The subject takes control over the outdoor setting, expressing her independence in spite of limitations.
Location: Musée d’Orsay
In the suburbs, Parisians escaped the pressures of modern life. Monet painted their sun-drenched pleasures.
How to recognize Monet: The Basin at ...
Renoir wanted to forget everything he knew about how to paint so that he could render light as it really is.
How to recognize Renoir: The Swing
They wanted an epic Biblical image, or one from a Greek myth. He gave them a painting of a modern-day funeral.
Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans
Lacking access to the cafes and bars male Impressionists painted, Morisot mastered intimate domestic interiors.
Berthe Morisot, The Cradle
Hazy with smoke, the architecture of the train station and technology of the iron engine dissolve before our eyes.
Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare
The male body at work is gorgeously glorified in Caillebotte’s canvas, raising questions of class and sexuality.
Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers (Les raboteurs ...
Manet decided to replace the idealized female nude with the image of a known prostitute. It didn’t go so well.
Édouard Manet, Olympia
Like other academic artists, Couture draws a subject from ancient Rome, but chooses decadence, not heroism.
Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence
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
Like a snapshot, Renoir’s flirtatious, social scene seems to represent a caught moment in time.
Auguste Renoir, Moulin de la Galette
Rosa Bonheur defies the patriarchy, one masterfully painted ox at a time.
Rosa Bonheur, Plowing in the Nivernais (or ...
This enigmatic portrait of a celebrated writer and critic does not provide the information we expect from it.
Édouard Manet, Émile Zola
This aborted commission was meant for a museum that was to be on the site of the Musée d’Orsay—where it now stands.
Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell
This domestic scene portrays Degas’ family with all the warmth and intimacy of a walk-in freezer.
Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family
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 ...
The wild dancing nymphs on the exterior of the Opéra had little in common with the ballerinas performing there.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Dance
Matisse borrows brushwork technique from his pal Signac—but don’t call him a Pointillist just yet.
Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté
This work celebrates the leisurely lifestyle of the urban bourgeoisie, but it also shows its more somber aspects.
Édouard Manet, The Balcony
Monet discards hundreds of years of tradition of how to paint light, and shows us what he’s really seeing.
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