Paintings

Nicolas Poussin. Mary presents the child to the world while the young John offers an apple, recalling the Fall. Joseph's compass refers to his trade and to God the Father.

Berthe Morisot. Morisot's sister Edma posed for this woman reading in a field. X-rays show that she originally looked toward the viewer; Morisot later redirected her eyes to the book.

Édouard Manet. Manet portrayed Morisot in a winter coat and feathered hat. Broad brushstrokes and crosshatching recall the freedom of her own painting.

Paul Cezanne. Cézanne painted this view from a road leading east from Aix toward the mountain. Two umbrella pines anchor the foreground, and a branch at the left echoes the distant slope.

Henri Rousseau. Rousseau never left France. He imagined tropical scenes from travel books and plants in Paris's botanical garden.

Jean Siméon Chardin. Chardin repeatedly used familiar kitchen objects, changing their positions and the food placed beside them.

Jean Antoine Watteau. The actors represent familiar commedia dell'arte roles. Pierrot's near stillness stands out among his gesturing companions.

Jean Siméon Chardin. Four versions of Chardin's card-building subject survive. This one was probably intended as a companion to Girl with a Shuttlecock.

Jacques Louis David. A clock, nearly spent candles, and disordered clothing present an emperor who has worked through the night on legislation.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Ingres initially declined to paint the financier's wife, then changed his mind after meeting her.

Claude Monet. Monet painted his wife Camille and son Jean in a single outdoor session. Different paint densities and exposed canvas retain evidence of rapid work.

Claude Monet. Monet designed the pond, planting, and bridge in his own water garden. In 1899 he painted twelve views from the same position.

Claude Monet. In 1892 and 1893 Monet worked on more than thirty cathedral views, switching canvases as the light changed. He finished them in Giverny.

Édouard Manet. The woman faces the viewer while the child looks through the railing toward the railway. Their relationship is unestablished.

Édouard Manet. Manet gave poor and displaced city dwellers the scale associated with major historical subjects. Paris's reconstruction changed neighborhoods and uprooted some inhabitants.

Édouard Manet. The figure once belonged to Manet's larger Incident in a Bullfight, shown at the Salon of 1864.

Berthe Morisot. Edma Pontillon, Morisot's sister, sits beside a window. The painting passed from the artist to Edma and remained in the family.

Paul Gauguin. Gauguin associated Tahiti with a search for life beyond French materialism and secular culture. His island scenes express that idealized vision.

Paul Gauguin. Gauguin painted this self-portrait on a cupboard door in a Le Pouldu inn. A halo, apples, and serpent combine signs of sanctity and temptation.

Paul Cezanne. Cézanne's father expected him to follow the family's business career. The painter placed one of his own early still lifes above him, possibly asserting his chosen profession.

Paul Cezanne. Cézanne returned to the same studio objects to study their relationships. He later included this very canvas within his Still Life with Plaster Cupid.

Paul Cezanne. The pose recalls sixteenth-century Italian aristocratic portraits. Cézanne simultaneously divides the face and setting into colored planes.

Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's tropics came from imagination, books, and Paris's botanical displays. The self-taught painter exhibited alongside the avant-garde, including the Fauves.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Marcelle Lender, playing Galeswinthe, performs a Spanish bolero for King Chilpéric and his court. The footlights explain the unusual green tones of her skin.

Georges Seurat. Seurat made six paintings during six weeks at Port-en-Bessin in 1888. Here he omitted a medieval tower and tourists on the cliff paths.

Claude Monet. In November 1872 Monet looked from a hotel window across the port of Le Havre. Before him lay the harbour, quays and structures of a major trading city.

Édouard Manet. In 1863 the Paris Salon rejected this large painting by Manet. It appeared at the Salon des Refusés under the title The Bath.

Eugène Delacroix. The Paris uprising of 27–29 July 1830 prompted Delacroix’s unusual turn to a recent event.

Édouard Manet. Manet painted Olympia in 1863 and exhibited it at the Salon of 1865. The reclining pose refers to Titian’s Venus of Urbino, but contemporaries recognised a Parisian courtesan.

Paul Gauguin. Gauguin painted this work in Tahiti during the winter of 1897–1898, amid a serious personal crisis.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir painted Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette in 1876 and exhibited it with the Impressionists the following year.

Henri Rousseau. A traveller sleeps beside a mandolin and a jar as a lion sniffs her hair. Rousseau exhibited the picture at the Salon des Indépendants in 1897.

Nikolai Yaroshenko. In 1888 Yaroshenko depicted people at the window of a prison railway car. A mother holds a child feeding pigeons.

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. Bogdanov-Belsky began his own education in a village school and later painted many peasant children.

Grigory Myasoedov. Zemstvos were established after the reform of 1864 to address local economic and educational affairs. Representatives of different social estates took part.

Vasily Perov. In 1868 Perov painted a winter road near the city gates. Sledges stand outside a tavern, with a woman waiting in one. She occupies very little space.