Abbott Fuller Graves (1859-1936)

Nato a Weymouth, nel Massachusetts, Abbott Fuller Graves è stato un influente pittore di Boston noto per le sue scene di giardini floreali e nature morte.

Sebbene gran parte del suo lavoro, in linea con lo stile della Boston School, descriva gli argomenti in modo realistico, le sue pennellate spesse ed impastate i dipinti luminosi e colorati illuminati dal sole mostravano la sua accettazione dell'impressionismo.

Nel 1884 andò a Parigi e in Italia e si concentrò sulla pittura di nature morte, lavorando spesso con il suo buon amico Edmund Tarbell, anche lui artista di Boston. Graves e Tarbell abitarono insieme in Europa, dove entrambi studiarono pittura di nature morte.

Claude Monet | Lo stile

Claude Monet è stato il sostenitore più convinto ed instancabile del «metodo impressionista» che vide già riassunto nelle opere dell'amico Manet. Per comprendere appieno la carica rivoluzionaria della figura di Monet, tuttavia, è necessario calarla con precisione nell'ambiente storico ed artistico francese della seconda metà dell'Ottocento.

La Francia della seconda metà del XIX secolo era una nazione viva, moderna, ricca di magnificenze e di contraddizioni, che in seguito all'offensiva prussiana del 1870 aveva conosciuto un impetuoso sviluppo economico e sociale che, tuttavia, aveva inizialmente mancato di investire le arti figurative.

Alfred Sisley | Boat in the Flood at Port Marly, 1876

In 1874, Alfred Sisley (French Impressionist painter, 1839-1899) moved to Marly-le-Roi and became the chronicler of this village situated a few kilometres to the west of Paris.

His most beautiful motif was when the Seine burst its banks and flooded the neighbouring village of Port-Marly in the spring of 1876.

The artist produced six paintings of this event.

He captured the great expanse of water with moving reflections that transformed the peaceful house of a wine merchant into something mysterious and poetic.

Two of these paintings are in the Musée d'Orsay.

Claude Monet | Snow Scene at Argenteuil, 1875

Snow at Argenteuil / Rue sous la neige, Argenteuil - is an oil-on-canvas landscape painting from the Impressionist artist Claude Monet.

It is the largest of no fewer than eighteen works Monet painted of his home commune of Argenteuil while it was under a blanket of snow during the winter of 1874-1875.

This painting - number 352 in Wildenstein's catalogue of the works of Monet - is the largest of the eighteen.

The attention to detail evident in the smaller paintings is less evident in this larger picture. Instead, Monet has rendered large areas of the canvas in closely like tones and colours of blue and grey.

William John Leech | Impressionist painter

William John Leech (1881-1968) was an Irish painter, well known for his illustrations of Concarneau harbour.

The works of Leech feature coastal and harbour scenes, landscapes, interiors, still life and portraits.

He went to school at St Columba's College, Dublin in Rathfarnham, later studying at the Metropolitan School.

He later transferred to the Royal Hibernian Academy and studied under Walter Osborne. In 1903, Leech left Dublin for Paris, where he would fall in love with the French landscape.

Frederic Payet, 1960 | Impressionist painter

Born on the French Island of Madagascar where the sunny, colorful and exotic atmosphere and a quality of light found nowhere else, has influenced his art to this day; Frederic was reared in Paris and moved to the United States, in 1989.

His defining style is impressionism which he uses to encapsulate his perceptions of the world. Frederic’s work conveys the long-lost environments of a calm countryside and cityscape whether French or North American.

Maurice Cullen | The pioneer of the Canadian Impressionism

Maurice Galbraith Cullen (1866-1934) was a pioneer of impressionism in Canadian art and is particularly noted for his winter landscapes.

Cullen moved to Montréal with his family in 1870.

There he began his art training as a sculptor at the Conseil des arts et manufactures and with sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert.

Like other artists of his generation, he went to Paris for additional training.

Claude Monet | Summer, 1874

In April and May of 1874, for the first time Monet and his artist friends exhibited their own works rejected by the official "Salon" in rooms belonging to the photographer Nadar on the boulevard des Capucines.

A newspaper critic, referring to Monet’s Impression - Sunrise of 1872 mockingly coined the term "Impressionists".

Claude Monet | A bouquet of gladioli, lilies and daisies, 1878

Painted in 1878, Monet’s "Bouquet of gladioli, lilies and daisies" / "Bouquet de glaïeuls, lis et marguerites" - beautifully demonstrates the artist’s ability to evoke the lavishness and vitality of flowers, rendering them with extraordinary freshness and spontaneity.

Claude Monet | La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse, 1867

"The Garden at Sainte-Adresse" is a painting by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet.

The painting was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art after an auction sale at Christie's in December 1967, under the French title "La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse".

The painting was exhibited at the 4th Impressionist exhibition, Paris, April 10-May 11, 1879, as no. 157 under the title Jardin à Sainte-Adresse.

Ernest Rouart (1874-1942) | Impressionist painter

Ernest Rouart was one of the five children on Henri Rouart (1833-1912), an engineer, collector and artist.

Henri was intimately involved with the Impressionist painters, especially Degas🎨, whose "Dancers at the Bar", now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he once owned.

Henri exhibited in all the official Salons between 1868-1872 as well as with the Impressionists from 1876-1996 (except 1882).

Claude Monet | Seine painting

During the 19th and the 20th centuries the Seine inspired many artists.

The Seine is a 777-kilometre-long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France.

It rises at Source-Seine, 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre (and Honfleur on the left bank).

Claude Monet | Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) 1873

Claude Monet made this work in the vicinity of his home in Argenteuil, a village on the Seine northwest of Paris that was a favorite gathering place of the Impressionists.

Although the scene has previously been called Plum Blossoms and Apples Trees in Bloom, the type of tree cannot be determined from the flurry of white buds evoked by the artist.

Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884-1961)

Hilda Rix Nicholas was an Australian artist.

Born in the Victorian city of Ballarat, she studied under a leading Australian Impressionist, Frederick McCubbin, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902-1905 and was an early member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.

Armand Guillaumin | Figure painting

Born Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927) in Paris, he worked at his uncle's lingerie shop while attending evening drawing lessons.

He also worked for a French government railway before studying at the Académie Suisse in 1861.

There, he met Paul Cézanne🎨 and Camille Pissarro🎨 with whom he maintained lifelong friendships. While he never achieved the stature of these two, his influence on their work was significant.

John Singer Sargent | Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1921

'Orestes Pursued by the Furies' was created in 1921 by John Singer Sargent (American painter, 1856-1925) in Neoclassicism style.

It is part of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

"Orestes Pursued by the Furies" is an event from Greek mythology that is a recurring theme in art depicting Orestes.

In the Iliad, the king of Argos, Agamemnon, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the Gods to assure good sailing weather to Troy.

In Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus as revenge for sacrificing Iphigenia.

James McNeill Whistler | Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St Mark's, Venice, 1880

Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St Mark's, Venice is an 1880 painting by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (American Tonalist painter, 1834-1903), now in the National Museum of Wale.

Following his bankruptcy in 1879, Whistler spent a year in Venice where he concentrated on etchings and pastels.

Only three oil paintings, produced largely from memory in the evenings, survive from this visit.

Pierre Auguste Renoir | Woman playing a guitar, 1897

Woman Playing a Guitar / "Femme jouant de la guitare"/"Joueuse de guitare ou La Guitariste" is an 1897 painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, which bought it in 1901.

The work was one of the first paintings acquired by Paul Durand-Ruel.

Renoir painted several paintings of guitar-players and borrowing classical motifs - here, he is influenced by Camille Corot, Titian and Rubens.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Église à Essoyes, 1890

The great impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir🎨 lived in the charming little village of Essoyes, in the Aube department of Champagne-Ardennes (in north-central France) from 1896-1907.

The village, hometown of his wife Aline and model and governess of his children Gabrielle Renard, is represented in many of his paintings.

Philip Wilson Steer | Pittore Impressionista

Steer, Philip Wilson - Pittore, nato a Birkenhead il 28 dicembre 1860. Ricevette la sua istruzione artistica nella Scuola d'arte di Gloucester, a Parigi nello studio di Julian con il Bouguereau, e all'École des Beaux-arts con il Cabanel.

Attraversò dapprima un periodo in cui subì influssi varî, compresi quelli del Whistler e del Bastien-Lepage, fino al 1889, quando intese la grande importanza dell'impressionismo francese e del Monet.

Nel 1866 venne fondato New English Art Club, di cui lo St. rimase per 30 anni il membro più importante. Nel 1893 divenne assistente del Brown alla Slade School e in tale qualità esercitò un grandissimo influsso sulla generazione successiva di pittori.