edith Dunn

American, died 1952

Explore Selected Works

Paul Cezanne, Banks of the Seine at Médan, 1880-1885, watercolor and graphite, Florian Carr Fund, 2013.102.1

Banks of the Seine at Médan

Paul Cezanne · 1880-1885 · watercolor and graphite ·  Accession ID  2013.102.1

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

The Dance Lesson

Edgar Degas · c. 1879 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1995.47.6

Painted entirely with small dots of pure color mostly in slate and azure blue, olive green, and cream white, this scene shows a sandy beach stretching to a lighthouse at the center and a four-story building to our right in this horizontal seascape. The tall, slender lighthouse standing on the water’s edge a short distance from us is painted with specks of azure and sky blue, ivory, and peach. In the distance to our left, a pier stretches into the sea along the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up this composition. A sailboat floats just off the pier, near the left edge of the painting. To our right of the lighthouse and extending off the right edge of the canvas, the building has three levels of windows and a row of dormers along the tall, peaked roof. The building is painted with touches of dove gray, sapphire blue, and pale pink. In front of the building and to our right, a denim-blue shed has a tangerine-orange roof. A wooden rowboat outlined in cornflower blue with flecks of dandelion yellow rests on the sand next to the shed. In front of us, dots of moss green blend into the blond tones of the sand, creating an impression of grass on the beach. Sunlight shimmers on the sea to our left, which is painted with short dashes of mint and seafoam green, baby blue, cream, and shell pink, beneath a clear, ice-blue sky.
Georges Seurat, The Lighthouse at Honfleur, 1886, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.33

The Lighthouse at Honfleur

Georges Seurat · 1886 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.33

Bibliography

1932

  • "A Modern Picture Collection." Studio 104 (August 1932):77-79

1985

  • Wilson, A.J. The Life and Times of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty. London, 1985.

1987

  • Kennedy, Brian. "Sir Alfred Chester Beatty and the NGI." Irish Arts Review 4, no. 1 (1987):41-51

2003

  • Horton, Charles. Alfred Chester Beatty: From Miner to Bibliophile. Dublin, 2003