Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

On View: West Building, Main Floor

127 artworks on view.

In a darkened room, two women sit at a round table near a man who stands leaning against a fireplace mantle, all illuminated only by a soft, yellow light from a ceiling lamp hanging over the table in this nearly square painting. All the people are light skinned and have brown or dark hair. The brushwork throughout is loose and details are indistinct. The brightest object in the room, the light, has a flaring shade over a spherical body, and hangs from three curling, scrolling arms. Painted in butter and golden yellow, it seems to be made from brass. The table is bare except for a white teapot and two small, white teacups on saucers near the women who sit to our right. The women have turned their wooden chairs to face each other next to the table, so the one closer to us sits with her back to us. Both have brown hair pulled up in buns, and they look down at their hands. The woman farther away wears a pine-green dress with white trim at the cuffs, and the one facing away from us wears a slate-blue, high-necked dress with a white collar. The one who faces us wears holds something white in her hands, presumably needlework. A third chair at the table, closest to us, is turned toward the women, but is empty. The man stands in semi-darkness behind the two women next to a glowing fireplace. He has a full beard and wears a black suit. He leans on the mantel with his left arm, on our right, with his other hand on his hip. Though his eyes are deeply shaded, he seems to look down at the woman in the blue-gray dress. A large mirror over the fireplace reflects the heads of the man and the woman facing us, as well as the back of a blue-gray lidded vase on the mantel and a clock hanging on the opposite wall, out of our view. A curtain runs along the wall beyond the fireplace and is painted with the suggestion of a floral pattern in strokes of forest green, burnt orange, gray, and tan. The rest of the room is swallowed in shadowy areas of dusky browns, grays, and tans. The artist signed the work in red letters in the lower left corner: “Claude Monet.”

Interior, after Dinner

Claude Monet

1868/1869

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1983.1.26

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M86

We look slightly down onto a bare, gnarled tree near a gray, dirt path, which leads back to a hamlet in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so many details are indistinct. To our left, the gray tree trunk sways to the left as the branches of its skeletal canopy nearly span the width of the painting. The path extends from the lower right corner of the painting into the distance, around a lattice-like fence, which also runs across the width of the canvas. To our right and facing away from us, a person wearing brown pants, a sky-blue shirt, and a gray cap leans his forearms on the chest-high fence as he presumably talks with the woman standing on the other side. She wears a long navy-blue dress with a sea-blue apron and a tan hat. The land enclosed within the fence is painted with bands of peanut brown and sage green. Another woman wearing a slate-blue skirt, a sky-blue shirt, and a white cap walks away from us down the path using a cane or walking stick. To her right is a thicket of loosely painted moss-green and rust-brown foliage. Across a gully in the distance, a white picket fence separates us from the small village. The buildings have white or beige walls and pitched terracotta-red, tan, or denim-blue roofs. Beyond these structures, flax-brown trees are silhouetted against a light blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark brown in the lower left corner: “C. Pissarro. 1872.”

The Fence

Camille Pissarro

1872

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1985.64.31

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M87

A wide creek winds between a tree-lined bank to our left and hazy mountains to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The riverbank curves deeply like a backward capital letter B. Marshy grasses grow in tufts, and palm and other trees grow in a grove to our left. One brown-skinned person wearing only a white cloth around the hips carries a long stick near the shoreline. Dabs of brown and muted dark pink suggest other people farther along the riverside. Tree-covered boulders jut into the creek from our right. A band of rocky, mountains are smoky mauve-pink across the rightmost two-thirds of the horizon, which comes a third of the way up the composition. The butter-yellow sun is low on the horizon to our right, peeking through the grove of palm trees. The light pours across the placid surface of the creek, creating a soft yellow streak next to the reflection of the mountain ridge. A few heather-pink clouds drift across the pale turquoise sky. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “C. Pizarro. 1856. Paris.”

A Creek in St. Thomas (Virgin Islands)

Camille Pissarro

1856

Oil on academy board Accession ID 1985.64.29

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M88

One person with brown skin lies on a patterned carpet and a nude woman, also with brown skin, stoops and holds a white cloth to her thighs in this loosely painted horizontal scene. A wall, painted with streaks and smudges of fog gray, white, and pale peach, spans the right two-thirds of the composition behind the people. In the leftmost third, a room bumps back in space, and an arched window there opens onto a view painted with strokes of shamrock green. We may be in a courtyard or another kind of brightly lit, enclosed space. The rug is loosely painted with visible dashes and dabs of raspberry pink, sapphire blue, mint green, pale yellow, white, and brown. The person lying on the rug is angled away from us, so the bare feet are closest, near the front left corner of the rug, and the head angles to our right, near the wall. That person is wrapped with white fabric over the head and chest, lemon-yellow fabric across the middle, and emerald green over the thighs. One ankle rests over the other, and the eye we see is closed. The nude woman stands just to our right, near the front right corner of the rug. Her black hair is short or pulled up. Dabs of gold around her neck suggest a coin-like necklace or large, round beads. Her full breasts hang as she holds the white cloth to her legs. The cloth is painted with short diagonal strokes, which cascade down her right leg, to our left, and pool on the floor. The toes of the foot we can see rest on the back of a pointed shoe painted with butter yellow and black. The other shoe sits just off the front edge of the rug, near the pooled white fabric. A side table with an octagonal top is at the back right corner of the rug, and is painted with crimson red, black, white, slate blue, and harvest gold. One orange is on the floor near the white fabric, and three more are near the back left corner of the carpet. A parrot, painted with an azure-blue body, white around the eye, a marigold-orange neck, and a pointed black beak, nibbles at an open orange on the floor nearby. A narrow white column rises from near the back left corner of the rug off the top edge of the painting. The wall behind the two people and the spaces in the room beyond, to our left, are loosely painted but with strokes that suggest geometric or lattice-like patterns. The artist signed the painting near the lower left: “Boldini.”

After the Bath

Giovanni Boldini

after 1889

Oil on wood Accession ID 2015.19.19

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81

Denise Maréchal

Théo van Rysselberghe

c. 1894

Oil on wood Accession ID 2019.118.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M87

This painting shows a scene with a light brown path or courtyard leading towards a small stone building on the left with a thatched roof. A person stands on the right, wearing a dark blue dress with a green apron and a white bonnet. The left side of the scene is in shadow, while the right is lit with bright yellow light. Behind the building are a few tall, thin trees with green leaves in front of a wide green field stretching towards the horizon. The sky is bright blue with one small white cloud in the upper left corner.

Farmhouse at Le Pouldu

Paul Sérusier

1890

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2000.95.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M83

A small complex of white buildings with red-tile roofs are engulfed in a patchwork of lush, green farm fields over rolling hills in this nearly square painting. The sun-drenched scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes in shades of spring, clover, and pine green, with touches of caramel and sand brown. The horizon comes about three-quarters of the way up the composition, and white clouds float against the pale blue sky above. Small in scale, a few people walk along pathways between fields and a few work among the crops. The cluster of buildings is situated along the base of a hill that rises in the distance, about halfway up the painting. A man wearing a straw hat, a white shirt, and denim-blue overalls walks away from us, perhaps carrying a long-handled tool in the lower left corner of the painting. Another person, perhaps a woman wearing a dress and white cap, stands at a fence along the path, near the man. The artist signed and dated the work with dark paint in the lower right corner: “C.Pissarro.68.”

Landscape at Les Pâtis, Pontoise

Camille Pissarro

1868

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1991.101.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M88

Shown from the shoulders up and from a low vantage point, a man with dark brown skin and black hair looks up and to our left in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our right, but he turns his head to look off with dark eyes. His lower lip comes slightly forward from the upper, and his mustache continues in lines from the corners of his mouth down to his square jawline. His hair creates a halo around his face, and a crimson-red cloth wraps across his shoulders. He is lit from our upper right, and the background brightens from golden yellow along the right edge of the canvas to vivid, shimmering yellow to the left. The portrait is loosely painted, especially in the clothing and the background.

A Chief of Abyssinia

Henri Regnault

c. 1870

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2014.136.74

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81

This painting shows a man seated with one knee bent, his body turned to the right and his face turned slightly back toward us. He has brown skin, high cheekbones, a short, curly black beard, and short black hair. His facial expression is neutral, and he is gazing off into the distance, his brown eyes turned slightly upwards. The man is wearing a cream-colored shirt with short sleeves, red and white striped shorts that end above his knees, and a yellow sash around his waist. His hands are clasped together on his bent knee, the other leg hanging downwards. The background is a solid light blue color with visible brushstrokes, and the man appears to sit on a red object in the bottom left corner, with a piece of blue fabric hanging off of it or in front of it.

Pierre Louis Alexandre

Karin Bergöö Larsson

1879 - 1880

Oil on canvas, mounted on board Accession ID 2024.6.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81

About a dozen people walk and a few ride horses across a bridge spanning river that cuts through a sandy landscape in this horizontal painting. A few wisps of clouds drift across a vivid blue sky over the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. The waterway winds from the lower left corner into the distance parallel to the left edge of the painting. A bank of shrubs and two tall palms lean toward the water from the left bank, and brown and cream-white buildings line both sides of the water to the horizon. People sit on the low wall of the bridge in the lower left corner, and a person leads a donkey laden with sacks toward us on the far side of the deck. The bridge is shaped like a capital T laid down, so the top crossbeam spans the river. The lower branch divides the river on our side of the bridge. Some rocks and a gnarled trunk lie across this strip of land. Farther up the river and to our left, a single person walks across a second bridge made up of planks supported by rocky pilings. That bridge meets the far bank near the remains of a building with pointed arches and a tower-like minaret. Verdant green canopies of a cluster of palm trees flare over this building. People who walk and ride across the bridge create a loose line that extends to a larger gathering beyond the building. The group gathers in the dense shade of a wide-canopied tree, which grows high over a brown wall. More rooflines, including a dome and another minaret, stack along the horizon beyond the tree. The people wear robes and turbans in bright white, aquamarine blue, brick red, and black. The artist signed the painting as if he had written his name on the face of a rock in the lower right corner, “JL GEROME.”

View of Medinet El-Fayoum

Jean-Léon Gérôme

c. 1868/1870

Oil on wood Accession ID 2013.62.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81

This painting shows a landscape with a horizon in the lower third of the composition. On the left side of the painting, there are tall trees along a canal. In the center is a dirt path on the other edge of the canal, with a person riding a donkey who looks over their shoulder towards us. On the right side, there are white buildings in the distance, with a grassy field leading towards them. The light blue sky is filled with fluffy clouds, and the water of the canal reflects the sky and trees. The brushstrokes of the painting are thick and visible, especially in the sky.

The Towpath

Johan Barthold Jongkind

1864

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2006.128.22

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M82

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.

The Favorite of the Emir

Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant

c. 1879

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2010.95.1

On View: West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M81