Odilon Redon | Still Life

Odilon Redon's still life paintings are known for their vibrant colors, dreamlike atmosphere, and Symbolist style.

Unlike traditional still lifes that seek realism, Redon's works are visual meditations that place the visible in the service of the invisible, evoking emotion and imagination.

Vincent van Gogh | Roses and Sunflowers, 1886

Van Gogh painted this still life during one of his crucial transitional phases.

Between 1886 and 1888 he spent two decisive years in Paris, which initiated a change in his working method, especially his understanding of color effect.

Schooled in the work of the French Romantic Eugène Delacroix, his colors lighten during this period and he begins to experiment with extreme contrasts.

In "Roses and Sunflowers", one of more than 30 still lifes he produced in Paris, this complementary contrast is created using red and green.

Vincent van Gogh | Roses and Sunflowers, 1886 |Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany

Paul Cézanne: "Esiste una sola maestra: la Natura!"

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), così come gli altri pittori vissuti durante gli ultimi decenni dell'Ottocento, all'inizio della sua carriera non esitò a far riferimento alla rivoluzione impressionista.

Gli alfieri dell'Impressionismo - pensiamo a Monet e al primo Renoir - per ritrarre la realtà in maniera più realistica, si affidavano ai fenomeni percettivi della luce e del colore, rapportandosi a quello che volevano dipingere in maniera soggettiva, ovvero basandosi esclusivamente sull'impressione fuggevolissima e irripetibile suscitata nei loro sensi.

Vincent van Gogh | Garden with Courting Couples, 1887

Van Gogh called this sunny park scene 'the painting of the garden with lovers'.

Couples in love are strolling under the young chestnut trees and sitting along the winding paths.

He used a free variation on the technique of the Pointillists.

Essential Facts:

Title: Garden with Courting Couples: Square Saint-Pierre

Date: Paris, May 1887

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 75.0 cm x 113.0 cm

Current location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh | Landscape under a stormy sky, 1889

Van Gogh's dramatically atmospheric Paysage sous un ciel mouvementé is one of the finest of the artist's Arles landscapes.

Painted amidst the most fruitful period of the artist's career, when his canvases were flooded with rich passages of densely-painted color, the composition depicts a verdant field under threat of an explosive rainstorm.

Van Gogh creates a scene of intense anticipation here, replete with psychological drama as the laborers hurry to finish their work before the heavens rain down upon them.

Vincent van Gogh | Landscape Under a Stormy Sky, 1889 | Sotheby's

Butterflies | Van Gogh series, 1889-1890

In May 1889, Van Gogh began work on Green Peacock Moth which he self-titled Death's Head Moth.

The moth, called death's head, is a rarely seen nocturnal moth.

He described the large moth's colors "of amazing distinction, black, grey, cloudy white tinged with carmine or vaguely shading off into olive green".

Behind the moth is a background of Lords-and-Ladies.

Vincent van Gogh | Emperor moth, 1889 (detail) | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Camille Pissarro | Hoarfrost, young peasant girl making fire, 1888

"Gelée blanche, jeune Paysanne faisant du feu" is one of Pissarro’s great masterpieces.

Painted in 1888 at the peak of the artist’s engagement with Neo-Impressionism and conceived on a grand scale, it is a brilliant rendering of light and atmosphere.

The subject is a cold winter’s morning, the low sun casts shadows across the meadow and in these shadows the night’s frost lingers; against this backdrop a young woman and a child build a fire, the smoke rising with a heat that shimmers and eddies across the frozen landscape.

Camille Pissarro | Hoarfrost, young peasant girl making fire / Gelée blanche, jeune Paysanne faisant du feu, 1888 | Museum Barberini

Luigi Cima | Verist painter

Luigi Cima (1860-1944) was an Italian painter, considered one of the most fortunate and appreciated representatives of the “verism” of the late nineteenth century, and in any case an absolute protagonist of the artistic world of Belluno.

Luigi Cima was born in Villa di Villa, current municipality of Mel (Belluno) on January 5, 1860.

After completing his technical studies in Feltre, he moved to Venice to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he attended the courses of Eugenio De Blaas.

Giovanni Segantini | The Two Mothers / Le due madri, 1889

"The Two Mothers" is an 1889 oil painting by Giovanni Segantini (Italian painter, 1858-1899).

This work is a product of the Divisionist technique and measuring 301x162.5 cm.

It is part of the collection of the GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan.

Presented at the inaugural Milan Triennale in 1891, alongside "Maternità" (Maternity) by Gaetano Previati (1858-1899), "Le due madri" is one of Segantini's most celebrated and talked-about works, and affirmed the revolutionary new technique known as Divisionism.

Giovanni Segantini | Le due madri, 1889 | olio su tela; 301x162.5 cm | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milano

Gaetano Previati | Maternity, 1890-1891 | From Scandal to Masterpiece

The "Maternity" is a monumental painting in which the Italian symbolist painter Gaetano Previati (1852-1920) interpreted the theme of Christian tradition in a secular way.

The painting was completed between 1890 and 1891 resides at the GAM - Gallery of Modern Art in Milan.

The "Maternity" has a complex and tormented genesis, not only due to the difficulties connected with the unconventional interpretation of a great theme, but also because of the high costs of making a painting of monumental dimensions (177 x 411 cm) .

A fundamental work, the painting represents a turning point in Previati's career and a manifesto of the new divisionist painting.

Gaetano Previati | Maternità, 1890-1891 | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano

Vincent van Gogh | Two peasant women digging in field with snow, 1890

Van Gogh was fascinated with the labour and life of peasants, as expressed in art and literature.

In his paintings and drawings, he prominently featured working men and women.

He believed that to truly capture ‘the heart of the people’, an artist must immerse himself in their world.

He saw labourers as simple, kind-hearted and courageous people, often holding them in higher regard than those he termed "civilized".

Vincent van Gogh | Two peasant women digging in field with snow, 1890 | Kunsthaus Zürich

Giovanni Segantini | L’angelo della vita (Dea cristiana), 1894

The Angel of Life (Christian Goddess) was commissioned in 1891 or shortly before by the banker Leopoldo Albini, together with the Pagan Goddess, now exhibited alongside it.

The two works were intended to form a diptych on the theme of women, a mystical mother in the case of the painting considered here, a worldly and lustful vision in the other.

The two figures are portraits of the family nanny, Baba, and of her son Gottardo (painted from memory, since he must have been twelve years old at the time).

Giovanni Segantini | L’angelo della vita (Dea cristiana), 1894 (detaglio) | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milano

Camille Pissarro at the Christie's

Camille Pissarro | Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, 1881

In Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, painted in 1881, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) depicts a group of five young women harvesting peas on the rural outskirts of Pontoise, a bustling market town about forty kilometers northwest of Paris where he and his family had lived for over a decade.

Pissarro had first treated the theme of picking peas in two oils the previous year, and he returned to the motif at least three times following his move to the agrarian hamlet of Éragny in 1884.

Camille Pissarro | Paysannes travaillant dans les champs, Pontoise, 1881 | Christie's

Happy birthday to Théo van Rysselberghe, born on this day in 1862

Happy birthday to Théophile "Théo" van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 - 13 December 1926), a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.

Van Rysselberghe discovered the pointillist technique when he saw Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the eighth impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886.

Together with Henry Van de Velde, Georges Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Willy Schlobach and Alfred William Finch and Anna Boch he "imported" this style to Belgium.

Happy birthday to Édouard Vuillard, born on this day, in 1868

Happy birthday to French Post-impressionist and Nabis painter Edouard Vuillard, born on this day in November 11, 1868.

From 1891 through 1900, Vuillard was a prominent member of the avant garde artistic group Les Nabis, creating paintings that assembled areas of pure color.

His interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, explored the spatial effects of flattened planes of color, pattern, and form.

Giovanni Segantini | Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi / Midday in the Alps, 1891

"I am now working passionately in order to wrest the secret of Nature’s spirit from her.

"Nature utters the eternal word to the artist: love, love; and the earth sings life in spring, and the soul of things reawakens"

- Giovanni Segantini.

"Midday in the Alps" is an oil on canvas painting by Italian painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899) executed in 1891.

It currently resides at the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz.

Camille Pissarro | The Avenue, Sydenham, 1871

"The Avenue, Sydenham" is an 1871 oil painting by a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).

This work is a product of the Impressionism movement, measuring 48 x 73 cm.

It currently resides in the National Gallery in London, UK.

From The National Gallery, London: Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Camille Pissarro and his family left France and moved to London.

This picture is one of 12 he painted while in self-imposed exile there.

One of the largest paintings in the group, this springtime scene, with the trees just coming into leaf, would have been completed in April or May 1871, shortly before Pissarro’s return to France.

Camille Pissarro | The Avenue, Sydenham, 1871 | National Gallery, London

Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897

"Spring in the Alps" was created in 1897 by Italian Divisionism / Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899).

The painting is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

"Spring in the Alps" depicts a panoramic alpine landscape near the village of Soglio - visible on the right with its recognizable church tower - in Val Bregaglia in southwestern Switzerland.

Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897 | J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Co Breman | Dutch Palmzondag, Laren, 1914

Ahazueros Jacobus Breman, known as Co (1865-1938) was a Dutch painter.

He specialized in landscapes, farms and interior scenes, with figures, and was one of the first Pointillist painters in the Netherlands.

His father, Willem Fredrik Breman (1829-1875), owned a carpentry and blacksmithing shop. He had five siblings, including Evert Breman, a well-known architect.

Oscar Ghiglia | Post-Macchiaioli painter

Born and raised in Livorno, Italian painter Oscar Ghiglia (1876-1945) chose Florence to pursue his artistic ambitions.

Ghiglia was initially trained by his father, who was also a painter, before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

He was particularly influenced by the teachings of Giovanni Fattori while also open to innovations from across the Alps, in particular to the oeuvre of Cézanne and from as well as Swiss and German artists such as Arnold Böcklin and Franz von Lenbach.