Impressionism

Choppy waters on a fresh even windy day set the scene here in Claude Monet’s The Cliffs at Étretat, where the picturesque and the sublime seem to collide in this 1885 painting of the coast of Normandy in north-western France. The picturesque, in the sense of rough irregularity, is present in the landforms themselves, the sea […]

Jean Monet on his Hobby Horse is an 1872 French Impressionist painting by leading artist Claude Monet. The picture depicts Claude Monet’s eldest son Jean and was painted in 1872 after his family’s return to France after the Franco-Prussian War, at their new home at Argentueil near Paris, France. The beginnings of Monet’s Impressionism are

The Studio Boat is an 1874 Impressionist oil painting by French artist and founder of the Impressionist Movement Claude Monet. It is located in the Kroller-Muller Museum at Otterlo in The Netherlands. Analysis of The Studio Boat The simple vessel in ‘The Studio Boat’, or Le Bateau-atelier in Monet’s native french, that is painted here

Here we have Claude Monet’s wife Camille Monet on a Garden Bench portrayed in dark colours of mourning. She looks out at the viewer with a sad expression of resignation. The picture was painted in 1873, the year of Camille Doncieux’s father’s death. A man also in dark dress leans over the bench while in the

The Luncheon is an 1868 genre painting by leading French Impressionist artist Claude Monet. Painted relatively early in his career at the age of 28, this was before his shift to the concerns of Impressionism of the 1870s. This image, therefore, can be said to be more Realist in character with more precise depictions of

Summer Night is an 1890 symbolist genre oil on canvas painting by American artist Winslow Homer. This work is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France. Analysis of Homer’s Summer Night Although primarily known as a Realist, Winslow Homer blends Realism with a certain exotic or enigmatic Symbolism. What is painted in 1890’s Summer Night

Leaning on Her Arms by American artist Mary Cassatt was painted in 1879, around the time she became close to fellow artist Edgar Degas. Indeed, the picture displays the influence of Degas the French Impressionist in its rapidly drawn contours and colors, as well as the fact of Cassatt’s use of pastel in the work.

Suffused in rich saturated colours of mostly greens, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1874 Impressionist painting The Fisherman, or Le pêcheur à la ligne in French, brings to us a fulsome nature that is almost too fertile for comprehension. It is also often referred to as The Angler. The composition focuses on the fisherman of the title, through

Les glacons (the Ice Floes) from 1880 is a typical instance of Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s fascination with wintry weather. The greens of the trees show a life force in nature, and the ice perhaps is contrasting opposite. The distant fog that is shot through with sunlight adds depth to the recession of the trees

Armand Guillaumin’s Sunset at Ivry (Soleil couchant à Ivry) of 1873 grants a great deal of the canvas to light effects in the evening sky where the heat of the day, the golden light, begins to dissipate while cold blues signifying the approaching night begins to descend on the darkening scene of industrial chimneys and

This 1876 portrait of Mlle Georgette Charpentier by French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir is of the daughter of one of his earliest patrons, Marguerite Charpentier. As early as 1875, Madame Charpentier bought three works by Renoir and became one of the earliest patrons of Impressionism which at the time was still controversial in the art

This 1878 portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children, two daughters is one of half a dozen that Pierre-Auguste Renoir completed for his patron Madame Charpentier. Such was her admiration for Renoir that he said he had become the family’s “private painter”. This picture, when displayed at the Paris Salon of 1879, received great

In Landscape with Ruins of 1897, Armand Guillaumin assumes a bold colour palette and makes use of greens, ultramarine and purples that present the scene of trees, hills and picturesque ruins atop the hills with vigour. A sense of artistic and expressive exaggeration in terms of the choice of colours is prevalent and lends an

In American artist Mary Cassatt’s Young Girl at a Window of 1885 we see the sitter seated in an armchair at an angle to the picture plane. She is dressed formally in white as if about to leave for or having just returned from a social gathering. The young girl seems rapt in a reverie

Georges Seurat’s 1884 painting Seated Figures or Figures Assises in French was one of about 60 studies that the artist completed for his masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The positioning and the appearance of the five lounging figures in this study change significantly between the study and the final,

Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana has many parents in English) is an 1893 painting in the Post-Impressionist style by the leading French artist Paul Gauguin. Gauguin painted this portrait of his thirteen-year-old companion and later wife during his first trip to Tahiti, from 1891-1893. Thought to be an 1893 farewell portrait painted before his departure, this

The Pink Shash is an 1898 painting by French Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt. The Pink Sash Analysis Mary Cassatt was an American artist who was to spend the bulk of her career in France, becoming associated with the Impressionists. Cassatt first arrived in France in the 1860s at a time when the stranglehold of the

The action in this naval scene titled The Battle of the Alabama and the Kearsarge is a re-imagining of the Battle of Cherbourg in 1864 which French artist Edouard Manet completed within a month of the event. The battle itself was an engagement of the American Civil War and saw the sinking of the Alabama,

Eugène Manet on Isle of Wight is an 1875 painting in the Impressionist style by the leading female French artist Berthe Morisot. This work is located in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, France. On the surface, Eugene Manet on the Isle of Wight is a pseudo-portrait of the artist Berthe Morisot’s husband (and brother

The Canal – Morning Effect is a painting by an entirely self-taught artist, American Impressionist Richard Gruelle who started as a sign and house painter, then worked as a portraitist before finally settling on landscape painting. A snapshot of the evolving city of Indianapolis as it appeared in the 1890s, 1894’s The Canal – Morning