Monet’s painting technique is perfectly suited for depicting this windy seaside day on the English Channel.
A-Level: 19th-century landscape
Cezanne gets freaky with the conventions of landscape painting in this fuzzy image of a hot day.
Paul Cézanne, The Red Rock
Obsessed with this view, Monet paid the owner of the trees not to cut them down until he finished his paintings.
Claude Monet, Poplars
This sentimental scene of a quiet moment of prayer in the fields reflects a nostalgia for religion in modern France.
Jean-François Millet, L’Angélus
Before the artist could paint this pastoral scene, she had to petition the government… for the right to wear pants.
Rosa Bonheur, Sheep in the Highlands
Cropped figures, vivid hues, and unnatural light turn a humdrum pastoral scene into an act of aesthetic rebellion.
Paul Gauguin, The Red Cow
Rosa Bonheur defies the patriarchy, one masterfully painted ox at a time.
Rosa Bonheur, Plowing in the Nivernais (or ...
Monet paints the surface of the water itself, refusing the viewer the anchoring presence of a horizon or shoreline.
Claude Monet, Les Nymphéas (The Water Lilies)
Realism’s original bad boy put a naked woman in a picnic scene, and the critics were not happy about it.
Édouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon ...
Monet discards hundreds of years of tradition of how to paint light, and shows us what he’s really seeing.
Claude Monet, The Argenteuil Bridge
Soft and lovely though it may be, this image struck fear in the hearts of urban elites when it was first exhibited.
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners
Cézanne’s lifelong love affair with the landscape of Aix-en-Provence reaches its peak in his mountain images.
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire
A small brown smudge in the background of this awkward painting hints at Cézanne’s ingenuity.
Paul Cézanne, Turning Road at Montgeroult
Though the artist was obsessed with painting a starry sky en plein air, it is likely this was painted indoors.
Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night
Rejected from a national exhibition, Courbet simply launched his own show to display this enormous work.
Gustave Courbet, The Painter’s Studio: A Real ...
Not your average vacation picture: Dyce’s family in a scientifically-observed landscape, timestamped with a comet.
William Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent – a ...
People paid to see this apocalyptic painting performed with light and sound—as much theatre as work of art.