Émile Zola: "I would rather die of passion than of boredom"

• "[Johann Strauss jr] Ha mostrato come il mondo può essere bello, io invece ho scritto come il mondo può essere brutto".

• "Il talento del Signor Manet è fatto di semplicità e di esattezza. Senza dubbio, davanti alla natura incredibile di alcuni dei suoi colleghi si sarà deciso ad interrogare la realtà, solo con sé stesso: avrà rifiutato tutta la perizia acquisita, tutta l'antica esperienza, avrà voluto prendere l'arte dall'inizio, cioè dall'osservazione esatta degli oggetti. Si è dunque messo coraggiosamente di fronte a un soggetto, ha visto questo soggetto per larghe macchie, per opposizioni vigorose, e ha dipinto ogni cosa così come la vedeva".

Édouard Manet | Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Henri Chapu | Mercure inventant le caducée, 1861

Henri Chapu's Mercure inventant le caducée (Mercury inventing the caduceus) was executed for la Villa Médicis in Rome in 1861.

The caduceus (from Ancient Greek: κηρύκειον kērū́keion "herald's wand, or staff") is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology.

The same staff was borne by other heralds like Iris, the messenger of Hera. The short staff is entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography, it was depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods.

Some accounts assert that the oldest imagery of the caduceus is rooted in Mesopotamia with the Sumerian god Ningishzida; his symbol, a staff with two snakes intertwined around it, dates back to 4000 BC to 3000 BC.

Henri Chapu | Mercure inventant le caducée, 1861 | Musée d'Orsay

Ed Wheeler | Santa Classic

In a series of self-portraits dressed as Santa Claus, Philadelphia-based artist Ed Wheeler, photographer, incorporates himself in classical paintings from Botticelli to Caravaggio to Monet.

In so doing he transforms the masterworks of art history from the Renaissance to the Surrealists. Santa Classics, his derivative art series, is based on a digital photography process.

Wheeler’s goal is to pay homage to the original paintings while offering art lovers an additional reason to smile.

Francesco Hayez | The Kiss, 1859 | Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Carolus-Duran | Portrait of Édouard Manet, 1880

Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), a successful society portraitist, painted this informal view of his friend Édouard Manet (1832-1883) at a villa outside of Paris.

Manet was known for his impeccable grooming, but Carolus-Duran portrays him in a moment of ease, flushed by the effects of a warm afternoon, wearing a straw boater pushed back on his forehead.

Carolus Duran | Portrait of Édouard Manet, 1880 | Paris, Musée d'Orsay

Working quickly, he captures Manet’s appearance and mood with broad, summary strokes, painting him “à la Manet”-employing his friend’s loose brushwork rather than his own tighter style. | Source: © RISD Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Artist's Garden at Giverny, 1900

The Artist's Garden at Giverny (French: Le Jardin de l'artiste à Giverny) is an oil on canvas painting by Claude Monet done in 1900, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

It is one of many works by the artist of his garden at Giverny over the last thirty years of his life.

The painting shows rows of irises in various shades of purple and pink set diagonally across the picture plane.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Champ de bananiers, 1881

Starting in 1881 the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel regularly bought paintings from Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The painter then undertook all the trips he had previously been unable to afford and which would complete his artistic training.

His first trip took him to Algeria, in the footsteps of Delacroix whom he admired. Renoir's visual experience there was as intense as it had been for the older artist.

Seduced by the colours and the "incredible wealth" of nature here, he produced several pure landscapes, quite rare in his oeuvre. This field of banana trees is in the Essai garden in Hamma, created in 1832 in Algiers.

Eugenè Burnand | Apostles Peter and John hurry to the tomb on the morning of the Resurrection, 1898

"Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple [John], and were going to the tomb. So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.

Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their own homes" - John 20:3-10.

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.

Vincent van Gogh | Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Vincent van Gogh | Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888

"The sight of the stars always makes me dream in as simple a way as the black spots on the map, representing towns and villages, make me dream.

Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France?

Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star’, wrote Vincent to his brother Theo in 1888.

Edgar Lee Masters | Silence / Il silenzio

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist.

He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness, An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man and Illinois Poems.

In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay and Walt Whitman.

Lucien Lévy Dhurmer (French Art Nouveau painter, 1865-1953) | Le Silence, 1895 | Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer | Le Silence, 1895

"Le Silence", a picture that Levy-Dhurmer kept throughout his life, is without doubt one of his most fascinating works.

It has the suggestive power of an icon, an image that is all the more compelling for being presented as an enigma: fixed in a hieratic pose, with eyes hidden in shadow, the figure eludes all explanation.

Solid and immobile, it keeps what we imagine to be the secret of its mourning to itself.

The long, falling folds, enhanced by the vertical format, cannot but evoke both physical gravity (from which it is impossible to escape) and moral gravity.

Auguste Rodin | Fugitive Love, 1886

This small group which originally featured in La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell) commissioned in 1880, was the biggest project of Rodin's life.

The sculptor chose to illustrate Dante's L'Enfer (Inferno), populated by the tortured souls of the damned.

He worked on it for at least twenty years without ever finishing it.

This monumental work of one hundred and eighty six figures was, for Rodin, an opportunity to create a ‘reservoir' from which he would draw for future compositions.

Auguste Rodin | Fugit Amor, 1886 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet | Riposo sotto i Lillà, 1873

"Riposo sotto i Lillà" è un dipinto ad olio su tela (50x65 cm) realizzato nel 1873 dal pittore Francese Claude Monet. È conservato nel Musée d'Orsay di Parigi.

Riposo sotto i Lillà, Monet ha usato colori tenui per i personaggi, fondendoli sullo sfondo. Dove sono le gambe dell'uomo appoggiato a destra?

L'unica cosa che salta all'occhio è l'abito bianco di una donna.

Uno sguardo più attento permette poi di distinguere le tre persone grazie al contrasto bianco e nero. Il processo è diverso in Lilacs in the Sun.

Macchie di luce giocano sugli abiti dei due modelli. Monet ha applicato questo effetto in diversi dipinti (La colazione, Le donne in giardino, La lettrice...)

L'occhio è catturato dai forti contrasti creati da questi tocchi di colori chiari, poi si scopre il volto della giovane donna sulla destra -potrebbe essere Camille, la moglie di Monet.

James Tissot, l'artista della Belle Époque

Nato a Nantes, formatosi all’Ecole des Beaux-Arts di Parigi e attivo da entrambi i lati della Manica, Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) è un artista fondamentale della seconda metà dell’Ottocento, ambiguo e al contempo affascinante.

Pur essendo regolarmente rappresentato nelle mostre dedicate al suddetto periodo storico, questa retrospettiva è la prima consacratagli a Parigi dopo quella organizzata al Petit Palais nel 1985.

Edgar Degas | Women on a café terrace in the evening, 1877

Women in a Café or Women on a Café Terrace is a work by the French painter Edgar Degas, made in 1877 and preserved in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

In this pastel, Degas's curious gaze catches four women sitting on the terrace of a Parisian café talking (in the background there is a Parisian cityscape dotted with night lights).

Edgar Degas loved the evening hour in Montmartre.

As strong sunlight hurt his eyes he enjoyed wandering round Paris at night, picking up impressions, fixing indelibly on the plate of his memory certain scenes which he later developed with remarkable distinction in his studio.

Claude Monet | Lilacs, grey weather, 1873

'Lilacs, Grey Weather' was created in c.1873 by Claude Monet in Impressionism style. It is kept in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

In Lilacs, Grey Weather, Monet used muted colors for the characters, merging them into the background. Where are the legs of the man leaning on the right ? The only thing that catches the eye is the white dress of a woman.

Then, a closer look enables to distinguish the three people thanks to the black and white contrast.

The process is different in Lilacs in the Sun. Spots of light play on the dresses of the two models. Monet applied this effect in several paintings (The Luncheon, Women in a Garden, the Reader...).

Frédéric Bazille | Réunion de famille, 1867

Before his early death in battle during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Frédéric Bazille was close to Renoir and Monet, particularly admiring their open-air paintings.

During a summer holiday in the family home at Méric, near Montpellier, he worked on this motif in a fairly large painting showing ten of his close family gathered on the terrace, and adding himself at the far left of the painting.

Lionel Walden | Les Docks de Cardiff, 1894

"I docks di Cardiff" è un dipinto del pittore Americano Lionel Walden (1861-1933), conservato al Musée d’Orsay che ci documenta il cambiamento delle città a seguito della rivoluzione industriale.

Le stazioni ferroviarie e le locomotive a vapore avevano subito attratto i pittori, pensiamo a Turner e poi alla serie che vi dedicò Monet.

Walden dipinge la ferrovia presso il porto di Cardiff, città del Galles che nel secondo ottocento ebbe un incredibile sviluppo demografico.

Lionel Walden | Les Docks de Cardiff, 1894 | Musée d'Orsay, Parigi