Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

On View: West Building, Main Floor

127 artworks on view.

Verdant green fields roll in undulating waves back alongside a road in this horizontal landscape painting. The fields take up the left and center of the composition and are painted with thick, curling strokes of emerald, pea, and celery green, and corn yellow to suggest grasses and plants. The pale green road runs up along the right edge of the painting, and is layered with strokes and daubs in butter yellow, spring green, and faint blue. The fields and road meet the horizon line about halfway up the canvas, where an aquamarine-blue sky swirling with white and periwinkle-blue clouds fills the top half of the painting.

Green Wheat Fields, Auvers

Vincent van Gogh

1890

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2013.122.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M83

A few pale brown buildings with terracotta red roofs are nestled among hills at the base of a towering, icy-blue mountain in this horizontal landscape painting. Only the pale indigo-violet shadows of the mountain are laid in, leaving the rest as the white of the canvas. The buildings and muted brown hills, blue shadows, and touches of sage green below are loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout around more blank areas of canvas.

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, from near Gardanne

Paul Cezanne

c. 1887

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1972.9.4

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M84

Shown from the waist up, pale-skinned young man wearing a bowler hat looks at us from the corners of his eyes in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our right, and he cuts his dark eyes back to look at us, his lips pursed. He has a wide face, round cheeks, and a narrow chin. His white lapels are flipped up, and he wears a buttoned blue jacket. The black bowler hat seems a little too small for his head. The man and setting are painted with areas of mottled, streaked color. For instance, his peachy face is shaded with visible strokes of slate blue. His white collar is a blend of ice blue and frosty green, and his jacket is built up with daubs and strokes of marine blue, moss green, and gray. The white of the canvas underneath shows through in some areas, especially in the jacket. The wrist of one hand resting in the man’s lap is visible, and the back rail of the wooden chair in which he sits peeks out past the shoulder to our left. The wall behind him is painted loosely with the suggestion of a diamond pattern in laurel and olive green, parchment brown, rust orange, and muted blue. A rail or frame running close and parallel to the right edge of the canvas is patterned with elongated red teardrop shapes outlined by white, against a celestial-blue background.

The Artist's Son, Paul

Paul Cezanne

1886-1887

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1963.10.100

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M84

A pale-skinned young man with a carrot-red beard and hair faces us, straddling a green chair in a sunny outdoor setting in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted so his features are indistinct. His eyes are painted as pale blue dots, and he looks out at us. His chair unfolds into an X shape, with interlacing slats to make the seat. He leans forward to rest his hands on one side of the chair, and his legs are spread wide. He wears a marine-blue jacket over a white shirt, sage-green trousers streaked with gray, and black shoes. A soft blue V-shape at the neck suggests a neckerchief. Behind him, a half wall is topped by a trellis. The wall is painted in muted tones of pale laurel green while the trellis is painted with crisscrossed strokes of pine green. Daubs of emerald, pine, and forest green suggest vines and leaves, and flicks of orange, gold, and blue could be flowers. The ground beneath the man is pale peach scattered with thin scribbles and patches of fog blue. The painting is inscribed with “E 72.” in the lower right.

George Moore in the Artist's Garden

Edouard Manet

c. 1879

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2006.128.24

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M87

Shown from the lap up, two women with pale skin and dark hair pulled up and back, wearing white dresses with baby-blue polka dots, sit on a couch in this horizontal portrait painting. Both women have straight, dark brows, delicate noses, smooth skin, and their small, rose-pink mouths are closed. Wispy bangs brush their foreheads, and their hair is piled high with long ringlets falling down their backs. Both wear black ribbons like chokers around their necks. Their dresses have high necks with ruffles along the necklines, ruffles at the wrists, and are gathered under the bust. They sit angled in toward each other. The woman on our left has black hair, and she looks down and to our right with dark eyes. She wears a gold ring with a dark, oval stone on one hand resting in her lap. The other woman has chestnut-brown hair and looks down and off to our left with ice-blue eyes. She holds an open fan in her hands in her lap. The fabric on the couch has vertical white and lilac-purple stripes, and is overlaid with a pattern of pink flowers and green leaves. A framed picture hanging on the bone-white wall behind the women shows an arched painting against a sky-blue background. A few spiky leaves from a houseplant are cut off by the left edge of the painting. The portrait is loosely painted throughout, especially in the couch and background. The artist signed the painting in the upper right corner, “Berthe Morisot.”

The Sisters

Berthe Morisot

1869

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1952.9.2

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M89

Young Spanish Woman with a Guitar

Auguste Renoir

1898

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1970.17.76

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81

People and a horse-drawn wagon move along a street lined with buildings on the left and trees on the right in this loosely painted horizontal landscape. The wide street angles from the bottom left of the composition to the middle right. The surface of the road is painted with strokes of apricot orange, light gray, rust red, and olive green, and it leads back to a slate-blue, blurred area suggesting trees in the distance. The two, three, or four-story buildings are close together or may be joined. They are painted in muted tones of parchment white, pale peach, and blue gray. Closest to us and to the left, a long brown roof and two bare trees sit beyond an ivy-covered stone wall. The people are indistinct and small in relation to the scene and are dressed in black, brown, olive-green, and slate-blue clothing. One of two carriages is across the road from us and the second one is farther back. On our side of the road, a man wearing a long black jacket and gray pants strolls away from us past a neat row of trees lining the peach-colored sidewalk. The overcast gray and pale pink sky is above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “Sisley. 72.”

Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil

Alfred Sisley

1872

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1970.17.82

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M82

We look slightly down onto the surface of a river in which three narrow canoes, each paddled by a single person, are being rowed toward us in this horizontal landscape painting. The rowers wear white shirts rolled up to the elbows, light blue pants, and straw-yellow, wide-brimmed hats pulled down over the eyes. They sit in the bottom of their boats with legs extended and the handle of the double-bladed paddle straddling the boat over their laps. The canoe closest to us comes almost directly toward us, angled slightly to our right as it cuts through the surface of the river, its tip extending off the bottom edge of the canvas. The second canoe is a couple of boat lengths behind and to our left of the closest canoe. The third is small in the distance, near the horizon that comes three-quarters of the way up the composition. The back end of a fourth canoe and a single paddle extends into the scene from the right edge of the canvas. The butter-yellow paddles are reflected in the pale sage green and sky blue of the river’s surface. The river is lined on both sides with lush trees and vegetation, which fills the top quarter of the painting above the horizon.

Skiffs

Gustave Caillebotte

1877

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1985.64.6

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M85

Madame Camus

Edgar Degas

1869/1870

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1963.10.121

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M86

From a sandy beach, we look across a sun-drenched body of water enclosed by a long, sand-colored, crenelated wall in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted, especially in the beach closer to us and in the water, which is a blend of aquamarine blue and honeydew green. The beach has a few areas of celery-green growth. The shoreline stretches away along the left side of the painting, back to an area with emerald-green trees. A few boats, painted with swipes of black and peanut brown, are pulled up to the beach near the trees. Spanning the right two-thirds of the composition, the wall angles away from us so the closest part of the wall is to our right. There is a round, stout tower at the end of the wall to our left and another near the right edge of the canvas, though the wall continues beyond that tower. There is an arched doorway about halfway long the length of the wall. The water is smoothly painted with only a few ripples where the tower to our right reflects in the surface. In the narrow space between the beach to our left and the wall to our right, a few buildings, a windmill, and more trees line the horizon in the distance. The top half of the painting is given over to a topaz-blue sky, with only a few puffy white clouds near the horizon.

The Western Ramparts at Aigues-Mortes

Frédéric Bazille

1867

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1985.64.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M88

Rose and coral pink, vivid white, delphinium blue, and buttercup yellow flowers with deep green leaves are arranged in a blue and white vase in front of a pale sea-green background in this vertical still life painting. The vase has a white cup on a flaring foot. The vase is encircled with a twisting, decorative blue vine and scrolls. It sits on a band of peanut brown, suggesting a wooden tabletop. The still life is painted with blended strokes, giving the composition a soft, almost mottled appearance. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “Cezanne.”

Flowers in a Rococo Vase

Paul Cezanne

c. 1876

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1963.10.105

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M84

Shown from the chest up, a young boy wearing an aquamarine-blue jacket sits facing us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is slightly angled to our right and he looks just over our right shoulder. He has close-cropped, dark hair. His features and clothing are painted in patchworks of colors. For example, his pale face is painted with swipes of peach, straw yellow, stone blue, and olive green, especially around his large, dark eyes and small, cherry-red mouth. The scarf knotted around his neck is painted with daubs of light and azure blue, teal, putty gray, and white. His voluminous jacket has touches of red, blue, and lighter shades of green. He sits in a corner with walls washed with shades of aqua and turquoise. The rail of a brown chair curves behind his right shoulder, on our left, and is cut off by the left edge of the canvas. A cluster of darker green, leaf-like shapes suggest a design on the wall to our right.

Louis Guillaume

Paul Cezanne

1879-1890

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1963.10.101

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M84