Vincent van Gogh | Field with Irises near Arles, 1888

Van Gogh was captivated by the colours of the landscape around the town of Arles (FR).

He particularly loved the contrast between the yellow and purple flowers in the fields.

In the landscape, he felt he could see a reflection of the world he knew from his collection of Japanese prints.

Japanese artists used large areas of colour in their compositions, often with a sharp diagonal.

They also regularly zoomed in on a detail in the foreground.

Van Gogh adopted these elements in his paintings.

Vincent van Gogh | Field with Irises near Arles, May 1888 | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Paul Cézanne | The Fishermen (Fantastic scene), 1875

"The Fishermen" (Fantastic scene) is an Impressionist oil on canvas painting created by Paul Cézanne in 1875.

It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

The critic Georges Rivière admired this painting at the 1877 Impressionist exhibition, writing:

"It is strikingly majestic and extraordinarily calm.

It seems that the scene takes place in [Cézanne's] memory while he turns the pages of his life".

Paul Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City houses one of the world's most significant collections of works by Paul Cézanne, featuring over 20 of his paintings and numerous works on paper, spanning his entire career from his early expressive portraits to his late, monumental landscapes and still lifes.

His landscapes, still lifes, and portraits are primarily on view at the 19th and Early 20th Century European Paintings and Sculpture galleries (Gallery 826 and surrounding areas).

Guido Reni | The Head of a Woman Looking Up (Judith), 1625-26

Striking for its coloristic richness -a pictorial quality imparted by the combination of red and black chalk- this head of a young woman is a preparatory study for Reni's painting Judith and Holofernes, a celebrated and much replicated composition.

The present study was most probably derived from life, to judge from the bold immediacy of the contours and the quick zig-zagging of the parallel hatching of the shading.

Guido Reni | The Head of a Woman Looking Up (Judith), 1625-26 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bartholomeus van der Helst | The Musician, 1662

Tuning the strings of her theorbo-lute, a beautiful musician directs an engaging glance at the viewer.

The foreground of the picture displays a viola da gamba and sheet music for tenor and soprano voices, suggesting that the lute player anticipates a duet.

Dutch painters of the seventeenth century frequently associated music-making and courtship with amateur concerts, providing opportunities for mingling and flirtation. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bartholomeus van der Helst | The Musician, 1662 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), the most celebrated painter of seventeenth-century Italy, was particularly famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his female heads, earning him the epithet “Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the Infanta of Spain.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | At the Milliner's, 1878

At the Milliner's is an oil on canvas artwork by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French Impressionist painter, 1841-1919), created in 1878.

This work is a product of the Impressionism movement, measuring 32.9 x 24.8 cm and is part of the collection of the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

At the Milliner's exhibits the quintessential Impressionist technique with its loose brushwork and the interplay of light and color, rather than intricate detail.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | At the Milliner's, 1878 | Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Spinario (Boy pulling a thorn from his foot)

Boy with Thorn, also called Fedele (Fedelino) or Spinario, is a Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boy withdrawing a thorn from the sole of his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.

There is a Roman marble version of this subject from the Medici collections in a corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

The sculpture was one of the very few Roman bronzes that was never lost to sight.

The work was standing outside the Lateran Palace when the Navarrese rabbi Benjamin of Tudela saw it in the 1160s and identified it as Absalom, who "was without blemish from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head".

Lo Spinario | Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini