Impressionist Metropolitan PDF

Post-Impressionist
Paintings IN THE
METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART
Charles S. Moffett
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers
NEW YORK
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings
IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist
Paintings IN THE
METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART
Charles S. Moffett
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers
NEW YORK
The publication of this volume
has been made possible by a gift
from Janice H. Levin.
PUBLISHED BY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bradford D. Kelleher, Publisher

John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief
Amy Horbar, Project Coordinator
Henry von Brachel, Production Manager
Peter Oldenburg, Designer
All rights reserved.

No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced
without the written permission of the publishers.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Impressionist and post-impressionist paintings in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Bibliography: p.
1. Impressionism (Art)-France-Catalogs. 2. Post-impressionism
(Art)-France-Catalogs. 3. Painting, French-Catalogs. 4. Painting,
Modern-19th century-France-Catalogs. 5. Painting-New York
(N.Y.)-Catalogs. 6. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
-Catalogs.
I. Moffett, Charles S. II. Title.
ND547.5...14M4 1985 759.4'074'01471 82-14172
ISBN 0-87099-317-8
ISBN 0-8109-1104-3 (HNA)
The photographs for this volume were

taken by Malcolm Varon and by The
Photograph Studio, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Composition by Innovative Graphics

International Ltd., New York, and
Cyber-Graphics, Inc., New York
Printed by Imprimeries Reunies Lausanne S.A.,
Lausanne, Switzerland
Bound by Mayer&SoutterS.A.,
Renens, Switzerland
Contents
FOREWORD 7
PREFACE 9
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 12
Johan BartholdJongkind, Dutch, I8I9-I89I 14
Eugene Boudin, French, I824-I898 16

Henri Fantin-Latour, French, I836-I904 20
Edouard Manet, French, I 832- I 883

Edgar Degas, French, I834-I9I7
Camille Pissarro, French, I830-I903
Claude Monet, French, I840-I926 104
Alfred Sisley, British, I839-I899 152
Pierre Auguste Renoir, French, I84I-I9I9 156

Paul Cezanne, French, I 83 9- I 906 176
Paul Gauguin, French, I848-I903 204
Vincent van Gogh, Dutch, I853-I89o 208
Georges Seurat, French, I859-I89I 222
Paul Signac, French, I863-I935

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French, I864-I90I
Odilon Redan, French, I840-I9I6
Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier), French, I 844- I 9 I o
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 249
FOREWORD reflect man's ineluctable search to understand nature and his
place in it, and his struggles, at the highest level of con-
sciousness, to render in visual terms his own perceptions of
reality.
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings are inves-
tigations of the. visible world as it had never before been
"seen." Furthermore, art historians have begun to demon-
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, the prod- strate that these beautiful and deceptively "simple" pictures
ucts of the late nineteenth-century avant-garde, are loved and are part of a complex fabric of philosophical, scientific,
admired by layman and scholar alike. The wide variety of political, and historical thought.
audiences to which this art consistently appeals is clearly due Monet looked afresh each time he planted his easel in a
to its multifaceted and generally pleasing character, as well as field or on a riverboat, and Cezanne's quest for the structure of
to the many levels on which it engages the eye and the mind. space is always on the edge of every stroke of his brush,
Indeed, these movements may be unique in the history of art irrespective of its pleasing effect or apparent inevitability.
because of their universal appeal that somehow does not Actually, these two artistic currents evolved rapidly and are
preclude serious inquiry, as evidenced year after year by the characterized by a pluralism of styles, relatively rapid changes
impressive array of books, articles, and doctoral dissertations in formal emphasis, and a willingness to experiment that call
devoted to their study. It is evident that the pleasure experi- into question the usefulness of the very words Impressionist
enced by the average viewer is matched in intensity by the and Post-Impressionist. Indeed, both must be thought of as
curiosity of the scholar. It is my hope that this volume will be "umbrella" terms for the art of the late nineteenth-century
perceived as more than just another manifestation of the wide avant-garde in general; otherwise it would be impossible to
interest in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, because explain why both Renoir and Degas are called Impression-
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is publishing it to answer a ists, and why Seurat, Cezanne, and Gauguin are labeled Post-
very real need. For the first time a large selection of the finest Impressionists.
works of these schools in the Museum's collection is available Thus, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are more
in one volume of scholarly commentaries and superbly real- complex and more blurred as movements than is generally
ized colorplates. believed. I hope that the selection of works in this book will
It should be noted that the broad appeal of these Impres- provide insights into the diversity of French avant-garde
sionist and Post-Impressionist paintings was by no means an painting between r86o and 1900 rather than subsume it
instantaneous phenomenon. The first Impressionist group under another discussion of various isms. Monet himself
exhibition, held in Paris in r87 4, was greeted with taunts, warned that "pictures aren't made out of doctrines." Admit-
skepticism, and more opprobrium than approval, and one tedly, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection in this
should remember that the word Impressionism was used by a area has gaps that make it impossible to present a completely
hostile critic as a derisive term in this context. The popularity detailed synopsis of one of the richest periods in the history of
enjoyed today by Degas's ballerinas, Monet's gardens, and French painting, but the extraordinary quality, variety, and
van Gogh's sunflowers cannot be ascribed only to the appeal fascinating interrelationships provided by the r26 works
of agreeable and uncomplicated subject matter. If their included in this anthology present a good alternative to a
bright, pure colors and variegated effects of light at first formal, exegetical examination of the two movements that,
detain and seduce the eye, an important factor in our continu- taken together, provided the crucible for the art of the
ing romance with these pictures resides in our sensing that twentieth century.
just beneath the lush and luminous surface a heroic struggle,
albeit in varying degrees, is taking place, one that endows
them with a latent power that is key to their lasting appeal. Philippe de Montebello
We are here dealing with more than merely decorative and Director
easily comprehensible paintings. At their best these works The Metropolitan Museum of Art
7
PREFACE intention had been 'to represent the customs, the ideas, the
appearance of my own era according to my own ideas.'" The
younger artists arrived on the scene with a variety of ideas and
stylistic emphases, but most of them shared a strong interest
in subjects from modern life and the desire to paint light as it
actually appears rather than as one was taught to interpret it
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. As Duranty wrote in 1876 in an
L i s book focuses on a selection of 126 Impressionist and essay about an exhibition that included work by Degas,
Post-Impressionist pictures from the Museum's collection. It Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and others, "The idea, the
begins with the work of Johan Barthold Jongkind and first idea, was to take away the partition separating the studio
Eugene Boudin, two painters who, in the early 186os, from everyday life .... It was necessary to make the painter
exerted a strong influence on many of the young artists who leave his sky-lighted cell, his cloister where he was in contact
emerged in the 1870s as the practitioners of the style that we with the sky alone, and to bring him out among men, into
now recognize as the classic phase of Impressionism. Their the world."
keen interest in light effects and their choice of subject matter The Impressionists' eight group exhibitions were held
appealed to the younger artists who clearly benefited from under a variety of titles, and some of the artists, notably
their example. Degas, were unhappy with the word Impressionist. In actual-
Henri Fantin-Latour, too, is included in this book. ity, the shows were forums for the work of the French
Although he was not an Impressionist, his realist stilllifes of avant-garde. The most famous of the many artists who exhib-
the 186os and 187os reflect the impetus that gave rise to ited work in the shows are still known as Impressionists, but
Impressionism. Indeed, he frequented the Cafe Guerbois, many others are never included in discussions of Impression-
where he became friendly with Maner and his circle. His ism. The principal figures were Monet, Renoir, Degas,
work lies at the periphery of Impressionism, but in spirit his Cezanne, Pissarro, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Paul Gauguin,
pictures often achieve a nearly identical goal. and Georges Seurat. Gauguin and Seurat are better known as
Edouard Maner, of course, is the father of the Impression- Post-Impressionists, and the inclusion of Seurat's now-
ist movement, although he never exhibited work in the famous A Sunday on La Grandejatte (Art Institute of Chicago)
Impressionists' eight group exhibitions, which were held suggests how inexactly defined the parameters of the exhibi-
between 1874 and 1886. Maner preferred, instead, to show tions had become by 1886. Indeed, as early as 1879 Renoir
in the officially sanctioned annual Salons. He sought the defected to the Salon, and the next year Monet had a painting
approval and awards proffered by the Salon juries, which were accepted there; moreover, work by neither artist was included
nearly always dominated by establishment figures from the in the last of the Impressionists' group shows, in 1886.
Academy and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Like his younger While the work of the orthodox Impressionists included in
colleagues, Maner focused on subjects from modern life, and this book-Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley-
there is a formalist emphasis in his work that looked far into began to change in the early 188os, the stylistic shifts were at
the future. At the Cafe Guerbois he was the center of gather- first gradual and can be construed as experiments within the
ings that included such artists, writers, and intellectuals as parameters of Impressionism. However, in the mid-188os a
Zacharie Astruc, Edmond Duranty, Theophile Silvestre, group of predominantly younger artists-Seurat, Paul
Henri Fantin-Latour, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Signac, Vincent van Gogh, Odilon Redon, Gauguin, Henri
Alfred Stevens, Paul Cezanne, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier)-
Camille Pissarro, and sometimes Emile Zola. Later, after moved away from the kind of visual realism oflmpressionism
1876, they nearly all began to frequent the Cafe de la Nou- to an expressive use of line, form, and color. With the
velle-Athenes, but by then Impressionism was a bona fide exception of Rousseau, these painters had their roots in
movement, at least in name. Impressionism, though their work is informed by a wholly
In subject and style Maner established the precedents that different attitude toward the goals of art. They perceived
enabled such younger artists as Monet, Degas, Cezanne, reality as more complex than the image that strikes the retina.
Pissarro, and Sisley to strike out in an independent direction. The change in art during the three decades following the first
As George Heard Hamilton observed in Manet and His Impressionist exhibition is easily measured by comparing
Critics, "Maner had proclaimed his acceptance of the funda- Monet's Apple Trees in Bloom (pages u6-17) with Henri
mental principle of contemporary realism as it had been Rousseau's The Repast of the Lion (pages 246-47). Landscape
defined (in I 8 55} by Courbet. In the manifesto distributed in had given way to mindscape. The range of possibilities open
his Pavilion du Realisme, Courbet had declared that his to an artist in the 1890s is immediately obvious when one
9
remembers that Gauguin's Two Tahitian WVmen (pages 206- 1930. Interestingly, paintings by Monet were on view as
7), Lautrec's The Sofa (pages 2 38-39), and Monet's Rouen early as 1906, but they were on loan. The first Monet that
Cathedral (pages 144-4 5) were all painted between 1892 and was accessioned is Apple Trees in Bloom (pages n6-r7), which
1899. The fields, flowers, street scenes, and sunny days of was bequeathed to the Museum in 1926 by Mary Livingston
Impressionism-all relatively uncontroversial and safe as Willard. To place the arrival of the Metropolitan's first Monet
subjects-had given way to such themes as a South Pacific in historical perspective, one need only recall that the first of
paradise, the interior of a brothel, and the light-demolished the Impressionists' group exhibitions took place fifty-two
facade of a cathedral. years earlier, two years after the founding of the Museum. In
The organization of this book is, of course, somewhat short, half a century later there were only a few Impressionist
arbitrary because it is limited to the Museum's holdings. paintings in the collection. Nevertheless, there was sufficient
Nevertheless, the progression that begins with the pre- interest in the city to enable the Durand-Rue! Gallery, the
Impressionist Jongkind and ends with the Post-Impression- principal Parisian dealer in Impressionist art, to maintain an
ist Rousseau is a fairly accurate summary of the revolution in extremely profitable branch in New York. Mr. and Mrs.
art that occurred between about r86o and 1900. There are H. 0. Havemeyer were among the gallery's best clients, and
serious gaps in the collection-for example, a notable some of their pictures were destined for the Museum. For this
Gauguin still life, an important painting by Morisot, and a reason, the Metropolitan probably did not feel compelled to
Renoir of the r86os-but it stands as the best in the world buy works by Degas, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Manet.
next to that of the Louvre. Indeed, it is prodigious in its Ind~ed, the Impressionist art in the Bequest of Mrs. H. 0.
quality, which improves with each passing year. Havemeyer-which also included old-master paintings, a
The growth of the Metropolitan's holdings of late nine- large collection of pictures by Courbet as well as other
teenth-century avant-garde painting is worth summarizing, nineteenth-century European paintings, prints, and draw-
because this book reflects the aggregate taste and efforts of ings, and Far Eastern art-established the Metropolitan in
many individuals. Nearly all the paintings were either given 1929 as the most important public collection outside of
or bequeathed by private collectors and not purchased by Franee of works by Degas, Monet, Cezanne, and Maner. Mrs.
curators or directors. In r889 Erwin Davis auspiciously inau- Havemeyer bequeathed five Cezannes; thirteen paintings as
gurated the Museum's collection of Impressionist and Post- well as numerous pastels, prints, drawings, and sixty-nine
Impressionist paintings with the gift of Maner's Boy with a sculptures by Degas; six paintings and three pastels by Manet;
Sword (pages 2 6-2 7) and WVman with a Parrot (pages 3 6-3 7), eight Monets; one Pissarro; and one Renoir. But more impor-
the first works by the artist to enter an American museum. tant than its size was the quality of the bequest. It included
However, eighteen years passed before another nineteenth- such works as Maner's Boating (pages 40-41), Cezanne's The
century avant-garde European painting became part of the GulfofMarseilles Seen from L'Estaque (pages r88-89), Monet's
Metropolitan's permanent collection. In 1907 Boudin's On La Grenouillere (pages n2-13) and Poplars (pages 138-39),
the Beach at Trouville (pages r6-r7) was bequeathed to the and Renoir's By the Seashore (pages r68-69).
Museum, and in the same year the Metropolitan made one of In 1930 the three Monets bequeathed by Theodore M.
its rare but significant purchases, Renoir's Madame Georges Davis joined those given by Mrs. Havemeyer and Mary
Charpentier (Marguerite Lemonnier) and Her Children, Georgette Livingston Willard, bringing the total to twelve. Today there
and Paul (pages r6o-6r). Six years later Cezanne's View ofthe are thirty-five, of which the most recently acquired is the
Domaine Saint-joseph (page 201) was bought and became the Robert Lehman Collection's Landscape near Zaandam (pages
first painting by the artist to enter a public collection in the II4-15). Nevertheless, none of the Museum's Monets are
United States. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Cezanne did dated after 1908, and the collection does not include a single
not mark the beginning of a succession of similarly bold pur- Water Lilies from either the r 90 3-8 series or from the group
chases. Jongkind's Honfleur (pages 14-15) was acquired in of mural-size paintings executed preparatory to the cycle
1916, and three years later the Museum bought drawings by that was ultimately installed in the Orangerie des Tuileries
Degas at one of the auctions of the contents of the artist's stu- in Paris.
dio, but the first paintings by Degas arrived at the Metropoli- The Depression and World War II interrupted the growth
tanonly in 1929, with theBequestofMrs. H. 0. Havemeyer. of the collection during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1949
In 1915 three pictures by Monet were bequeathed to the William Church Osborn gave Maner's The Spanish Singer
Museum by Theodore M. Davis, and at least one of them, (pages 24-25) and Gauguin's Two Tahitian WVmen (pages
Rouen Cathedral (pages 144-4 5), was on view beginning that 206-7). Two years later the Museum received his bequest of
year, but the Davis estate was contested and the paintings did Pissarro's]allais Hill, Pontoise(pages 84-85) and Monet's The
not actually become the property of the Metropolitan until Beach at Sainte-Adresse (pages ro8-9), Vetheuil in Summer
10
(pages 128-29), and The Manneporte, Etretat, I (page I34). by Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard. In 1964 the
Two Tahitian Women was the Metropolitan's first painting first paintings by Alfred Sisley to enter the collection were
by Gauguin, and ]allais Hill, Pontoise was its first impor- given by Mr. Richard Rodgers and Mr. and Mrs. Henry
tant Pissarro. In I95 I the Gauguin was joined by another lttleson, Jr. Since then, four others have been given or
major work by the artist, Ia Orana Maria (pages 204-5), bequeathed. Another artist whose work entered the Mu-
bequeathed by Sam A. Lewisohn. seum at a relatively late date is Signac, who was first repre-
Mr. Lewisohn's bequest included several other extremely sented in the permanent collection by View of the Port of
significant Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings: Marseilles (pages 230-31), a gift of Robert Lehman in 1955·
Cezanne's Still Life: Apples and a Pot of Primroses (pages I84- Three more arrived with the Robert Lehman Collection
85), Renoir's In the Meadow (pages 170-7I), Rousseau's The in I975, and the same year Thejetty at Cassis (pages 228-
Repast of the Lion (pages 246-47), van Gogh's L'Arlesienne: 29) came with the Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson.
Madame joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie julien) (pages 2I4-15), Large gifts and bequests tend to dominate our attention,
and Seurat's final study for A Sunday on La Grande]atte(pages but it is also important to point out that acquisitions ofsingle
224-25). That oil study was the first painting by Seurat to works have often added significantly to the collection. Partic-
enter the collection, but L'Arlesienne was the third van ularly striking examples are Mr. and Mrs. Edwin C. Vogel's
Gogh. In 1949 the Museum had had the courage to purchase gift in 1957 of Degas's Portrait of a Lady in Gray (pages 54-
two: Sunflowers (pages 210-u) and Cypresses (pages 216-I7). 55), Mr. and Mrs. John L. Loeb's gift in 1962 of van Gogh's
Nevertheless, the Lewisohn bequest provided the Museum Oleanders (pages 212-13), and the purchase in 1962 of
with its best-known image by van Gogh as well as other Cezanne's Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress (pages I94-95)
Post-Impressionist paintings of the highest caliber. withfundsgivenby Mr. and Mrs. Henry lttleson, Jr.
Nine years later, in I96o, the Bequest of Stephen C. Clark In 1967 the Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot
brought the Museum another group of Impressionist and contributed to the extraordinary growth of the collection
Post-Impressionist pictures that were as important as those during the postwar decades. It included several important
bequeathed by Sam A. Lewisohn. Degas's Self-Portrait (pages pictures of the I88os and early r89os: van Gogh'sSelf-Portrait
50-5 I) and The Singer in Green (La Chanteuse Verte) (pages 78- with a Straw Hat (pages 208-9), Seurat's The Gardener (page
7 9 ), Renoir's A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant (page I 57) and 222), Monet's Rapids on the Petite Creuse at Fresselines (pages
Marguerite( Margot) Berard(pages I62-63), Seurat's extraor- r 36-3 7), and Toulouse-Lautrec' s The Englishman at the Moulin
dinary Invitation to the Sideshow (Parade de Cirque) (pages Rouge (pages 236-37). The Toulouse-Lautrec is one of five
226-27), and a superb group ofCezannes: Madame Cezanne works by the artist given or bequeathed during the 196os
in the Conservatory (pages I82-83), Near the Pool at thejas de and 1970s. Before I967 the only picture by Toulouse-
Bouffan (pages r86-87), Still Life: Apples and Pears (page Lautrec in the collection was The Sofa (pages 238-39), which
200), Still LifewithaGinger)arandEggplants(pages I96-97), was purchased through the Rogers Fund in 1951. In I975
and The Cardplayers (pages I98-99). In short, the Osborn, Toulouse-Lautrec's Woman in the Garden of Monsieur Forest
Lewisohn, and Clark bequests enriched the entire collec- (pages 234-35) arrived with the Bequest of Joan Whitney
tion, increasing in number and significance the Museum's Payson, which also included, among other works, Manet's
Post-Impressionist paintings. The base of the collection Peonies (pages 34-35) and The Monet Family in Their Garden
had broadened considerably, and it began to emerge clearly (pages 46-4 7), and Degas's Portrait of Yves Gobillard-Morisot
as the strongest one of its kind in the United States. (pages 6o-6I). Toulouse-Lautrec's striking portrait of Rene
During the I950s and I96os several other important Grenier (pages 232-33) joined the collection in I978 with
bequests were received. Of the thirty-five Monets today in the Bequest of Mary Cushing Fosburgh. Pissarro's Barges
the Metropolitan, five were bequeathed by Julia W. Emmons at Pontoise (pages 88-89) was also bequeathed by Mrs.
in I956, and four others were given by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fosburgh, and since then two other important paintings by
McVeigh in 1959. Twelve more entered the Museum during the artist have also been donated: The Garden of the Tuileries
the same period, including the three bequeathed by William on a Winter Afternoon, II (pages I02-3), a gift in I979 from
Church Osborn in 1951. In 1967 the Metropolitan acquired the collection of Marshall Field III, and Morning, An Overcast
the only Monet that it has ever purchased, Terrace at Sainte- Day, Rouen (pages 96-97), Bequest of Gregoire Tarnapol,
Adresse (pages IIO-II). Nine of the Museum's sixteen Pis- I979, and Gift of Alexander Tarnapol, 1980.
sarros and seventeen of its twenty-five Renoirs were acquired The gift of the Robert Lehman Collection in I975 consti-
by gift or bequest during the same two decades. The only tuted the largest group of European paintings and drawings
Pissarro ever bought by the Museum, Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen donated to the Museum since the Bequest of Mrs. H. 0.
(pages roo-ror), was purchased in I96o with funds given Havemeyer in I929. Included in the Lehman Collection are
II
important pamtmgs by Monet (pages rr4-15), Renoir
(pages 172-75), Seurat (page 223), Signac, Sisley, Degas, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Pissarro, van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne that substan-
tially broaden the range of Impressionist and Post-Impres-
sionist art to be seen at the Metropolitan. Only four are
included in this book, but all will be fully studied in the
forthcoming complete catalogue of the Robert Lehman
Collection. L e texts for each painting were developed from the label
Like the Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, the addition texts written in 1979-80 by Charles S. Moffett, Curator,
of the paintings in the Lehman Collection was an exceptional Department of European Paintings, and Ann M. Wagner,
event. Nevertheless, the Museum's collection oflmpression- formerly a Research Assistant, Department of European
ist and Post-Impressionist paintings has grown with increas- Paintings, for the Metropolitan Museum's Andre Meyer Gal-
ing, albeit somewhat erratic, momentum since Erwin Davis's leries. For the purposes of this book, many of the label texts
gift of two Maners in 1889. Significant needs remain, but were substantially rewritten and expanded by Charles S.
there is no collection of paintings that could not be improved Moffett and Charles F. Stuckey, Research Assistant, Depart-
by the addition of a particular picture. For that reason, in ment of European Paintings. Selected references have been
1980 the Museum purchased, through the Mr. and Mrs. included in a separate section at the back of the book.
Richard J. Bernhard Gift, by exchange, Fan tin-Latour's Still John Pope-Hennessy, Consultative Chairman, Depart-
Life with Flowers and Fruit (pages 20-21), a painting of ment of European Paintings, edited the original texts for The
exceptional quality dating from the mid-186os. Andre Meyer Galleries and later suggested that Charles S.
Occasional strategic purchases of this kind will continue Moffett convert the material written for the Impressionist
to be made, but the Metropolitan's Impressionist and Post- and Post-Impressionist sections into a text for this volume.
Impressionist paintings will remain primarily an assemblage The Museum's publisher, Bradford D. Kelleher, and its
of collections formed by individuals with the particular likes editor in chief, John P. O'Neill, enthusiastically endorsed
and dislikes generally labeled taste. The Museum's collection the project.
has grown impressively because of the extraordinary generos- C. S.M.
ity of these individuals and because they formed their collec-
tions by exercising taste, courage, perspicacity, and will.
Their decisions were not made by committees, and their
collections almost always reflect personal considerations and
strong ideas about quality-elements not always typical of
the decision-making processes of museum acquisitions com-
mittees. The spirit with which the Museum's benefactors
collected is best expressed in the passage in Mrs. Havemeyer's
Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector, wherein she described
her reasons for buying Degas's Madame Gobillard-Morisot
(Yves Morisot) (pages 62-63). After remarking that most
collectors would probably have preferred a more fashionable
example of Degas's work, such as the pastel of a woman in a
striped dress seated on a sofa that Mary Cassatt had once
found for her, she added that she prized above all his portrait
ofBerthe Morisot's sister: "Well! I paid a large sum for that
picture and I do not regret it, not a farthing of it. I bought
neither beauty nor glamour, no, nor still life, nor a great
composition; nothing but art, just pure incandescent art,
right out of the crucible; its author heated it over the sacred
fire. It seems to me it is not a picture, not a portrait, it is an
inspiration. Degas never did anything like it again. I doubt if
he ever could, I doubt if ever any painter could do such a
picture. It is forever! It is an art epoch in itself."
C. S.M.
12
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings
IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
JOHAN BARTHOLD JONGKIND
Dutch, I8I9-I89I
Honfleur dead to art." However, in I86o Jongkind returned to

Oil on canvas, 201/2 x 321/s inches Paris. His works during the next few years influenced
Signed and dated (lower right): Jongkind 1865 the young Impressionists, especially Monet, whose har-
bor scenes of the I 86os may have been at least indirectly
IN I846 JONGKIND left The Hague and went to Paris, inspired by such pictures as Honf/eur. Moreover,
where he studied with Eugene Isabey and Fran~ois Jongkind's sensitive treatment of subtle light effects
Picot. Through the early I85os his work reflected the must have greatly appealed to the young painter. The
influence of Isabey. In I853 his only source of financial two occasionally met in Honfleur, a town on the Chan-
support, a royal stipend, was withdrawn. As a result, his nel, where both artists worked in the early and middle
personal and professional life began to disintegrate. Two I 86os. This canvas was painted there in August-
years later, drinking heavily and deeply in debt, he September I865, during Jongkind's third visit.
returned to Holland. Monet reported regretfully to Wolfe Fund, 1916
Boudin, "The only marine painter we have, Jongkind, is Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection
EUGENE BOUDIN
On the Beach at Trouville

Oil on wood, ro x r8 inches
Signed and dated (lower right): E. Boudin. 63
THIS IS AN early example of the seaside scenes for which modern life, Boudin clearly underestimated the impor-
Boudin is famous. On February 12, 1863 (the year it tance of his work in the early 186os. Although the scope
was painted), he wrote to a friend, "People like my little of his work remained rather limited, his early achieve-
ladies on the beach very much; some hold that in them ment was revolutionary, and he had an important influ-
there lies a vein of gold to be exploited." In another ence on the young Monet, to whom he gave painting
letter he mentioned some beach scenes that were "per- lessons in 1858-59.
haps not great art but at least a fairly honest image of the
world in our time." A plein-air painter of subjects from Bequest of Amelia B. Lazarus, 1907
17
EUGENE BOUDIN
Village by a River
Oil on wood, 14x23 inches
Signed (lower right): E. Boudin.
BouDIN FREQUENTLY painted landscapes along the

coast of Brittany, although his views of people on the
beaches of seaside resorts in Normandy are better known
(pages I 6- I 7). The subject of this work is the village of
Le Faou, west of Brest, which he visited in I867, I873,
I874, and I875· Village by a River was probably exe-
cuted during Boudin's first visit, because its broken
brushwork and small, light touches resemble his han-
dling of a view of Le Faou, sold in I868, that was
presumably painted the summer before. The short,
quick brushstrokes and the flicker of light and color are
easily distinguished from his earlier, simpler style. The
technique he developed in the late I 86os became the
basis of his work during the remainder of his career.
Although Boudin is generally regarded as an artist of
secondary importance, works such as Village by a River
exemplify his importance during the early years of
Impressionism. As an accomplished plein-air painter in
the I86os, his interpretation of the world through myr-
iad quick touches of color provided an important prece-
dent for the younger painters who banded together later
as the Impressionists. Boudin's significance for the
movement was officially acknowledged when they in-
vited him to exhibit in their first group show in I874·
Gift of Arthur J. Neumark, I 959 59· 140
I8
19
HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR
Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

Oil on canvas, 283/4 x 235/s inches
Signed and dated (upper left): Fantin. 1866.
IN THE EARLY years of his career, Fantin-Latour under-

took a wide range of subject matter that included
traditional allegory, still life, and portraiture, but he
always worked in an unmistakably contemporary idiom.
He was particularly successful with flower subjects,
which occupied him throughout his career. Inspired by
the eighteenth-century painter Chardin and by his own
contemporary Courbet, he was direct and naturalistic in
his approach. This painting of flowers and fruit, and
several others of 1865-66, are Fantin-Latour's first ma-
jor achievements as a still-life painter. They are rela-
tively large in scale and reflect his desire to create serious
compositions in a realist style that transcend mere pic-
tures of well-rendered objects in convincing space. The
special character of his work is described in the follow-
ing passage written by Jacques-Emile Blanche, a painter
of the next generation: "In his paintings of flowers,
Fantin's drawing is sometimes beautiful and bold; it is
always sure and incisive. He gives the physiognomy of
the flower that he copies; it is itself and not another of
the same species."
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard Gift, by exchange, 1980 1980.3
20
HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR
Still Life with Pansies

Oil on canvas, I 8 1h x 2 21/4 inches
Signed and dated (upper right): Fantin. 74
MADAME FANTIN-LATOUR, in a catalogue of her hus-

band's work, listed thirty-one compositions of flowers
and fruit painted in 1874, including Still Life with
Pansies. Among the pictures she mentioned is a study of
a basket and pansies in small pots (present location
unknown) that is probably similar to this painting. The
branch of apples suggests that the Museum's picture was
painted in the fall, but the pansies are spring flowers
that were probably cultivated in a hothouse.
Still Life with Pansies is typical of Fantin-Latour's
portrait-like treatment of flowers and fruit. Generally
he managed to avoid the pitfalls of repetitiveness and
self-imitation, but his work is characterized by a conserv-
atism that distinguishes his pictures clearly from those
of his Impressionist contemporaries. When compared to
Monet's Apples and Grapes (pages 122-23), for example,
the limitations of Still Life with Pansies are obvious.
Fantin-Latour's vision was less vigorous and less com-
plex than Monet's, and many of his pictures fail to
challenge or engage the viewer. Nevertheless, paintings
such as this one are as pleasing to the eye today as they
were in 1874.
The Mr. and Mrs. Henry lttleson, Jr. Purchase Fund, 1966 66.194
EDOUARD MANET
The Spanish Singer

Oil on canvas, 58 x 45 inches
Signed and dated (at right, on bench): ed. Manet r86o
MANET MADE HIS public debut at the Salon of 1861

with a portrait of his parents (Louvre, Paris) and The
Spanish Singer. Response to his pictures was gratifying.
The jury awarded The Spanish Singer an honorable men-
tion after it was moved from high up on a wall, where it
had first been placed, to a more prominent position.
Reviewing the Salon, Theophile Gautier, the respected
critic for the government's Moniteur universe/, praised
Manet as a gifted realist in the tradition of Spanish
painters from Velazquez to Goya. As Gautier's own
essays on Spanish culture had stimulated French print-
makers to flood the market with illustrations of Spanish
types, the theme of Manet's picture was hardly novel.
Yet, as Gautier observed, most of the illustrators roman-
ticized their subjects, whereas Manet did not.
The Spanish Singer was also warmly admired by such
younger painters as Alphonse Legros and Henri Fantin-
Latour, who were among a group that visited him in his
studio to convey their admiration. Such acclaim surely
helped to sustain Manet's independent spirit during the
next years.
Manet openly admitted his debt to the seventeenth-
century Spanish masters, but he treated every detail of
The Spanish Singer with unique finesse: the red shoulder
strap that twists in the shadows, the crumpled trousers,
the spent cigarette, and the soulful expression, captured
after just two hours' work. Despite Manet's apparent
concern for detail, however, the singer holds his guitar
left-handedly though the instrument is strung for a
right-handed musician, and his precarious pose would
tax anyone's ability to play. By such devices Manet
drew attention to the artifice involved in painting
pictures that purport to be realistic transcriptions of
everyday life.
Gift of William Church Osborn, 1949 49-58.2

EDOUARD MANET
Boy with a Sword

Oil on canvas, 5 r 5/s x 363/4 inches
Signed (lower left): Manet
ASSESSING MANET's CAREER shortly after his death,

the conservative critic Albert Wolff predicted that Boy
with a Sword would eventually enter the Louvre and
exemplify the artist at his best. However, Emile Zola,
who wrote the preface to the catalogue for the memorial
exhibition ofManet's works in I884, presumed that the
picture had been destroyed, since it was not included. In
fact, Boy with a Sword had already been purchased in
I 88 I by the perspicacious American collector Erwin
Davis, who also owned Manet's Woman with a Parrot
(pages 36-3 7). When Davis donated the two pictures to
the Metropolitan in I889, they became the first of
Manet's works to enter an American museum.
When interviewed later in his life, Leon Koella-
Leenhoff, Manet's stepson, explained that he had posed
for the picture in I 86 I, when he was about ten years old.
His innocent gaze directed toward the spectator, the boy
seems to be fetching a weapon for a grown-up. Manet
dressed him in a seventeenth-century costume and bor-
rowed a sword of the same period as a prop, presumably
in a tribute to Velazquez and other Spanish artists whom
he deeply admired. That the boy's straightforward pose,
the neutral background, and the muted colors reflect the
art of Spain's Golden Age was evident to most critics,
who reviewed the work favorably when Manet exhibited
it, on five separate occasions, during the next six years.
Gift ofErwin Davis, 1889
27
EDOUARD MANET
French, 1832-1883
Mademoiselle Victorine
in the Costume of an Espada
Oil on canvas, 65 x 501/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): ed. Manet. I r862
LIKE ALL THE WORKS submitted by Manet to the Salon

of 186 3, Mademoiselle Victorine in the Costume ofan Espada
was rejected. The severity of the jury that year was,
however, countered when the government agreed to
support a separate exhibition, the Salon des Refuses,
where Manet's works provoked heated debate. Clearly
he intended Mademoiselle Victorine to perplex. He chose
his favorite female model, Victorine Meurent, for the
picture, although women did not fight in the bullring.
If it is to be understood that her gaze is directed toward a
bull, she is holding her sword and cape ineffectually, and
the latter, which should be red, is pink. Ignoring the
premises of pictorial realism, Manet copied her pose
from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century engravings, as
if adherence to tradition were more important than
common sense. His spoofery extende~ to the back-
ground of the painting. The vivid realism of the men
and animals, based on etchings by Goya, is at odds with
the theatrical pose of Victorine. Moreover, in terms of
scale the groups of figures in the background are incon-
sistent with one another as well as with the principal
figure. It seems beyond doubt that Manet conceived
these disconcerting juxtapositions to show that endur-
ing art is fundamentally the product of abstract har-
monies of shape and color and not of convincing
illusionism.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.53

H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
EDOUARD MANET
French, 1832-1883
YoungMan
in the Costume of a Majo
Oil on canvas, 74x49 1/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): ed. Manet. I863
AccoRDING TO HIS close associates, Manet painted so

many pictures with Spanish subjects because he had
acquired a trunkful of Andalusian costumes that had
enormous visual appeal for him. For this depiction of
one of the dashing young Spaniards known as majos,
Manet's younger brother Gustave donned the same cut-
off trousers and bolero that Victorine Meurent had worn
to pose for Mademoiselle Victorine in the Costume of an
Espada (pages 28-29 ). Rejected by the Salon of r863,
both paintings were included in the Salon des Refuses
that same year. Although Manet's robust brushwork and
bold use of color were admired by most critics, some
complained that the majo lacked psychological charac-
terization, Manet having rendered his face and hands
with no more attention than he had rendered details of
the costume. In an article published early in r867,
Emile Zola countered such objections, explaining that
Manet's only concern was to translate purely visual
sensations into paint. "His attitude toward figure paint-
ing," contended Zola, "is like the academic attitude
toward still life." Indeed, Young Man in the Costume of a
Majo seems to have been conceived primarily as a vehicle
for virtuoso painting both subtle and unrestrained.
Striking in juxtaposition are the exquisitely delicate
black and pastel tones of the majo's suit and the broadly
applied red and orange stripes of the tasseled blanket
draped over his arm.

EDOUARD MANET
French, 1832-1883
The Dead Christ, with Angels

Oil on canvas, 70 5/s x 59 inches
Signed (lower left): Maner
Inscribed (lower right, on rock): evang(ile]. sel(on}. S~ Jean I chap(itre}.
XX v. XII
MANY PROGRESSIVE mid-nineteenth-century artists, laire pointed out the mistake prior to the Salon, Manet
including Gustave Courbet, felt it was dishonest to did not correct it. Nevertheless, criticism was not all
paint things that could not be observed at first hand: for adverse. Manet's advocates in the press compared his
example, angels with wings. In fact, "Religious paint- ability to paint the human figure to the skill of the
ing has disappeared,, pronounced one critic of the Salon Renaissance masters upon whose compositions The Dead
of 185 7. Not· surprisingly, Manet's The Dead Christ, Christ, with Angels is closely based.
with Angels provoked both surprise and anger when it Manet's previously exhibited works had frequently
was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. been found lacking in psychological characterization,
In the passage from the Gospel of John referred to in but this Christ conveys both suffering and majesty, and
an inscription on a rock in Manet's painting, Christ's the pity and sorrow of the angels are equally moving.
disciples entered his tomb and found no trace ofhis body According to Antonin Proust, his lifel<?ng friend, Manet
there, but instead two angels at the head and feet of the always wanted to depict the Crucifixion. Although that
shroud. Recently scholars have suggested that Manet project was never realized, The Dead Christ, with Angels
included the dead body of Christ in his picture because and TheMockingojChrist(1865, Art Institute ofChicago)
he had been impressed by Ernest Renan's best-selling indicate what enormous expressive powers the painter
book La Vie de jesus (1863), in which the author claimed could bring to religious subjects.
that Christ was a man, not a supernatural being. There
are other anomalies in the painting: for example, Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929
Christ's wound is in his left side, and, though Baude- H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
32
EDOUARD MANET
French, r832-r883
Peonies
Oil on canvas, 233/s x 13 7/s inches
PERHAPS BECAUSE RECENT work by Courbet and

Fantin-Latour had interested him in the subject, Manet
painted half-a-dozen flower pictures during his summer
vacation in r864. As he would later in his career on
those occasions when a still-life theme took his atten-
tion, Manet used different vases for different pictures in
the series. The group of 1 864 is devoted to peonies,
reportedly Manet's favorite flower. Since their petals and
leaves are broad, Manet could work with a relatively
wide brush, and his paintings are thus more loosely
rendered than many contemporary flower pieces. The
delicate color of the peonies is accentuated in the
Museum's example by the highly polished surface of a
tabletop and by a red lacquer tray.
Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975

35
EDOUARD MANET
French, I832-I883
Woman with a Parrot

Oil on canvas, 72 7/s x 50 5/s inches
MANET PAINTED Woman with a Parrot in his studio in

the Rue Guyot. The model is Victorine Meurent. Given
his inclination to allude to the works of other painters, it
is probable that Manet conceived this picture as a com-
ment on the controversial nude exhibited by his rival
Courbet at the Salon of I 866 that is today also in the
Metropolitan Museum (29. I00.57). The two paintings
were included in the one-artist exhibitions indepen-
dently organized by Courbet and Manet for the World's
Fair in Paris in the spring of I867. Whereas Courbet's
picture is explicitly sexual and filled with opulent ob-
jects of the boudoir, Manet's is discreet and spare. He
may have wished to show that a truly gifted artist need
work only with the simplest poses and props.
When it was exhibited for the second time, at the
Salon of I 868, Theophile Gautier remarked that Manet
had not bothered to place his figure in a realistic setting:
"The indefinite and neutral background must have been
borrowed from the wall of the studio, smeared with an
olive color. If there were nothing more, it would be
enough to make a beautiful picture." Yet Gautier found
the painting to be without poetry or drama and, like
other critics, he claimed that Manet had not fairly
represented the beauty of his Titianesque model. The
woman's pallor and pensive expression, however, may be
intended to suggest private thoughts-perhaps of the
lover whose captured monocle she fingers while absent-
minded! y inhaling the fragrance of a token of violets.
Evidently she has only recently changed into a comfort-
able peignoir, for her hair is still bound up. Whether or
not her lover is to be imagined as present is something
that only her pet parrot will know.
The theme of a woman and her parrot-confidant has
literary and pictorial antecedents. It has also been sug-
gested that Woman with a Parrot is an allegory of the five
senses: smell (the violets), touch and sight (the mono-
cle), hearing (the talking bird), and taste (the orange).
Gift of Erwin Davis, 1889

EDOUARD MANET
French, 1832-1883
Madame Edouard Manet

Oil on canvas, 39 1h x 307/s inches
THE SITTER IS MANET' S wife, Suzanne Leenhoff,

whom he painted several times after their marriage in
1863. Most of these portraits are interior scenes, but
here her surroundings are undefined and she is dressed as
if about to go out. The handle of an umbrella protrudes
from beneath her left arm, and she seems to draw on her
gloves. This picture is an excellent example of the kind
of painting described by the critic Edmond Duranty in
1876: "What we need is the particular note of the
modern individual, in his clothing, in the midst of his
social habits, at home or in the street."
The portrait is unfinished and is therefore difficult to
date, but most scholars relate it to Manet's work of the
late 186os. However, the character of the brushwork is
very similar to that of a much later but also unfinished
picture, Le Clairon, of 1882 (Wildenstein & Company,
New York).
Its state provides a rare view of Manet's working
method. The figure has been sketched in with thin but
vigorous brushstrokes, after which Manet seems to have
concentrated on the face. Technical examination has
revealed that the artist scraped off and repainted the face
at least twice before abandoning the portrait.
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967
39
EDOUARD MANET
Boating
Oil on canvas, 381/4 x 51 1/4 inches
Signed (lower right): Manet
BOATING WAS PAINTED during the summer of 1874,

when Manet was working with Renoir and Monet at
Argenteuil, a village on the Seine northwest of Paris.
The high-keyed palette, the elevated viewpoint from
which the water's surface appears to rise up as a back-
drop, and the artist's decision to celebrate the everyday
pleasures of the middle class are all in keeping with the
Impressionist style recently developed by his younger
colleagues. Despite his close association with Renoir
and Monet, Manet preferred not to exhibit at their
independent group shows but instead to submit his
works to the official Salons, where they seemed out of
place. Why they did J. K. Huysmans found easy to
understand. At the Salon of r879 he admired the uncon-
ventional visual qualities of Boating. "The bright blue
water continues to exasperate a number of people," he
wrote. "Manet has never, thank heavens, known those
prejudices stupidly maintained in the academies. He
paints, by abbreviations, nature as it is and as he sees it.
The woman, dressed in blue, seated in a boat cut off by
the frame as in certain Japanese prints, is well placed, in
broad daylight, and her figure energetically stands out
against the oarsman dressed in white, against the vivid
blue of the water. These are indeed pictures the like of
which, alas, we shall rarely find in this tedious Salon."
The identities of the sitters are uncertain, although the
man may be Manet's brother-in-law, Rodolphe Leenhof£
At an early stage in the execution of the painting, his right
hand held the rope to guide the sail, as X-rays and penti-
menti indicate.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.11'5

41
EDOUARD MANET
French, r832-r883
Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier

Pastel on canvas, 22 x r81/4 inches
BORN IN r 86o, Isabelle Lemonnier was the daughter of

a successful Parisian jeweler. She may have met Manet at
the home of her sister Marguerite, Madame Georges
Charpentier, who is the principal figure in Renoir's
Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguerite Lemonnier) and
Her Children, Georgette and Paul, of 1878 (pages r6o-6r).
In r879 Manet painted the first of at least six portraits
of Isabelle Lemonnier. This pastel may have been exe-
cuted the same year, or perhaps in the summer of r88o,
when Manet was staying at Bellevue, near Paris. Made-
moiselle Lemonnier spent her summer holiday at a
nearby villa, and Manet frequently sent her letters
charmingly decorated with watercolor sketches.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29. roo. 56

43
EDOUARD MANET
French, I832-I883
George Moore
Pastel on canvas, 2 I 3/4 xI 37/s inches
A GROUP OF ARTISTS that included Manet, Degas, and

Renoir brought the medium of pastel back into popular-
ity during the final quarter of the nineteenth century.
They were stimulated in large part by the enthusiastic
reappraisal of Maurice Quentin de la Tour and other
eighteenth-century masters of chalk drawing by the
Goncourt brothers, whose L'Art du dix-huitieme siecle
began to appear in a new edition by Charpentier in
I 88 I . The previous year the publisher had made new
space in his offices available to Manet, who chose to
exhibit not only recent oils but fifteen pastels.
Among them was this portrait of George Moore, the
Irish writer, who had come to Paris as an art student in
I 87 3. Later he would write memoirs that describe the
Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes and its guests, among

whom were members of the Impressionist group. Manet
met Moore there in I879, shortly after work in pastels
had become a "passion" for him, and Moore agreed to
serve as a model for a never-finished genre painting of
a cafe (pages 48-49), as well as for this pastel portrait,
a work that he reportedly found to be unflattering.
Nevertheless, he obtained a photograph of the boldly
executed portrait to use as the frontispiece for his book
Modern Painting ( I893).
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.1oo.ss

44
EDOUARD MANET
French, r832-r883
The Monet Family in Their Garden

Signed (lower right): Manet
THE MONTHS FOLLOWING the first of the Impression- younger men during the r86os, took a greater interest
ists' group exhibitions, in April r874, were especially now in their experiments. He paid relaxed visits to the
important for the development of painting in France. Monet family and one day undertook this casual group
The Monet family settled in a house in Argenteuil that portrait of Monet at work in his garden, accompanied by
Manet had helped them find. As John Rewald has his wife, Camille, and their son Jean. While Manet was
noted, "Probably no single place could be identified working Renoir arrived and painted Camille and Jean as
more closely with impressionism than Argenteuil they were posing for Manet (Madame Monet and Her Son,
where, at one time or another, practically all of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Caught
friends worked but where, in r874 particularly, Monet, up in the spirit of competition, Manet reportedly whis-
Renoir, and Manet went to paint .... Renoir made fre- pered to Monet in jest, "He has no talent at all, that boy!
quent visits there, once more painting at Monet's side, You, who are his friend, tell him please to give up
choosing the same motifs; ... Manet himself decided to painting." Renoir and Manet made presents of their
spend several weeks at Gennevilliers (where his family canvases to their host. Monet, too, took up his brushes
owned property) on the other bank of the Seine river, that day and painted Manet at work on this picture.
opposite Argenteuil." Unfortunately his picture has been lost.
Manet, whose example had been seminal for these Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975 1976.201.14
EDOUARD MANET
French, r832-r883
George Moore (Au Cafe)

Oil on canvas, 2 5 3/4 x 3 2 inches
IN THIS UNFINISHED portrait of the writer George

Moore, painted in 1879, Manet depicted the young
Irishman at the popular Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes, a
gathering place for artists and writers. Moore was intro-
duced to the group at the cafe by the poet Stephane
Mallarme and soon became a member of the circle that
included Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro.
The critic Theodore Duret later described Moore as an
object of amusement for the others because of his odd
manners and poor French. Moore had been a student of
the academician Alexandre Cabanel but had abandoned
painting for writing. Although he did not remain a
member of the Nouvelle-Athenes group for long, he
later wrote vividly of the cafe as well as of the artists and
literary figures who assembled there.
Manet depicted Moore at least four times. Moore said
that the artist's intention had been to paint him in a cafe:
"He had met me in a cafe, and he thought he could
realize his impression of me in the first surrounding he
had seen me in. The portrait did not come off; ulti-
mately it was destroyed." This picture is another that
Manet never finished. However, the Museum owns a
finished pastel portrait of Moore (pages 44-45) that
Manet is believed to have done in 1879, shortly before
Moore left Paris.
GiftofMrs. Ralph]. Hines, 1955 55· 193

49
EDGAR DEGAS
Self-Portrait
Oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 16x 13 1h inches
IN THE 185os AND 186os Degas produced numerous

self-portraits in various media. This one is thought to
have been painted in 1854, the year that he gave up the
study of law to become an artist. The decision was
difficult for the twenty-year-old Degas because he knew
it would infuriate his father. According to Degas's niece,
"With great sadness and no less nobility Degas left his
father's home and went to live in an attic."
This work reflects Degas's acute awareness of the
self-portraiture of Rembrandt, Ingres, and Delacroix.
The close scrutiny, the intense introspection, and the
precocious talent reflect an individual who was moody,
disciplined, and demanding. Few living painters could
have combined as successfully the classicism of Ingres
and the romanticism ofDelacroix.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 61.101.6
51
EDGAR DEGAS
A Woman with Chrysanthemums

Oil on canvas, 29x36 1h inches
Signed and dated (twice, lower left): D[e)gas I I8[5)8
1865 I Degas
PoRTRAITS ARE AN extremely significant aspect of

Degas's work, but, with a single exception, he seems
never to have accepted a commission for one, and he
made little effort to sell those that he did paint. Indeed,
most were not formally posed, a departure from tradi-
tion. Instead, they reflect the artist's wish to depict his
subjects in familiar and typical positions. Here, and in
such works as Mademoiselle Marie Dihau (page 55),
Degas observed his subject in a private and unguarded
moment, but in this painting he may have relied as
much on invention as on direct observation to create an
image that would express the character of the unidenti-
fied sitter. Despite the compelling realism of this paint-
ing, there is strong evidence that the woman never
posed next to the vase of flowers. The canvas is signed
and dated twice, indicating that it results from two
separate periods of activity. When completed in r8s8,
it was a still life of flowers that seems to have been
strongly influenced by Delacroix's flower pictures of
1848-49· In 1865 Degas added the figure of the
woman, for which there is a drawing (signed and dated
1865) in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachu-
setts. Moreover, X-rays and pentimenti show that her
arm, right shoulder, and bodice cover blossoms that
were part of the original composition-further evidence
that the portrait was added to the still life at a later date.
Like many of Degas's ballet pictures, A Woman with
Chrysanthemums may thus be an assortment of observa-
tions that were brought together first in the artist's
mind and then on canvas.

53
EDGAR DEGAS
Portrait of a Lady in Gray Mademoiselle Marie Dihau

Oil on canvas, 36 x 28lf2 inches Oil on canvas, 8 3/4 x m3/4 inches
Stamped (lower right): Degas
VARIOUS AUTHORS HAVE cited affinities between this DEGAs's PORTRAIT OF Marie Dihau shows the success-
portrait and works by Vehizquez, Ingres, and Whistler, ful pianist and singer in what is probably a characteristi-
but any direct influences have been eliminated as the cally contemplative moment. She is seen in the Parisian
artist searched for the precise attitude and gestures that restaurant Chez Ia Mere Lefebvre, a popular gathering
would reveal the character of the sitter. Here, the un- place for musicians. In 1867-68, when this portrait was
identified woman seems about to rise from the sofa. She painted, Mademoiselle Dihau was living in Lille (where
is bonneted, ready to leave, and only partially turned she had won a first prize at the Conservatory in 1862),
toward the viewer. Her posture and imminent departure when she was not in Paris working or visiting her two
suggest an indefinable elusiveness, perhaps shyness. brothers. According to Mademoiselle Dihau's later rec-
Her right hand, almost out of sight, grips nervously the ollection, the painting was done rapidly as a consolation
length of scarf that she has pulled taut. gift before one of her frequent departures for Lille,
As in A Woman with Chrysanthemums (pages 52-53) which may account for the unfinished appearance of the
and Mademoiselle Marie Dihau (above right), in this work background.
of about 1865 Degas has achieved the kind of intimate Undoubtedly Degas knew his subject well, for she
view of an individual that is usually only possible with a and her brother Desire belonged to a circle of musicians
camera. Interestingly, he later experimented with a and cognoscenti of music that included the artist and his
camera, but none of the photographs that has survived is father. Desire Dihau, a bassoonist in the orchestra of the
as successful as this painting. Paris Opera, is depicted in Degas's Ballet from "Robert le
The stamped signature identifies Portrait ofa Lady in Diable," of 1872 (pages 68-69).
Gray as a work that was in the artist's possession when he
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeytr I•J29 29.100.182
died. It was included in the first four auctions of the H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
contents of the artist's studio in 1918-19. All works
included in the sales bear a stamped signature.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin C. Vogel, 195 7
55
EDGAR DEGAS
French, r834-1917
The Collector of Prints

Oil on canvas, 20 7/s x 15 3/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Degas I r 866
COMPARED TO HONORE DAUMIER'S images of collec-

tors and connoisseurs, the unidentified figure depicted
here seems detached and distant. Evidently he has been
interrupted while seated in a gallery looking through a
portfolio of prints. The single-mindedness of his en-
deavor is reflected in the cool, matter-of-fact glance
from beneath the brim of the hat that he has not both-
ered to take off. Hunched over, and hidden by his hat
and beard, this man reveals little about himself other
than his interest in art.
Like Degas's portrait of his friend the artist Jacques
Joseph Tissot, of r866-68 (pages 58-59), and Manet's
portrait of Emile Zola, of r868 (Louvre, Paris), Degas's
print collector is depicted in a setting that reflects
contemporary interest in Far Eastern art. There is a
T' ang horse in the vi trine to the left, and in the frame to
the right, prominent among the paper and cloth miscel-
lanea, are five Japanese woven silks that were originally
used as pocketbook covers but were prized by nine-
teenth-century French collectors and artists for their
intrinsic beauty of design.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100-44

s6
EDGAR DEGAS
French, 1834-1917
Jacques Joseph Tissot

Oil on canvas, 59'>/s x 44 inches
Stamped (lower right): Degas
IN 1919, AT THE THIRD of four auctions of the con- (Louvre, Paris). However, the portrait of Tissot is less
tents of Degas's studio, three drawings appeared that formal and less obviously posed. Tissot, with a pointer
helped to establish the identity of the sitter in this in one hand, seems to have been interrupted while in the
portrait as Jacques Joseph Tissot. In 1871 Tissot fled middle of a casual discourse on painting.
France after playing an active role in the violent political The works depicted here are, to a greater or lesser
upheaval known as the Commune. He spent ten years in e·xtent, improvisations on works that Degas knew well.
England, where he was known as James Tissot, and For example, the picture to the right ofTissot's head is a
achieved great success as a painter of fashionable woq1en portrait in the Louvre of Frederick the Great, Elector of
in Victorian London. Saxony, by the workshop of the sixteenth-century
In 1874 Degas wrote to Tissot in London and asked painter Lucas Cranach. This German Renaissance por-
him to participate in what later became known as the trait and other paintings-old masters, contempo-
first Impressionist exhibition: "Look here, my dear Tis- rary ·European pictures, and oriental works-reflect
sot, no hesitations, no escape. You positively must Degas's, and presumably Tissot's, eclectic sensibility
exhibit .... The realist movement no longer needs to and willingness to consider the work of all periods in
fight with the others; it already is, it exists, it must show order to create a style both anchored in tradition and
itselfas something distinct, there must be a salon ofrealists." appropriate to subjects taken from modern life.
Tissot declined the invitation.
Degas's portrait ofTissot, of 1866-68, is often com-
pared to the portrait ofZola that Manet painted in 1868 Rogers Fund, 1939 39.161
59
EDGAR DEGAS
French, 1834-1917
Portrait of Yves Gobillard-Morisot

Pastel on paper, I 8 7/s xI I I3ft6 inches
Signed (lower right): Degas
IN MAY 1869 Degas made three studies ofYves Gobil-

lard-Morisot that were preparatory to the Museum's
painting Madame Gobi/lard-Morisot (pages 62-63). Two
are pencil drawings of Yves seated on a sofa. The third is
this bust-length portrait. Yves's mother described the
sittings for the pastel in a letter to another of her
children, the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot:
"{Degas} came on Tuesday; this time he took a big sheet
of paper and set to work on the head in pastel. He
seemed to be doing a very pretty thing, and drew
marvelously. He asked for an hour or two in the morning
yesterday. He came to lunch and stayed all day; he
appeared happy with what he did and was annoyed to
have to tear himself away from it. He really works with
ease, for all of this took place in the midst of the visits
and good-byes that never ceased during these last two
days" (Yves was about to depart to join her husband in
Mirande).
Referring to this pastel, Berthe later wrote, "Mon-
sieur Degas has made a sketch of Yves that I find
indifferent." However, when it was exhibited at the
Salon of 1870 she changed her mind and said, "{Degas's}
masterpiece is the portrait of Yves in pastel." of this small painting bears out one scholar's statement
that "the particular gift ofDegas ... was to make a mood
Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975 1976.201.8
emerge from the paintings as if it were the sitter's."
Interestingly, Degas has chosen to depict the flutist
from the side not normally seen by the audience. It is, so
Joseph Henri Altes to speak, his private side.
The composition suggests a Renaissance portrait, an
Oil on canvas: original size, 9 7/s x 7 7/s inches; with added
scrips, IoVs x8I/2 inches association that Degas undoubtedly meant to convey. In
Signed (upper left): Degas fact, Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, the first owner of the
painting, hung the portrait of Altes between two French
PAINTED IN 1868, this profile view of the first flutist Renaissance portraits; in her memoirs she said she hoped
and concertmaster of the orchestra of the Paris Opera is to demonstrate that "the great modern held his own
one of Degas's many portraits of musicians. Alt($'s fine between those of the Renaissance."
features and broad forehead suggest a man of refine- Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29. 100.!81
ment, intellect, and vision; indeed, the evocative power H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
61
EDGAR DEGAS
Madame Gobillard-Morisot
(Yves Morisot)
Oil on canvas, 2 I 3/s x 2 5 5/s inches
Signed (lower left): Degas
DEGAs's TWO drawings ofMay 1869 of Yves Gobillard-

Morisot show her seated in the living room of the
Morisots' home on the Rue Franklin(1984. 76, 1985 .48).
The setting of the house was described by Yves's brother
Tiburce: "This very simple house {stood] in a beautiful
garden with large shade trees, to which doors on the
ground gave direct access." Degas also did a bust-length
portrait of Yves in pastel (pages 6o-61), and sometime
later he executed another drawing (Louvre, Paris). The
painting probably followed in late June or early July. In
both the pastel and the painting the garden is visible
through the open door at the back of the room.
On May 2 3 the sitter's mother wrote to another of her
daughters, the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot,
"Do you know that Degas is mad about Yves's face, and
that he is doing a sketch of her? He is going to transfer to
canvas the drawing he is doing in his sketchbook."
Berthe herself was present during at least one of the
sittings and provided the following account: "Monsieur
Degas has made a sketch of Yves that I find indifferent;
he chattered all the time he was doing it, he made fun of
his friend Fantin, saying that the latter would do well to
find new strength in the arms of love, because at present
painting no longer suffices him. He was in a highly
satirical mood; he talked to me about Puvis, and com-
pared him to the condor at the Jardin des Plantes."
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929

EDGAR DEGAS interaction between the two figures is also unclear.
Possibly the painting is the result of a project that Degas
French, r834-1917
proposed in a notebook of r869: "Do expressive heads
... a study of modern feeling ... it is Lavater, but a more
Sulking relativistic Lavater, so to speak, with symbols of today
Oil on canvas, I23f4 x 181/4 inches rather than the past." Lavater was an eighteenth-century
Signed (lower right): E. Degas Swiss who had devised a theory of analytical physi-
ognomy through which one could interpret human
THE SETTING OF THIS work, painted between r869 character. Degas's choice ofDuranty as a model may not
and r87r, is possibly an office in Degas's father's bank have been accidental. In r867 Duranty had published an
on the Rue de la Victoire. The title is apocryphal. essay, "On Physiognomy," in which he discussed a va-
Originally this picture was probably known as The riety of theories of physiognomic expressiveness.
Banker, which was the title of one of six works that It would be understandable if in this picture Degas
Degas bought back from his dealer in r 87 4. associated an angry or disgusted individual with his
Comparison with other paintings indicates that the father's bank. In r854 his father had strongly disap-
models for the figures were Degas's friends Emma proved of his son's decision to become an artist, and the
Dobigny and the critic and novelist Edmond Duranty. twenty-year-old Degas left home with little to support
There is general agreement that the man seated at the himself except his own determination.
desk is angry, disgusted, or annoyed, but the reason for Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929
his expression remains unexplained. The nature of the H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
EDGAR DEGAS
The Dancing Class

Oil on wood, 73/4 x 10 5/s inches
DEGAS'S FIRST DEPICTION of dancers rehearsing was

The Dancing Class, which he probably painted late in
1871. Although there is visual and technical evidence
that the artist made some changes in this picture while
working on it (for example, the positions of the central
figure and her reflection in the mirror have been al-
tered), no preparatory drawings or studies have sur-
vived. This painting is apparently the full record of
Degas's initial treatment of a subject that occupied a
prominent position in his subject matter for the next
thirty-five years.
The Dancing Class is also important as Degas's first
essay in the orchestration of groups in an interior. It is
very likely that the composition is a product ·of the
artist's imagination, because in a letter (unfortunately
undated) to a friend, in which he asked for a pass to
observe the dance examinations at the Opera, Degas
admitted that he had painted dance classes without ever
having attended one: "I have painted so many dance
examinations without having seen one that I feel a little
ashamed."

EDGAR DEGAS
French, r834-1917
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"

Oil on canvas, 2 6 x 2 r 3/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Degas I r872
THE SUBJECT OF THIS painting was probably inspired bassoonist Desire Dihau, whom Degas painted on sev-
by the I87I production of Meyerbeer's first French eral occasions (for example, he appears in The Orchestra of
opera, Robert /e Diab/e, which had been popular since its the Paris Opera, r868-69, Louvre, Paris). Degas also
premiere in I 83 I. The ballet scene-during which the painted two portraits of Dihau's sister Marie, one of
ghosts of a convent of nuns rise from their graves and which is in the Museum's collection (page 55).
dance through a cloister-must have fascinated Degas The Ballet from "Robert /e Diab/e" was probably influ-
because of its extraordinary lighting effects. Indeed, one enced by depictions of theater subjects by Honore
of his notebooks contains the following entry about the Daumier and Adolf von Menzel. Degas admired the
picture: "In the recession of the arcades the moonlight work of Daumier, and he is known to have copied a
barely touches the columns-on the ground the effect is work by Menzel.
rosier and warmer than I have made it. Vaults black, A horizontal version of The Ballet from "Robert /e
arches indefinite. The panel of footlights is reflected by Diab/e.'' dated I 876, is in the Victoria and Albert Mu-
the lamps(?)." seum (Ionides Collection), London. There are also draw-
The figure in the audience holding the opera glasses is ings for the dancing nuns in the collection of the Victoria
Degas's friend the collector Albert Hecht, who is be- and Albert.
lieved to have been the first owner of the painting. The Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929
second figure from the left is also identifiable. He is the H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
EDGAR DEGAS
The Rehearsal
of the Ballet on the Stage
Oil colors freely mixed with turpentine, with traces of
watercolor and oil paint over pen-and-ink drawing on paper,
mounted on canvas, 2r 3/s x 28 3/4 inches
Signed (upper left): Degas
THIS PAINTING OF ABOUT 187 3 is one of two very

similar versions of the same composition in the Mu-
seum's collection. The other is The Rehearsal on the Stage
(29. roo. 39), of r87 3-74. Another work, the Louvre's
· Repetition de Ballet sur Ia Scene, of r87 4, presents a third,
somewhat different variation on the subject, but techni-
cal evidence suggests that the Louvre's picture was,
during one phase of its evolution, very similar to the two
in the Metropolitan.
The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage began as a
pen-and-ink drawing that Degas submitted to the II-
lustrated London News for publication in r87 3- The draw-
ing was rejected because it was not considered suitable
for the Victorian reading public. This image was created
by working over the original drawing with a combina-
tion ofpeinture a/'essence (oil colors thinned with turpen-
tine), oil paint, and watercolor.
The Rehearsal ofthe Ballet on the Stage and The Rehearsal
on the Stage were part of a group of rehearsal pictures that
Degas made in r873-74. There are numerous drawings
and studies for the Metropolitan's two pictures and for
the example in the Louvre. In addition, there is a
painting in the collection of the Courtauld Institute,
London, that contains figures directly related to the
performers at the front of the stage in all three versions.
Gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929 29.160.26

71
EDGAR DEGAS
A Woman Ironing
Oil on canvas, 2 I 3/s x I slfz inches
Signed (lower left): Degas
A WOMAN IRONING of I874 is one of Degas's many at least by implication, to the artist's fascination with
depictions of laundresses done between I 869 and I 902. dancers: "Yesterday I spent the afternoon in the studio of
Several authors have suggested a connection between a painter named Degas .... And Degas placed before our
them and the descriptions of laundresses in Edmond de eyes [pictures of} laundresses ... while speaking their
Goncourt's novel Manette Salomon (I867), but Degas's language and explaining to us technically the downward
pictures have none of the social implications of de Goo- pressing and circular strokes of the iron, etc. etc. Next
court's book or any other naturalist novel. Moreover, [pictures of} dancers file by .... The painter shows you
Degas's works always rise above the picturesque con- his pictures, from time to time adding to his explana-
cerns of genre painting and the issues of poverty and tion by mimicking a choreographic development, by
class struggle implicit in Daumier's treatment of the imitating, in the language of the dancers, one of their
subject. arabesques-and it is really very amusing to see him,
Degas's primary motive for painting laundresses at his arms curved, mixing with the dancing master's
work is suggested in a passage from de Goncourt's aesthetics the aesthetics of the artist."
journal. In an entry dated February I3, I874, he de-
scribed Degas's fascination with the repertory of skilled, Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929
specialized movements of laundresses, which he related, H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
72
EDGAR DEGAS
French, 1834-1917
Dancers Practicing at the Bar

Oil colors freely mixed with turpentine, on canvas,
293/4 x 32 inches
Signed (at left): Degas
ALTHOUGH Dancers Practicing at the Bar has a casually ruined works by making too many revisions, Rouart
realistic appearance, Degas's fascination with form and refused to allow him to take back the picture. A story
structure is reflected in the analogy between the water- that it was padlocked to the wall to prevent the artist
ing can (used to lay the dust on the studio floor) and the from taking it away was dismissed as apocryphal
dancer at the right. The handle on the side imitates her by Rouart's son.
left arm, the handle at the top mimics her head, and As in The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage (pages
the spout approximates her right arm and raised leg. 70-71), the medium of Dancers Practicing at the Bar is
Compositional devices such as this bear out the artist's peinture a /'essence. The technique permits a thin, fluid
famous remark, "I assure you that no art was ever less application of paint and leaves a mat, pastel-like surface
spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of when it dries. There exists a peinture a /'essence sketch on
reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, paper of the two dancers, a pastel variant of the dancer at
spontaneity, temperament ... I know nothing." the right, and several drawings related to the figures and
At one point Degas apparently had reservations about the composition.
the visual pun and asked his friend Henri Rouart, the
owner of the picture, if he would allow him to paint out Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929
the watering can. Knowing that Degas sometimes H. 0. Havemeyer Collection
74
75
EDGAR DEGAS
At the Milliner's
Pastel on paper, 30 x 34 inches
Signed and dated (upper right): r882 I Degas
IN 1882 DEGAS produced several pastels of women

trying on hats. Customers in various poses are seen
regarding themselves in mirrors, while shopgirls stand
nearby ready to perform what might be called a milli-
ner's manual of arms. The gestures and postures are less
precise than those of a ballerina or a laundress, but they
are nevertheless similarly codifiable and demonstrable.
These movements belong to the unconscious urban cho-
reography that gives life much of its structure. The
subject was as consciously "modern" as Degas's studies
of cafe singers or laundresses. The Irish author George
Moore wrote that the customer in At the Milliner's was
"as typical of the nineteenth century as Fragonard ladies
are of the court of Louis XV."
The painter Mary Cassatt may have posed for this
pastel. Degas is said to have frequently accompanied his
women friends on such errands and later to have turned
what he saw into pictures.

77
EDGAR DEGAS
French, I834-I9I7
The Singer in Green

(La Chanteuse Verte)
Pastel on paper, 233/4 x 181/4 inches
THE SINGER DEPICTED in this work performs in a cafe

concert, one of the music halls that were a primary source
of entertainment in nineteenth-century Paris. She is the
mid- I 88os' equivalent of a pop singer or a nightclub
entertainer. The strong colors of her costume result from
the exaggerating effects of the footlights. In Degas's
many pictures of cafe-concert entertainers, as in his depic-
tions of dancers both on and off stage, he shows an
interest in the technical aspects of art. Here, for exam-
ple, he has chosen a subject that depends heavily on a
variety of artificial effects: costume, music, gesture, and
stage lighting. The Singer in Green, executed about
I 885, also reflects the artist's interests in subjects from
contemporary urban life and in activities requiring
expert knowledge and specialized training, such as those
performed by dancers, jockeys, and laundresses. Like so
many of Degas's pictures, this work focuses on the
dialogue between art and the process of art, a subject
that fascinated the artist throughout his career.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 6I. 101.7
79
EDGAR DEGAS
The Bather
Pastel on paper, 22 x 183/4 inches
Signed (upper left): Degas
DEGAs's MANY IMAGES of women climbing into or out The ordinariness of the model, her ungainly pose, and
of a bathtub form a significant subgroup within the the banality of the subject neutralize the erotic element.
broad category of bathing subjects that he executed We tend to regard this picture as a work of art per se
during the I88os and I89os. Evidently he first used the rather than an illustration of a particular theme. Like
pose depicted in this example in a pastel of I 88 3 that Monet's Haystacks of I888-9I, the subject seems less
once belonged to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The important than the artist's interpretation of it. The
Bather belongs to a group of pastels, drawings, mono- exaggerations and simplifications create rhythms and
types, and one painting that are usually dated about juxtapositions of color that fascinate us because of their
I89o. The softness of the execution and the vertically pictorial and formal qualities. The theme is less impor-
striated application of the pastel relate them to a number tant than the variations and impositions; Degas, not
of pictures by the artist of the late I 88os. the subject, predicates our interest in these images.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100 . 190

AWoman Having Her Hair Combed

Pastel on paper, 29 1/s x23 7/s inches
Signed (lower left): degas
THIS IS ONE OF ten pastels that Degas exhibited in

I 886 at the eighth and last of the Impressionists' group
exhibitions. In the catalogue he described them as "a
series of nudes of women bathing, washing, drying
themselves ... combing their hair and having it
combed." This work, dated about I885, is the only one
among Degas's pastels of the mid-I88os that fits the last
phrase of the description exactly. Intimate yet imper-
sonal, the scene seems to have been glimpsed through a
keyhole, an effect that Degas consciously sought: "Hith-
erto .. . the nude has always been represented in poses
which presuppose an audience, but these women of
mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other
interests than those involved in their physical condition .
. . . It is as if you looked through a keyhole."
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29. 1 00.)5

H . 0. Havemeyer Collection
8r
EDGAR DEGAS
French, r834-1917
Dancers, Pink and Green

Oil on canvas, 323/s x29 3/4 inches
DANCERS, PINK AND GREEN, of about r88o, is signif-

icant as a late work in which Degas tried to imitate in
paint the effects that he was able to achieve in pastel,
especially the exaggerated effects of such pastels of the
r88os as the Museum's Singer in Green (pages 78-79).
Moreover, the broader treatment of form and the looser
handling of paint indicate a growing concern with the
formal elements of painting-color, surface, and tex-
ture. The subject is increasingly a means to explore
aesthetic interests that have begun to outweigh illusion-
istic concerns. It is an interesting coincidence that at
about the time that Dancers, Pink and Green was painted,
Maurice Denis published his famous statement, "Re-
member that a painting-before it is a battlehorse, a
nude woman, or some anecdote-is essentially a flat
surface covered with colors assembled in a certain or-
der." There is another version of this painting tn
the Louvre, Danseuses Bleues, of about 1890.

CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, r830-1903
Jallais Hill, Pontoise

Oil on canvas, 341/4 x 4 51/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower right): C. Pissarro I 1867
IN r866 PISSARRO moved to Pontoise, northwest of

Paris, where he lived until r869. The lanes, farm build-
ings, hillsides, and plowed and planted fields of this
hilly village on the Oise provided the subject matter for
a group of firmly·structured landscapes that are among
his most important early works. Their strong brush-
strokes and broad, flat areas of color owe much to the
example ofCourbet and Manet, whose work was on view
in large, much discussed exhibitions in Paris.
]allais Hill, Pontoise was exhibited in the Salon of
r868 with another landscape by Pissarro, probably Hill-
sides of /'Hermitage, Pontoise, painted about r867 (Solo-
mon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Even
though Pissarro's two pictures were hung high, and
were therefore difficult to see, Emile Zola praised them
in an article in L'Evenement illustri that was devoted
entirely to a discussion of Pissarro's work. He especially
admiredjallais Hill, Pontoise: "I prefer perhaps ... the
Cote du Jallais .... There is the modern countryside.
One feels that man has passed, turning and cutting the
earth .... And this valley, this hillside embody a sim-
plicity and heroic freedom. Nothing could be so banal
were it not so great. From ordinary reality the painter's
temperament has produced a rare poem of life and
strength."
Although this is a pre-Impressionist work, it has
many Impressionist characteristics. For example, the
clear light reveals little precise detail, and the broad
treatment of the grass, the figures, the road, and the
foliage in the foreground foreshadows the Impression-
ists' interest in the generalized appearance of things that
the critic Louis Leroy scorned in his review of their first
group exhibition in r874. Furthermore, Pissarro appar-
ently included]allais Hill, Pontoise in the sixth Impres-
sionist group exhibition, in r88r.
Bequest of William Church Osborn, 1951

86
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, 1830-1903
A Cowherd
on the Route du Chou, Pontoise
Oil on canvas, 21~k x 36lf4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): C. Pissarro. 1874
AFTER LEAVING PONTOISE in 1869, Pissarro lived in

Louveciennes until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian
War in 1870, when he fled to Brittany and then to
England. In London he often worked with Monet, and
the two artists continued to influence each other after
the war. In 1872 Pissarro returned to Pontoise and
settled at 26 Rue de !'Hermitage.
A Cowherd on the Route du Chou, Pontoise was painted in
1874, the year of the Impressionists' first group exhibi-
tion. It shows the transformation that had taken place in
Pissarro's art since the late 186os. By comparison with
]allais Hill, Pontoise(pages 84-85), the brushstrokesare
short and small, and the palette has been narrowed
largely to a range of soft greens and blues. Although the
painting has the appearance of a spontaneously con-
ceived plein-air work, examination reveals a carefully
constructed composition for which there were probably
several preliminary drawings and studies. Moreover, the
landscape is perceived as a place in which peasants live and
work. Here Pissarro's concern with color and light is in
balance with his increasingly strong interest in what the
critic Georges Lecomte later called "inner essences of
peasant life" ("des essences intimes de la vie agreste").
Gift of Edna H. Sachs, 1956

88
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, 1830-1903
Barges at Pontoise
Oil on canvas, I 8 1/s x 2 I 5/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): C. Pissarro. I 876
HERE PISSARRO FOCUSES on the steam-powered For example, the figure on the bow of the boat is just
barges that carried freight on rivers and canals through- recognizable, and the reflections in the water are barely
out France during the nineteenth century. Although the intelligible. Only two years earlier the critic Louis
steam engine was replaced long ago by the internal Leroy, in a review of the first Impressionist group exhi-
combustion engine, barge traffic is still a significant bition, derided similarly painted works as undisciplined
means of freight transportation in France. Today simi- and meretricious. Indeed, the vigorously applied
larly moored barges can be seen along the quays of Paris. strokes of orange on the hulls of the barges would
Of the six views of barges and factories along the probably have horrified him as much as the "palette
banks of the Oise that Pissarro painted in 1876, this is scrapings placed uniformly on a dirty canvas" that he
stylistically the boldest. Each of the brushstrokes serves complained of in Pissarro's work in I 87 4.
a descriptive function but attention to detail is minimal. Bequest of Mary Cushing Fosburgh, I978
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, r830-1903
La Mere Larcheveque
Oil on canvas, 283/4 x23 1/4 inches
Signed and dated (upper left): C. Pissarro So
DURING THE SECOND half of the nineteenth century,

artists as different as Bouguereau and van Gogh painted
solitary French peasant women, and the results nearly
always reflect the artists' own political, social, and phil-
osophical beliefs. Pissarro was no exception. The sitter
in this picture was one of his neighbors in Pontoise, and
the artist clearly appreciated her solid, unpretentious
appearance as much as Renoir admired the unaffected
manners of the young Parisian waitress at Duval's Res-
taurant (page r 57). However, La Mere Larcheveque can
also be compared to Ingres's famous portrait of the
wealthy businessman and journalist Louis-Fran<_;ois
Bertin in the Louvre, a painting so expressive of early
nineteenth-century middle-class values that Manet
called it "the Buddha of the bourgeoisie." Pissarro's
peasant woman also seems to typify a class and a way of
life: that of the French peasantry during the early years
of the Third Republic. Her still, contained pose empha-
sizes the solidity of her body and seems to assign her a
monumental permanence that challenges the rapid in-
dustrialization and modernization of the French coun-
tryside during the r87os and r88os.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nate B. Spingold, 1956

CAMILLE PISSARRO
Two Young Peasant Women

Oil on canvas, 35 1/4 x45 7/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): C. Pissarro. 1892
PISSARRO BEGAN WORK on this painting, one of his

largest, during the summer of r891. It was completed
by mid-January r892, in time to be included the follow-
ing month in a large exhibition of the artist's work
organized by Joseph Durand-Rue!. Unlike earlier
shows, this was a critical and financial success. Many of
the fifty paintings were sold, but Pissarro kept this
canvas and gave it to his wife.
Against the sharply tilting background of an open
field near his house in Eragny, Pissarro placed the figures
of two young field laborers. Their simple, monumental
forms and reserved expressions give them a heroic qual-
ity that is part of the painting's message. Pissarro, a
confirmed anarchist, opposed the spread of capitalism
and the urbanization and industrialization of French
society. Pissarro's peasants seem to be untroubled,
happy people who work harmoniously in landscapes ripe
with the bountiful results of their labor. Indeed, as
Richard Brettell indicated recently, Pissarro's mature
ideas about rural life grew out of his reading of such
anarchist philosophers as Prince Kropotkin. Pissarro
believed that inevitably all people would return to
the country for at least part of each year to share the
pleasures of agricultural work. As in this picture, his
peasants are not exhausted by their labors but seem
to contemplate the profound rhythm that directs
their lives.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1973 1973· 3 I I. 5
92
93
CAMILLE PISSARRO
Poplars, Eragny
Oil on canvas, 361/2 x25 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): C. Pissarro. 95.
THE COMPOSITION OF Poplars, Eragny is very different

from that of Monet's Poplars of 1891 (pages 138-39).
Pissarro was attracted by the lyrical character of the
subject, Monet by its formal and inherently decorative
qualities. Also, the trees in Monet's painting were
planted at equal intervals along the riverbank, while
those in Pissarro's painting seem to be random and
natural elements in the landscape. Painted during the
summer of 1895, this canvas shows a corner ofPissarro's
garden in Eragny, where he had a residence from 1884
until his death.
The figure in the background is a reminder of Pis-
sarro's lifelong interest in French peasant life. However,
like the artist's other late landscapes, it was painted from
a window in his studio. Apparently Pissarro saw nine-
teenth-century rural France as a kind of Arcadia that was
best left untouched by the Industrial Revolution. The
artist's celebration of this aspect of French life may seem
a confirmed anarchist's stubborn refusal to come to
terms with modern existence in the 189os, but it is
more likely an affirmation of a way of life that peacefully
coexisted with that of cities such as Paris and Rouen
(pages 96-103).
Poplars, Eragny was among the group of works that
Pissarro sold to Durand-Rue! on November 22, 1895.
The dealer included it in the major exhibition of the
artist's work that he held in the spring of 1896.
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (I876-1967), 1967
94
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, r830-1903
Morning, an Overcast Day, Rouen

Oil on canvas, 21Vs x25Vs inches
IN HIS LATER years Pissarro developed an eye ailment

that gradually prevented him from working outside. As
a result, many of his city views of the r89os and early
1900s were painted from the windows ofhotel rooms in
Rouen and Paris (pages 98-99, 102-3). From January
to April r 896 and again from September to November
of that year he was in Rouen, where, according to his
letters, he became especially interested in the "motif of
the iron bridge on a rainy day, with much traffic,
carriages, pedestrians, workers on the quays, boats,
smoke, mist in the distance, the whole scene fraught
with animation and life." This painting is one of a group
whose subject is the Boieldieu Bridge, or Grand Pont,
which Pissarro painted from a room in the Hotel
d'Angleterre. Its title (Matin, Temps Gris, Rouen) is
thought to be Pissarro's own; it reflects his continuing
interest in the kind of veracity associated with Impres-
sionism during the r87os and with Neo-Impressionism
during the r88os. However, the vapor from the steam-
boat in the foreground and the smoke from the chimney
of the gasworks in the background suggest an enthusi-
asm for industrialization and the rise of the modern city
that is lacking in the artist's earlier work, in which he
tended to emphasize the values of rural life and an
agrarian society.
Bequest of Gregoire Tarnopol, 1979, and Gift of Alexander Tarnopol, 1980

1980.21. I
97
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, 1830-1903
The Boulevard Montmartre

on a Winter Morning
Oil on canvas, 2 5 1h x 3 2 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): C. Pissarro. 97.
IN FEBRUARY I897 Pissarro arrived in Paris from

Eragny and took a room in the Grand Hotel de Russie
overlooking the Boulevard Montmartre. In a letter to
his son Lucien he said he thought his dealer would be
interested in a series of paintings of the boulevard at
different times of day and during a variety of atmo-
spheric conditions. Both Pissarro and Durand-Rue! had
admired Monet's Haystacks(pages I40-4I) and Poplars
(pages I 38-39) when they were shown at the gallery in
I89I and I892, respectively. The strong critical and
commercial success of Monet's series probably encour-
aged Pissarro to pursue a similar course.
The Boulevard Montmartre paintings were executed
during the early months of I 897 and are frequently
mentioned in the artist's letters during February and
March. Like the individual works in Monet's series, all
are slightly different in detail and point of view. Stylisti-
cally, however, these paintings recall the classic phase of
Impressionism in the I87os.
Gift ofKatrin S. Vietor, in loving memory ofErnest G. Vietor, 196o 6o.174

99
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, 1830-1903
Rue de l'Epicerie, Rauen

Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 5/s inches
Signed and dated (lower left): C. Pissarro. I 1898
IN A LETTER of August 19, 1898, Pissarro announced

to his son Lucien, "Yesterday I found an excellent place
from which I can paint the Rue de l'Epicerie and even
the market, a really interesting one, which takes place
every Friday." Ultimately he painted the view three
times, but the Museum's picture is the only one that
shows the market, on the Place de Haute-Vieille-Tour, in
progress.
In Monet's Rouen Cathedral (pages 144-45), the play
of light on carved stone makes the facade a nearly
abstract image. In Pissarro's view, the cathedral towers
are a natural part of a lively urban scene. The two
pictures represent entirely different interpretations of
the same subject, although each is rooted in empirical
truth. Pissarro's apparently more conservative picture is
in many ways very similar in composition to a view of
the Provenc;al town of Gardanne painted by his protege
Cezanne (pages 190-91).
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard Gift, 1960 6o.s
roo
CAMILLE PISSARRO
French, r830-I903
The Garden of the

Tuileries on a
Winter Afternoon, II
Oil on canvas, 28 7/s x 36"/s inches
ON DECEMBER 4, r898, Pissarro wrote from Paris

that he had "engaged an apartment at 204 Rue de
Rivoli, facing the Tuileries, with a superb view of the
Garden, the Louvre to the left, in the background the
houses on the quays behind the trees, to the right the
Dome des lnvalides, the steeples of Ste. Clothilde be-
hind the solid mass of chestnut trees. It is very beautiful.
I shall paint a fine series." He painted five views of the
Tuileries Gardens that are very similar to this one, and
eight looking east toward the Louvre. Pissarro worked
on all fourteen canvases simultaneously and recorded his
progress in letters to his son Lucien. In late May he sent
eleven to his dealer, Durand-Rue!. The artist noted in
his letters that the paintings were generally well liked,
and the following year he rented the same apartment and
executed a second group of fourteen paintings.
The scene remained more or less the same in the six
views of the Tuileries, permitting Pissarro to concen-
trate on changes in light and atmosphere. In contrast to
Monet's series of the r89os, in which exaggerations and
simplifications reflect the artist's subjective experience
of nature, these pictures differ in mood because of objec-
tively recorded changes in atmospheric conditions and
time of day. The naturalist-realist element in Pissarro's
work remained as strong at the end of his career as it had
been at the beginning. Pissarro also continued to affirm
the importance of the human presence in a landscape,
whether the solitary figure in Poplars, Eragny (pages 94-
95) or the citizens of Paris out for a stroll on a late
afternoon in winter.
Gift from the Collection of Marshall Field III, 1979 1979·414
103
CLAUDE MONET
The Green Wave

Oil on canvas, I 9 1/s x 2 5 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Cl. Monet 65
THIS PRECOCIOUS WORK was probably painted in the

fall of 1865, when Monet was working in Trouville with
Boudin, Charles Daubigny, and Courbet. Monet ad-
mired the work of Courbet during this period, but in
The Green Wave the influence of Manet is far more
evident. The handling of paint and the composition,
especially the high horizon line, are clearly indebted to
Manet's two depictions of American warships, The
"Kearsarge" at Boulogne (private collection) and The Battle
of the "Kearsarge" and the uA/abama" (Philadelphia
Museum of Art), which had been exhibited in Paris the
previous year. Even before painting The Green Wave,
Monet had made two seascapes so dependent on the style
ofManet that the older artist complained of plagiarism.
Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.III

104
CLAUDE MONET
The Bodmer Oak,

Fontainebleau Forest
Oil on canvas, 37 7/s xso 7/s inches
Signed (lower right): Claude Monet.
MONET FIRST VISITED the forest of Fontainebleau in

the spring of I 863. He stayed in the village of Chailly,
about half a mile from Barbizon. He returned for an-
other visit in the spring of I864, and in April I865 he
moved to Chailly for a year. The Bodmer Oak depicts a
subject that had long been popular among the group of
painters known as the Barbizon School, who lived and
worked in the neighboring village. The tree was a
particularly favorite subject of Karl Bodmer, who had
exhibited a painting of it in the Salon of I85o.
This work is one of at least five paintings of I 865 that
anticipate Monet's project for Le Dijeuner sur /'Herbe (The
Luncheon on the Grass), an immense painting, nearly
fifteen feet high and over nineteen feet wide, that now
survives in the form of two fragments, in the Louvre and
the Eknayan Collection, Paris. The Bodmer Oak was
probably done when Monet was searching for a suitable
landscape setting for the large painting. Unlike his
other forest scenes of this period, it is quite similar in
composition to a finished sketch (Pushkin Museum of
Fine Arts, Moscow) that Monet made in I866 for Le
Dijeuner sur /'Herbe. Although The Bodmer Oak is not
directly related toLe Dijeuner sur /'Herbe, and its size and
finish establish it as an independent project, it seems
clearly to have been a preliminary step toward formally
beginning the life-size picnic scene.
Gift ofSam Salz and Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, by exchange, 1964 64.210
I06
CLAUDE MONET
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse

Oil on canvas, 295/s x4o inches
Signed (lower left): Claude Monet
MONET SPENT THE summer of I867 with an aunt in

Sainte-Adresse, a small town just north of Le Havre on
the Channel coast. On June 2 5 he wrote to his friend the
painter Frederic Bazille that he was working on about
twenty pictures. One of them was probably The Beach at
Sainte-Adresse: "Among the seascapes, I am doing the
regattas ofLe Havre with many figures on the beach and
the outer harbor covered with small sails." He also asked
his friend to send IOO to I 50 francs to help with ex-
penses that included those of Camille Doncieux, who
was pregnant with his child, and whom he had been
forced to leave in Paris in order to save money.
In its composition this canvas is not as ambitious as
the Museum's Terrace at Sainte-Adresse (pages I ro-r r),
also painted in r867, but it reflects Monet's growing
fascination with color and light. Note, for example, the
variety of blues and greens in the water, the blue
shadows behind the figures in the left foreground, and
the different blues on the hull of the boat on the beach.
These effects indicate. a strong interest in specific visual
and atmospheric conditions that is in marked contrast to
the idealized; formulaic approach of painters trained at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where pure landscape was
considered beneath the dignity of a serious artist.
The brushstrokes used for the figures in the middle
ground are also noteworthy. They are quite similar to
those that Louis Leroy called "black tongue-lickings" in
his satiric review of the first Impressionist exhibition, in
r874. In short, by I867 Monet had already evolved the
chief characteristics of the style that was finally given a
name seven years later: Impressionism.
Bequest of William Church Osborn, I 95 I
Io8
CLAUDE MONET
French, 1840-1926
Terrace at Sainte-Adresse
Oil on canvas, 38 5/s x 51 1/s inches
Signed (lower right): Claude Monet
AMONG THE WORKS Monet painted at Sainte-Adresse

during the summer of 1867 were The Beach at Sainte-
Adresse (pages ro8-9) and Terrace at Sainte-Adresse. On
June 2 5 he reported to Bazille that all was well: "I have
been here for fifteen days, happy and as well as can be
expected. Everyone is. charming and admires every
stroke of my brush." Undoubtedly his admirers in-
cluded the figures depicted in this painting: the artist's
cousin Jeanne Marguerite Lecadre, standing beside an
unidentified gentleman in the middle ground, and
Monet's aunt, Madame Lecadre, and his father,
Adolphe, seated in the foreground.
By choosing an elevated vantage point and compos-
ing his picture within horizontal areas of relatively
similar size, Monet emphasized the two-dimensionality
of the painting. The three horizontal zones seem to rise
parallel to the picture plane instead of receding into
clearly defined space. The flags, especially the tricolor
on the right, may be a witty analogy to the composition.
The subtle tension between illusionism and the two-
dimensionality of the surface remained an important
characteristic of Monet's style throughout his career.
In I 920 Monet himself recalled the avant-garde char-
acter of Terrace at Sainte-Adresse, as the art dealer Rene
Gimpel recorded in his diary after visiting the artist in
Giverny: "Monet showed us a photograph of one of his
canvases, which represents his father looking at the sea
... he pointed out to us that on each side of the composi-
tion there is a pole with a flag and that, at that time, this
composition was considered very daring."
Purchased with special contributions and purchase funds given or bequeathed by

friends of the Museum, I 967 67.24 I
IIO
CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-I926
La Grenouillere
Oil on canvas, 293/s x 39 1/4 inches
Signed (lower right): Claude Monet
IN I869, WHEN this picture was painted, Monet and

Renoir were living near one another in Saint-Michel, a
few miles west of Paris. They often visited La Grenouil-
lere, a swimming spot with a boat rental and a cafe on
the Seine. On September 2 5 Monet wrote to Bazille, "I
do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouil-
lere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it
is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here,
also wants to do this painting."
There are actually six known paintings of the subject,
separable into three pairs by each of the two artists. This
example and the one by Renoir in the Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm, are nearly identical in composition. They
were undoubtedly painted side by side.
Pursuing interests earlier defined in Terrace at Sainte-
Adresse (pages I I o- I I), Monet concentrated on repeti-
tive elements-the ripples in the water, foliage, boats,
and the human figure-to weave a fabric of brush-
strokes that, although emphatically brushstrokes, re-
tain a strong descriptive quality. X-rays and pentimenti
reveal that Monet changed the positions of the boats in
the foreground, an indication that in the late I86os his
interests already transcended the limitations suggested
by Cezanne's famous remark, "Monet is only an eye,
but, my God, what an eye!"

II3
114
CLAUDE MONET
Landscape near Zaandam

Oil on canvas, 17 1 ~h6 x263/s inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Claude Monet. 72
MONET SPENT THE Franco-Prussian War, from the fall

of r87o to the summer of r87 r, in England, but when
hostilities ended he did not return directly to France.
Instead, he went to Zaandam, a town in Holland to the
north of Amsterdam. It has been suggested that he was
encouraged to do so by Paul Durand-Rue!, whom he had
met in London. Indeed, in September 1872 the dealer
bought six of the twenty-four works that Monet painted
along the picturesque waterways of Zaandam. At that
time few people shared Durand-Ruel's confidence in the
young artist.
Monet was particularly attracted by views across the
Zaan River and the canals in the area. In several in-
stances he selected a vantage point that permitted him
to include a great deal of reflection image.ry. Much of the
excitement in these paintings results from the delicate
interplay between the appearance of the three-dimen-
sional world and its muted, gently distorted image
mirrored on the rippling water. In subject and handling
these works foreshadow many of Monet's views along the
Seine at Argenteuil, pictures that are synonymous with
Impressionism during the early and mid-r87os.
In Paris, Monet's Zaandam pictures were admired by
his colleagues. In a letter to a friend, Eugene Boudin
wrote, "{Monet] has brought back some very beautiful
studies from Holland and I believe that he is called to
take one of the leading places in our school."
From a position just beyond the last house on the left
in this painting, Monet painted a view looking in the
opposite direction (private collection).
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
115
rr6
CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-I926
Apple Trees in Bloom

Oil on canvas, 24 1/z x 39Vs inches
Signed and dated (lower left): 7 3 Claude Monet·
THIS WORK WAS painted in Argenteuil, a village on the

Seine northwest of Paris. In the early I87os Argenteuil
was a favorite gathering place for the Impressionists.
Monet, Manet, Sisley, Renoir, and Gustave Caillebotte
worked there at various times between I 87 I and I 87 8.
Apple Trees in Bloom was painted during the classic
period of Impressionism, in the early and mid-I87os.
The pastel colors of spring and the clear light provided
Monet with a pretext for an almost purely chromatic
interpretation of nature. Indeed, he later advised an-
other painter, "Try to forget what objects you have
before you, a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely
think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of
pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks
to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your
own impression of the scene before you."
Pissarro painted a similar picture the previous year,
Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes (National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.).
Bequest of Mary Livingston Willard, 1926 26. !86.1
II7
CLAUDE MONET
The Pare Monceau, Paris

Oil on canvas, 23 1h x 32 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet 76
IN THE SPRING OF 1876 Monet painted three views of

the Pare Manceau. Situated on the Boulevard de Cour-
celles in the eighth arrondissement of Paris and surround-
ed by fashionable town houses, the park was planned in
the form of an English garden after designs made by
Carmontelle, a French artist and writer, for Philippe
d'Orleans in the late eighteenth century.
This painting relies on a compositional device that
Monet used at various times throughout his career. He
positioned his easel in order to focus on a contained area;
in this case the space is delineated by the vegetation at
the sides and the houses in the background. The best-
known examples of this kind of composition are the
paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare that Monet did in
1876-77. As William Seitz has remarked, "It should go
without saying that he did not choose a subject or a
vantage point at random, and that while the choice was
being made a pictorial solution was already forming in
his mind."
In 1878 Monet returned to the Pare Manceau and
twice painted a view looking toward the buildings visi-
ble at the left in this painting. One of them, Parisians
Enjoying the Pare Monceau, is illustrated on page 12 I.
Bequest ofLoula D. Lasker, New York City, 1961 '59-206

CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-I926
Parisians Enjoying the Pare Monceau

Oil on canvas, 285/s x2r3/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet 78·
THIS IS ONE of two very similar views of the Pare

Monceau that Monet painted in I878. Comparison with
an earlier painting of the same subject (pages I I 8- I 9)
shows that the artist has turned in a new direction. The
disposition of light and shade in the foreground, the
patterns of the leaves, and the broad contours beginning
to develop in areas of strong contrast suggest that in
I878 Monet had already begun to experiment with the
boldly two-dimensional motifs that would characterize
his work in the I 88os and I 89os.
The cheerfulness of this scene contrasts vividly with
the.poverty that was very much part of Monet's life in
I878. Indeed, the second half of the I87os was a very
difficult period for Monet. Impressionism was under
attack, his second son was born amid dire financial dis-
tress, and his wife's health was rapidly deteriorating.
The Mr. and Mrs. Henry lttleson, Jr. Purchase Fund, 1959 59·142
I20
CLAUDE MONET
Apples and Grapes

Oil on canvas, 26~/s x 35 1/4 inches
Signed (upper right): Claude Monet
IN LATE NOVEMBER 1879 Marthe Hoschede, who later The solidly modeled forms of the fruit suggest the
became one of Monet's stepdaughters, mentioned in a influence of Courbet, who had had a great impact on
letter that he was working on stilllifes, and she specifi- Monet in the 186os. Monet seems also to have been aware
cally referred to a painting of fruit. During late 1879 and of the stilllifes of fruit that Fantin-Latour painted in the
early 188o the artist probably painted three pictures of 186os and 1870s. The artist's emphasis on shape, form,
apples and grapes in a basket. This example and another, and mass suggests a growing dissatisfaction with the
in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, depict the feathery lyricism of classic Impressionism.
same table and basket of fruit. The basket was used
again, but with a different arrangement of fruit, for Still
Life: Apples and Grapes, dated 188o, in the Art Institute
of Chicago. Gift of Henry R. Luce, 1957
!23
CLAUDE MONET
French, r840-1926
Path in the lle Saint-Martin, Vetheuil

Oil on canvas, 3 I 1h x 2 33/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): I 88o Claude Monet
FROM APRIL 1878 until November r88r Monet lived

in Vetheuil, a village on the Seine about twenty-five
miles northwest of Paris. In September of the year
following his arrival, his wife, Camille, died after a long
illness, but he continued to paint the surrounding land-
scape almost without interruption. During the summer
of I 88o he painted twenty-six views of the area around
Vetheuil. Six were done on the Ile Saint-Martin, one of
the many nearby islands in the Seine. In this example
the town ofVetheuil is visible in the background.
A variety of formal problems engaged the artist's
attention during this period. In this picture, rapid,
flickering brushstrokes create a strong pattern in the
foreground that diminishes the illusion of space and
emphasizes the abstract character of the painted surface.
There is another version of this picture in a private
collection in Switzerland. In r88r Monet returned to
the site and again painted the view twice.
Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956
124
CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-1926
The Seine at Vetheuil

Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet I 88o
THE REDUCED RANGE of the palette, the markedly

linear character of the composition, and the prominence
of the brushstrokes in this canvas dated I 88o are indica-
tive of a change in the character of Monet's work.
Increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of ortho-
dox Impressionism, Monet began to experiment with a
variety of brushstrokes and types of composition. The
change is largely a function of his emphasis on the
elements of painting itself: stroke, palette, surface, and
structure. Technical issues began to dominate the inter-
est in color and light that had been the focus of most of
his work in the 187os. In The Seine at Vetheuil the
sweeping curve of the riverbank is typical of the inher-
ently strong, relatively simple shapes that began to
appear in Monet's work in the early 188os. In composi-
tion it foreshadows the many views of the coast of
Normandy that he painted during the 188os and 1890s.
Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915

Theodore M. Davis Collection
127
CLAUDE MONET
Vetheuil in Summer
Oil on canvas, 23 5/s x39 1/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet 188o
IN THIS VIEW OF Vetheuil, painted from the opposite

side of the Seine during the summer of 188o, the flicker
of individual brushstrokes reflects Monet's concern with
recording as accurately as possible sensations of color
and light. Ironically, his desire to transcribe the actual
experience of color and light resulted in paintings with
an increasingly abstract character. Indeed, the imagery
nearly dissolves in the myriad touches of paint.
Vetheuil in Summer was painted two or three months
after the fifth Impressionist exhibition, held in April
188o. Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Cezanne did not par-
ticipate in the show, an indication of the deep divisions
that had emerged within the group. Monet and Renoir
chose instead to submit work to the Salon (one painting
by Monet and two by Renoir were accepted). Both
painters were motivated largely by the need for financial
reward that often resulted from official recognition. The
Impressionists' group exhibitions continued until
1886, but they had evidently served their purpose by
188o. Paintings such as Vetheuil in Summer indicate that
Monet's defection to the Salon did not result in a more
conservative approach to painting, but rather that the
criteria of the Salon jury had changed to accommodate
the avant-garde.
Bequest ofWilliam Church Osborn, 1951
128
129
CLAUDE MONET
Sunflowers
Oil on canvas, 393/4 x 32 inches
Signed and dated (upper right): Claude Monet 81
IN I 88 I MONET painted four views of the steps de-

scending to the garden behind his house in Vetheuil. In
each of the paintings there are sunflowers growing on
both sides of the steps. The blossoms in this still life
must have come directly from the garden; they were
probably cut on a day when bad weather had made it
impossible for Monet to work outside.
In I 882 Sunflowers was included in the seventh Im-
pressionist exhibition. Four years later it was shown at
the National Academy of Design, New York, thus be-
coming one of the first Impressionist paintings exhib-
ited in the United Stat~s.
Although van Gogh's depictions of sunflowers are
better known, the Dutch artist claimed to prefer this
painting to his own. In a letter of December I888 to his
brother, van Gogh wrote, "Gauguin was telling me the
other day that he had seen a picture by Claude Monet of
sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, very fine, but-he
likes mine better. I don't agree."

CLAUDE MONET
Chrysanthemums
Oil on canvas, 39 1h x 3 21/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Claude Monet 82
BETWEEN I858 AND I882 Monet painted forty-nine

stilllifes, twenty-one of flowers. For the artist, flower
painting was an enterprise that combined his interests in
gardening and painting. The relationship between the
two assumed a far more important role after he moved to
Giverny in I 88 3.
Chrysanthemums is very likely one of the large stilllifes
that Monet mentioned in a letter to his dealer in the fall
of I882. It was painted either in the town of Poissy,
northwest of Paris, where Monet lived from December
I 88 I until April I 88 3, or in Pourville, the village on
the Channel coast where he spent the summer of I882.
Like his Sunflowers of I88I (pages I30-3I), it was
probably painted when poor weather had driven the
artist indoors. Both pictures are investigations of a
limited range of harmonies, but each also exploits color,
rhythm, surface, and touch to the fullest extent. Painted
at a time when Monet had become dissatisfied with the
tenets of Impressionism, such pictures are as much
pretexts for a display of technical virtuosity as they are
vehicles for the study of color and light that is generally
associated with the Impressionist movement.

CLAUDE MONET
The Manneporte, Etretat, I The sunlight that strikes the Manneporte has an
Oil on canvas, 253/4 x32 inches especially dematerializing effect that permitted the art-
Signed and dated (lower left): Claude Monet 83 ist to interpret the cliff almost exclusively in terms of
color and luminosity. Most nineteenth-century visitors
MONET SPENT THE first three weeks ofFebruary 1883 were attracted to the rock as an extraordinary natural
in Etretat, a fishing village and resort northeast of Le phenomenon, as many surviving photographs made for
Havre on the Channel coast. He painted eighteen views sale to tourists attest. Monet, however, conveys little
of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations sense of the Manneporte as a natural wonder, concentrat-
in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and ing instead on his own changing perception of it at
the Manneporte. Three years later Guy de Maupassant different times of day. The nature of Monet's interests at
reported that in Etretat Monet worked on several can- Etretat is made apparent by comparing his with other
vases at a time in order to depict changes in light and artists' views of the area, such as those by Boudin.
atmospheric conditions. Bequest of William Church Osborn, 1951
134
the Riviera late in 1883. Furthermore, we know that by
The Manneporte, Etretat, II this time Monet had become less interested in working
Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 3/4 inches directly from nature, because in a letter to his dealer he
reported that he continued to refine the Etretat paint-
ings in his studio at Giverny. Equally important, in
THE SUBJECT OF this painting is the same dramatically these pictures the artist's subjective response began to
arched projection in the cliff at Etretat that is illustrated play a more important role. Monet's tendency to inter-
on the facing page. Monet painted it six times from this pret and exaggerate his observations grew during the
angle: twice during each of three visits to Etretat in 188os as he concentrated increasingly on painting
1883, 1885, and 1886. groups of works with a single theme. In many ways the
The differences between the two pictures are too paintings of the Manneporte anticipate the Rouen
pronounced to have resulted from changes in light and Cathedral series of 1894, in which light is also re-
atmospheric conditions alone. This work reflects the flected from an enormous stone surface (pages 144-45).
brightening of Monet's palette that followed his trip to Bequest of Lizzie P. Bliss, 1931
CLAUDE MONET
Rapids on the
Petite Creuse at Fresselines
Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 361/s inches
MONET FIRST VISITED Fresselines, a small village in

the departement of Creuse, during the second half of
February I889. He was invited initially in June I888 by
a poet and musician, Maurice Rollinat, who had ex-
tended the invitation through a mutual friend, Gustave
Geffroy, the influential critic who later became Monet's
biographer, but the trip was postponed until the winter.
After the visit Monet returned to his home in Giverny, .
but by March 6 he was back in Fresselines. During the
next ten weeks he painted at least twenty-three works
depicting the area around the confluence of two rivers,
the Petite Creuse and the Grande Creuse.
This is one of two nearly identical paintings of the
shallow rapids near the confluence. The other is in a
private collection. Monet positioned his easel on the
steep bank of the ravine through which the Petite Creuse
flows. The raised vantage point permitted him to look
down onto the subject, and the resulting ambiguous
space produces a strong two-dimensional effect. This is
one of a number. of canvases from the late I 88os that
explore ideas that Monet pursued more fully later. The
artist's viewpoint, the subject, and even the purples and
greens recur in many of his pictures after I 900.

CLAUDE MONET
French, 1840-1926
Poplars
Oil on canvas, 32lf4 x 32 1/s inches
DURING THE SUMMER and fall of 1891 Monet painted

a series of works depicting poplars along the banks of the
Epte River, about a mile from his house in Giverny.
Completion of the series was temporarily threatened
when the village of Limetz, on the opposite side of the
Epte from Giverny, decided to sell the trees at auction.
In order to finish the series Monet made a financial
arrangement with a local lumber merchant, who pur-
chased the trees and allowed them to stand until the
artist had completed his work.
Some of the Poplars were painted from the banks of
the river; others, such as this example, were painted
from a boat. According to Lilla Cabot Perry, an Ameri-
can who spent the summers of 1889-1909 in Giverny, ·
Monet used a specially outfitted boat: "The Poplars
series ... were painted from a broad-bottomed boat fit-
ted up with grooves to hold a number of canvases. He
told me that in one of his Poplars the effect lasted only
seven minutes, or until the sunlight left a certain leaf,
when he took out the next canvas and worked on that."
Monet first exhibited the Poplars, like the Haystacks,
as a series. In 1892 fifteen were shown by themselves in
two small rooms at the Durand-Rue! Gallery in Paris.
They were well received, but opinions differed as to
their aim. Some critics praised them for naturalism,
others admired their abstract and decorative qualities.

CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-I926
Haystacks in Snow
Oil on canvas, 253/4 x36 1/4 inches
HAYSTACKS APPEAR frequently in nineteenth-century

French paintings-usually as incidental elements.
However, from I 888 until I 89 I Monet made haystacks
the principal subject of a group of canvases. Several
stood in a field across the road from his house in
Giverny, and he painted them at different times of day
throughout the year. Although he had executed multi-
ple versions of a single subject before, the Haystacks
were the first group that he exhibited as a series.
During an interview with the due de Trevise in I920,
Monet said that he had been forced to work on a number
of canvases at the same time because of the rapidly
changing light. At first he thought that two would
be sufficient, but as the light shifted he had to send his
stepdaughter back to the house again and again for
additional canvases. The emphasis on naturalism
implicit in Monet's concern with changing light is,
however, somewhat deceptive. For example, the simpli-
fications, exaggerations, and marked sense of mood in
this picture suggest a strong element of subjectivity, at
which Monet himself hinted in a conversation with a
Dutch critic, Willem Byvanck, during the course of the
I89I exhibition of fifteen Haystacks at the Durand-
Rue! Gallery in Paris.

CLAUDE MONET
The Thaw (La Debacle)

Oil on canvas, 26x 39 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet 93
DURING THE WINTER of 1892-93 Monet painted

eight views of the Seine near Bennecourt, a river village
a few miles southeast of Giverny. Six of the eight are
identical in composition to The Thaw. In this series of
paintings Monet was able to explore the subtlest varia-
tions in color and mood that resulted from the changing
light. The heavy atmosphere in combination with the
reflective surfaces of snow, ice, and water provided the
artist with a wide range of the lightest blues, greens,
grays, and mauves. The truest whites in the painting are
unpainted areas of the prepared ground of the canvas.
Monet's first paintings of ice floes on the Seine were
done in Vetheuil in 1879-80. Both the Vetheuil and the
Bennecourt series foreshadow Monet's early series of
Water Lilies (1903-8).

143
CLAUDE MONET
Rauen Cathedral
Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 2•//s inches
DuRING FEBRUARY-APRIL 1892 and February-

March 1893, Monet produced more than thirty views of
Rouen Cathedral. Twenty-seven finished paintings, one
unfinished painting, and one sketch depict the facade
alone. Painted from the second stories of 23 Place de la
Cathedrale (1892) and 81 Rue Grand-Pont (1893), they
constitute the group known as the Rouen Cathedral series.
The Museum's example is one of nine that show the church
from the Place de la Cathedrale.
Twenty-four works in the series are signed and dated
1894, one is signed and dated 1893, and two are signed
but not dated. All were probably finished later in the
artist's studio in Giverny, where they were worked on
together and interrelated. In 1895 twenty were exhib-
ited as a series at the Durand-Rue! Gallery in Paris.
They sold rapidly for 15,000 francs apiece, an extremely
high price at that time. The Metropolitan Museum's
example WclS included in the gallery's exhibition, where
it was titled Le Portail (Solei/) {Tf?e Portal (Sunlight)).
The significance of these works has been interpreted by
George Heard Hamilton: "The twenty moments repre-
sented by the twenty views of Rouen are less views of the
cathedral (one alone would have been sufficient for that),
less even twenty moments in the going and coming of
the light (which is an insignificant situation), than
twenty episodes in Monet's private, perceptual life.
They are twenty episodes in the history of his conscious-
ness, and in thus substituting 'the laws of subjective
experience for those of objective experience' he revealed
a new psychic rather than physical reality."
Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 191~

Theodore M. Davis Collection
145
CLAUDE MONET
Morning on the Seine near Giverny

Oil on canvas, 32 1/s x 365/s inches
THE MORNING ON THE SEINE series WaS begun in Maurice Guillemot, visited Monet's studio in I897, at a
I 896 but not completed until the following year be- time when the Mornings on the Seine were lined up on
cause of inclement weather. The pictures were painted easels to be completed together as a series. Although
from a boat that Monet had converted into a floating work in the open air remained an important aspect of
studio. For an extended period he rose before dawn and Monet's painting, it was now part of a more complex
reached his boat before sunrise in order to observe and procedure.
paint the changing effects of light as the sun came up. Eighteen Mornings on the Seine were shown as a
The critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in I 898 that work series in an exhibition of sixty-one paintings at the
on the series began only after a patient search for a Georges Petit Gallery in 1898. One was dated I896,
particular kind of composition: "Monet wandered and the others were all dated 1897. In subject, and in
among the meadows, under the light shade of the pop- Monet's emphasis on the imagery of reflections, the
lars. He went up and down the river in his boat, skirting series anticipates the Water Lilies paintings to which he
the islands, searching deliberately and with infinite care soon turned his attention.
for views suited to his sense of order, form, horizon line,
play of light, shadows, and color." Another critic, Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956 56.135-4
CLAUDE MONET
Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies

Oil on canvas, 36lf2 x 29 inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Claude Monet I 99
IN 1893 MONET BOUGHT a small piece of land just

across the railroad tracks (now a road) that bordered one
side of his property in Giverny. The newly acquired plot
included a small pond that was fed by a nearby stream.
In the mid-189os he built an arched footbridge on the
axis of the main garden path in front of his house. It was
probably modeled on a bridge depicted in one of the
many Japanese prints in his collection.
In 1899-1900 Monet painted a series of at least
seventeen views of the footbridge and the pond. In 1900
thirteen of them were included in an exhibition of
twenty-six paintings by the artist at the Durand-Rue!
Gallery in Paris.
Monet later purchased more property adjacent to the
pond, which he expanded and refined. In the 1920s he
again used the Japanese footbridge as the central motif
in an extended series of paintings.

CLAUDE MONET
French, I840-I926
The Houses of Parliament

Oil on canvas, 32 x 36 3/s inches
MONET FIRST PAINTED views of the Thames tn ninety canvases. When the light changed he put one
I 870-7 I, the year that he spent in England in order to canvas aside and turned his attention to another until
escape the Franco-Prussian War. Two decades later he the light changed again. In November Monet returned
visited London briefly and wrote to his dealer, Paul to Giverny, but in February I 900, back in London, he
Durand-Rue!, that he wanted to work there again. continued to work on the Thames series until early
However, he did not return until the fall of I899, when April. In his studio in Giverny he worked on the paint-
he began the so-called Thames series, a large group of ings until at least I903, when he wrote Durand-Rue!, "I
works comprising views of Waterloo Bridge, Charing cannot send you a single canvas of London ... it is indis-
Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. The views pensable to have them all before me, and to tell the truth
of the two bridges were painted from the window and not one is definitely finished. I develop them all to-
balcony of Monet's fifth-floor room at the Hotel Savoy; gether., In May I904 thirty-seven were exhibited at the
the Houses of Parliament were painted from Saint Durand-Rue! Gallery in Paris.
Thomas's Hospital directly across the river.
In London Monet reportedly worked on as many as Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956
151
ALFRED SISLEY
The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne

Oil on canvas, 1 9 1h x 2 53/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Sisley. 1872
WHEN CHARLES GLEYRE retired from teaching in

1864, several of his students, including Sisley, Monet,
and Renoir, continued to work together. In the absence
of conventional instruction, they turned their energies
increasingly to painting landscapes out-of-doors in the
countryside around Paris-as had the members of the
so-called Barbizon School a generation earlier. On occa-
sion the young artists even painted side by side, and
apparently the experience encouraged Sisley to move
beyond his early style, which reflects the influence of
Camille Corot and Charles Daubigny, and to adopt the
fundamentals of what would come to be known as
Impressionism. Those fundamentals are already evident
in The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne: the informal com-
position, the high-keyed, chalky color applied in short
strokes that mimic the effects of sparkling light, and the
unpretentious subject matter. Unquestionably one of
Sisley's masterpieces, this painting in effect celebrates
all the little villages, byways, and bridges that are the
soul of France. To capture that was the ultimate goal for
Sisley, as it had been for the preceding generation of
itinerant landscape painters.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry lttleson, Jr., 1964

ALFRED SISLEY
British, I839-I899
View ofMarly-le-Roi
from Coeur-Volant
Oil on canvas, 253/4 x 363/s inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Sisley. 76
TRADITIONALLY TITLED View of Louveciennes, this

painting was recently identified by historians in that
small French town as a panoramic view of a neighboring
village, Marly-le-Roi, where Sisley was living in I876.
He executed two similar views during the winter of
I876, and in all three pictures the steeple of the church
of Saint-Vigor rises above the houses in the back-
ground.To paint this view, Sisley set up his easel in a
garden on the property of Robert Le Lubez in the hamlet
of Coeur-Volant. Le Lubez was a noted amateur singer
and patron of composers, two of the most famous of
whom were Gounod and Saint-Saens.
The interpretation of the visible world almost exclu-
sively in terms of color and light and the use of rapidly
applied, loose touches of paint are typical of the classic
phase of Impressionism, during the mid-I87os. In
I876 Sisley's style was quite close to that of Monet.
Indeed, this picture seems to combine the stylistic char-
acteristics of the paintings of the Pare Monceau by
Monet illustrated on pages I I 8- I 9 and I 2 I .
I 54
PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR
French, 1841-1919
A Road in Louveciennes
Signed (lower right): Renoir
THE PAINT HANDLING indicates that A Road in Louve- 187os: tiny dabs and dashes for the foliage in the middle
ciennes was executed about 1870, a date that is supported ground, but somewhat longer flourishes in the fore-
by the figures' style of dress. Recently the site has been ground; sweeping, viscous strokes for the path crossed
identified as the village ofLouveciennes, where Renoir's with shadows; thinner, more regularly placed strokes of
parents had a summer house. Pissarro lived and worked white and blue for the sky; and a few bold streaks of im-
in the village in 1869-70, and he painted a view of the pasto for the clouds. Almost certainly executed out-of-
same road (National Gallery, London). His seems to doors, the picture is in effect drawn directly with paint.
have been painted in the spring, whereas Renoir's ap- Four years later such works were derisively labeled
pears to have been done at the height of summer. "Impressionist," but by the time Louis Leroy coined
The idyllic mood and the dominant blue and green the term the movement was already a fait accompli.
tonalities reflect Renoir's admiration for French eigh-
teenth-century landscape, but the lively and varied
Bequest of Emma A. Sheafer, 1973
brushwork is unmistakably that of Renoir in the early The Lesley and Emma Sheafer Collection
A Waitress at
Duval's Restaurant
Oil on canvas, 39 1h x 28 1k inches
Signed (lower left): Renoir.
EDMOND RENOIR WROTE in 1879 that his brother was out clearly against four regularly shaped zones of muted
committed to art rooted in actual experience rather than color. The informal pose and Renoir's direct, seemingly
contrived with the assistance of professional models spontaneous technique are characteristic of the kind of
wearing costumes. For this picture, painted about work that the critic Edmond Duranty described in his
1875, Renoir depicted a waitress whom he had met in essay "The New Painting," written in 1876 upon the
one of several Parisian restaurants established by a occasion of an exhibition at the Durand-Rue! Gallery
butcher named Duval. Evidently he asked her to come that included work by Renoir, Degas, Monet, Morisot,
to his studio to pose in her uniform, just as she looked Bazille, Sisley, and others: "Farewell to the human body
while working. As he explained in a different context, "I treated like a vase with a decorative, swinging curve;
like painting best when it looks eternal without boast- farewell to the uniform monotony of the framework, the
ing about it: an everyday eternity, revealed on the street flayed figure jutting out beneath the nude; what we
corner: a servant-girl pausing a moment as she scours a need is the particular note of the modern individual, in
saucepan, and becoming a Juno on Olympus ... his clothing, in the midst of his social habits, at home or
The simplicity of Renoir's composition is as innova- in the street.,
tive as his attitude toward the model. Her form stands Bequest of Stephen C. Oark, 1960 61.101.14
French, r84I-1919
Young Girl in a Pink and Black Hat

Oil on canvas, 16x 12 3/4 inches
Signed (lower left): Renoir
IN THE I 89os Renoir executed several bust-length

paintings of stylish young women in modish hats that
are very different from the pictures of women in milli-
nery shops done in the r88os by Degas (pages 76-77).
Degas's underlying concern was the similarity between
aspects of everyday life and the technical and artificial
elements of art, but Renoir's interest was limited princi-
pally to images of attractive young women. In addition,
he seems to have relished sentiments such as those
evoked in this painting by the nape of the girl's neck, the
curves of black velvet and ostrich feathers, and rustling
ribbons. Clearly a strong erotic element interweaves
with Renoir's characteristic joie de vivre and his celebra-
tion of youth, beauty, color, and light. Despite the
artist's emphasis on superficial qualities, pictures such
as Young Girl in a Pink and Black Hat have always proven
extremely popular. Renoir's hedonistic vision is evi-
dently as enduring in its appeal as the analytical, intel-
lectual, and aesthetic approach of Degas.
Gift of Kathryn B. Miller, 1964

French, 1841-1919
Madame Georges Charpentier

(Marguerite Lemonnier)
and Her Children, Georgette and Paul
Oil on canvas, 6o 1h x74 7/s inches
Signed and dated(lower right): Renoir. 78.
GEORGES CHARPENTIER, the well-to-do publisher of

the Goncourts, Zola, and Maupassant, introduced him-
self to Renoir in 1876, having purchased one of the
artist's paintings at auction the year before. Charpentier
and his wife entertained political, literary, and artistic
notables on Friday evenings, and they welcomed Renoir
to these gatherings. He was paid handsomely to paint
this stunning family group portrait, which so pleased
Madame Charpentier that she exerted her influence to
have it prominently displayed at the Salon of 1879.
During the sittings she wore an exquisite black gown
designed by Worth, and its sweeping skirt dominates
the scene, set in the Charpentiers' red-and-gold Japa-
nese-style drawing room. Next to her is her three-year-old
son, Paul; her six-year-old daughter, Georgette, is seated
comfortably on the docile Newfoundland dog, Porto. The
children wear matching blue outfits with white butterfly
bows at the shoulders. Like their mother, they seem as
exquisite as the exotic birds that decorate the painted
Japanese blinds that serve as a backdrop.
Though Renoir conveys the opulent ease of his sub-
jects' lives, he made no attempt to capture their person-
alities. Consequently, his portrait of this stylish family
is closer in spirit to works by Rubens and Fragonard that
he admired than to the penetrating character portraits of
his colleague Degas. Far more elaborately detailed than
Renoir's other works of the 1870s, this painting marks
the beginning of an important shift away from the
classic Impressionist style, with which the artist had
made his reputation only a few years before.
Wolfe Fund, 1907 07.122

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection
161
French, 1841-1919
Marguerite (Margot) Berard

Oil on canvas, 161fs x 12 3/4 inches
Signed and dated (upper left): Renoir 79·
MARGOT BERARD (1874-1956) was the daughter of

Paul Berard, an ambassador in the French diplomatic
corps, who met Renoir through Georges and Marguerite
Charpentier (see pages 16o-61). Beginning in the late
1870s Renoir was often a guest of the Berards at their
country home in Wargemont, on the Normandy coast.
During his visits he painted members of the family and
executed several decorative pictures for their house
(pages 166-67).
According to the sitter's nephew, this sensitive and
direct portrait was painted shortly after Renoir encoun-
tered Margot in tears. She was running from her house
after a difficult lesson with her German tutor. Since
the painter borrowed the picture in 1886 to send to an
important exhibition in Brussels, he apparently consid-
ered it to be among his best.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 6I.IOI.I5

View of the Seacoast

near Wargemont in Normandy
Oil on canvas, 197/s x24 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Renoir. So.
WHILE A GUEST AT the country house of Paul Berard,

Renoir was captivated by the seaside views. This area of
the Channel coast, notable for its steep cliffs and
weather-swept panoramas, also attracted Monet during
the I 88os (see pages I 34-3 5).
Renoir painted this scene out-of-doors, working
quickly and broadly to capture the landscape's salient
features before the lighting conditions changed. As in
many classic Impressionist works by Renoir and Monet,
the surface is relatively rough. Seen from a few steps
away, however, the summary passages vividly suggest
the dazzling play of light on grassy slopes and the vast
expanse of sea stretching beyond.
Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956

PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR During the late 1870s and early 188os, both Renoir
and Monet applied the bright palette and feathery
French, I841-19I9
brushwork they had developed for painting landscapes
out-of-doors to decoratively arranged still-life motifs.
Still Life with Peaches and Grapes This picture is exquisitely simple in conception. The
Oil on canvas, 2 I 1/4 x 2 5 Vs inches composition consists essentially of two equal horizontal
Signed and dated (lower left): Renoir. 8 I . bands created by the white tablecloth and a deep blue
background. The artist softened the stark juxtaposition
WHILE VISITING THE Berard family at Wargemont in of colors by combing the tablecloth with violet shadows
the summer of 1881 Renoir painted two still lifes, and raking the background with white highlights. The
almost identical in format, that show the family's two colors are combined again in the jardiniere, a white
faience jardiniere piled with peaches. Records indicate dish articulated with decorative blue borders. Set
that Berard purchased this picture before the end of the against the orchestrated blues and whites, the reds and
year. The second is illustrated on the facing page. yellows of the peaches appear especially vibrant.
The Mr. and Mrs. Henry ltdeson, Jr. Purchase Fund, 1956
Still Life with Peaches
Oil on canvas, 2 I x 2 5 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): Renoir. 8 I.
STILL LIFE WITH PEACHES AND GRAPES (facing page) were conceived independently, not as pendants or even
concentrates on the interplay of the blue and white tones as first and second versions of the same subject. Never-
in the Berards' jardiniere and its setting; this painting, theless, it seems clear that Renoir painted them at about
in a related fashion, focuses on the interrelationships of the same time with the idea of investigating the decora-
the red, yellow, and green of the fruit and the gold, tive and formal possibilities offered by different but
emerald, vermilion, and red of the richly patterned similarly limited ranges of color.
wallpaper. The slightly different positioning of the jar-
diniere in the two paintings suggests that the pictures Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 6r.IOI.l2
French, I84I-I9I9
By the .Seashore
Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x281f2 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Renoir. 83.
DURING THE I 86os many incipient Impressionists

"dreamed," as Emile Zola remarked, of painting the
figure in full sunlight. Renoir pursued that goal more
energetically than the others during the I87os. He
concentrated especially on bathers and painted several
large canvases depicting figures seen against the Nor-
mandy seashore at Wargemont, where he began to sum-
mer in I879· After a trip to Italy in I88I-82, Renoir
consciously changed his style. His palette began to
reflect the muted pastel colors of frescoes and his figures
the grandeur and simplicity of those in Raphael's
mythological compositions. Noting that Raphael had
not worked out-of-doors yet had studied sunlight,
Renoir resolved "not to bother any more with the small
details that extinguish rather than kindle the sun."
This new attitude is apparent in the loosely rendered
background of By the Seashore, probably painted on the
Channel island of Guernsey in I883. The white, blue,
and ocher tones of the coast and sea are in perfect
harmony with the colors of the sitter's lace-trimmed
bonnet and jacket, her frothy jabot, and the wicker
chair. Yet because Renoir rendered these details and the
face so carefully, the figure and the background do not
entirely integrate. Indeed, Renoir may have painted the
young woman first, subsequently adding the view of the
shoreline as background decoration. Such was his cus-
tom frequently during the I 88os and I 89os: in many
works monumental, fully modeled figures are set
against diffused, theatrical vistas reminiscent of Italian
frescoes or of the idyllic landscape settings of Antoine
Watteau'sfltes champetres. As Renoir wrote from Guern-
sey, "One would believe oneself [to be] much more in a
landscape by Watteau than in reality."

French, r84I-1919
In the Meadow
Oil on canvas, 32x253/4 inches
Signed (lower left): Renoir.
ABOUT r 890 RENOIR was introduced to the two un-

identified girls in this painting, one of half-a-dozen
works for which they posed together in the same dresses.
The blond and brunette models lean together in song at
the piano (pages 174-75), read a book (Barnes Founda-
tion, Merion, Pennsylvania), or, in this painting, ad-
mire flowers that they have picked. With their
cooperation, Renoir was able to return to a theme that
had attracted him in the r87os, when he painted pairs of
young women at the theater or in cafes. Whether con-
sidered as intimate genre scenes or as double portraits,
all these pictures celebrate youthful innocence.
For this out-of-doors scene Renoir used long, curving
strokes of very thin paint, creating a background that
hardly seems substantial. It recalls the decorative, pre-
dominantly blue and green landscape settings favored
by the eighteenth-century French artists whom Renoir
admired. Similarly, Renoir took poetic license with
actual physical appearances in order to suggest a world
pervaded by the goodness of nature. As the artist's son
explained in reference to a related work, "The blossom of
the linden tree and the bee sipping honey from it follow
the same rhythm as the blood circulating under the skin
of the young girl sitting in the grass."
Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 195 I 51.112.4

French, 1841-1919
Young Girl Bathing

Oil on canvas, 32x2c; 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Renoir. 92.
LIKE COURBET AND DEGAS, Renoir was committed to body neither Puvis's allegorical intentions nor his desire
art based upon modern life and the classical tradition of to re-create in a modern idiom the effects of Renaissance
the nude. Inspired by the frescoes of Raphael and other fresco painting.
Italian masters that he saw on a trip to Italy in 1881-82, The blond model who posed for this picture also
Renoir devoted himself increasingly to the nude during appears in In the Meadow (pages 170-71) and Two Young
the following years. Most often he placed his models in Girls at the Piano (pages 174-75). Evidently Renoir
outdoor settings, such as beaches and secluded poolside painted her in his studio and then added the loosely
glades. Seemingly observed unawares, these bathers brushed background from his imagination. For a closely
bear similarities to those evoked by Renoir's friend related version of Young Girl Bathing executed at the
Stephane Mallarme in his poems. Although they have same time, he used a different background representing
been compared to the mythological nudes painted by his seashore cliffs (Durand-Rue! Collection, Paris).
contemporary Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir's bathers em- Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 1975.1.199
French, 1841-1919
Two Young Girls at the Piano

Oil on canvas, 44x34 inches
Signed and dated (lower left): Renoir. 92
RENOIR PAINTED SEVERAL versions of Two Young Girls

at the Piano, and he used the models who had posed for In
the Meadow (pages 170-71). The version believed to be
the first (Louvre, Paris) was purchased immediately by
the state for its museum of contemporary art in the
Luxembourg Palace. In this picture he slightly altered
the position of the standing model's left arm as well as
the placement of the sheet music on the chair in the
foreground. In addition, he changed the color of the
curtains and placed a different vase on top of the piano.
Three other variations exist in oil, one in pastel. Such
related works, painted on commission from dealers and
collectors and referred to as repetitions, should not be
confus~d with the serial variations on single motifs that
Monet and Pissarro executed. Their works were often
exhibited as groups that were meant to be seen together;
Renoir's variations on a single theme were not.
However, Renoir, too, realized that originality in art
did not depend wholly upon the invention of composi-
tions. As his son explained, "He told me one day that he
regretted not having painted the same picture-he
meant the same subject-all his life. In that way he
would have been able to devote himself entirely to what
constituted creation in his painting: the relation be-
tween form and color, which has infinite variation in a
single motif, and which can better be grasped when
there is no further need to concentrate on the motif."
Renoir treated the subject of a woman at a piano on
several different occasions, beginning in 1875. Evi-
dently the theme appealed to him, as it did also to James
Whistler, Manet, Degas, Jacques Joseph Tissot, and
Toulouse-Lautrec, all of whom were no doubt aware of
contemporary investigations in creating through line
and color the equivalents of musical harmonies.
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 1975.1.201
174
PAUL CEZANNE
Dominique Aubert (Uncle Dominic)

Oil on canvas, 3 I 3/s x 2 5 1/4 inches
DURING THE AUTUMN of 1866 Cezanne lived at his quently developed cracks. Aubert wears a yariety of
family's home, the Jas de Bouffan, near the town of costumes in these portraits: a cowled monk's robe, a
Aix-en-Provence. Recently returned from Paris, where barrister's hat, a turban, and-in the Museum's picture
all the works he had submitted to the Salon that spring -a soft tasseled cap presumably of the sort worn by local
had been rejected, the twenty-seven-year-old artist peasants. Whether Cezanne had collected the various
seems to have become still more defiant of conventional hats over the years, or whether they belonged to his
standards of taste in art. Couil/arde-a coarse term that father (a hatmaker) or to the sitter is unknown. While
might be translated as vigorous or bold-is how he Aubert sat in enforced stillness he was teased mercilessly
described his peculiar style, characterized by somber by Cezanne's friend the painter Antoine Guillemet. We
colors applied in thick impasto with a palette knife. must be grateful for his patience, for· from our perspec-
At the J as de Bouffan Cezanne undertook a group of tive these portraits are among the most extraordinary
portraits for which friends and family members were pictures produced in the 186os. More daringly than any
enlisted to pose. His mother's younger brother Domi- ofhis colleagues, Cezanne discarded conventions of"fin-
nique Aubert sat for several, each completed in an ish" in these works that are virtually sculpted in paint.
afternoon. Because they were executed so quickly and
with such thick paints, these pictures have all subse- Wolfe Fund, I95 I, from the Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss Collection
53· 140. I
177
PAUL CEZANNE
Bathers
Oil on canvas, I 5 x 18 1/s inches
LIKE DEGAS AND RENOIR, Cezanne admired classical

and Renaissance treatments of the nude and sought to
continue that tradition in his own work. According to
Maurice Denis, Cezanne once said that he had wanted to
~'do Poussin over again entirely from natu~e." However,
since he worked slowly and was uncomfortable with
female models, from the mid-r87os to the end o£his life
he concentrated on imaginary scenes in sylvan settings.
In selecting the figures for these pictures, Cezanne, like
Manet, often consulted works by old masters. Manet
adapted the figures for modern settings, but Cezanne
seldom indicated whether his bathers should be under-
stood as subjects from modern life or classically inspired
idylls similar in spirit to the decorative allegories of
Puvis de Chavannes. In this painting, for example, only
the roads parallel to the riverbanks-perhaps towpaths
for barges-suggest that the figures may not be wood
nymphs at ease beneath a Mediterranean sky.
This work of 1875-76 is one of Cezanne's first paint-
ings of bathers. The parallel diagonal brushstrokes so
evident here were later refined and became a key compo-
nent of his style. The bold form that they take in this
picture is typical of the artist's work in the mid-r87os.
However, the bright, high-keyed palette was relatively
short-lived, although the penchant for blue and green so
prominent in this painting is characteristic of much of
Cezanne's later work as well.
Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975 1976.201.12
179
PAUL CEZANNE
Still Life
Oil on canvas, 23 7/s x29 inches
CEZANNE'S STILL LIFES departed from tradition in

two significant ways. Whereas most artists arranged and
painted the objects in a still life as we might encounter
them in our daily lives, Cezanne concentrated on the
priorities of an artist's studio rather than on the utilitar-
ian, symbolic, or material character of the objects de-
picted. As Meyer Schapiro has written, "Cezanne
preserves a characteristic meditativeness and detach-
ment from desire. His tendency coincides with what
philosophers have defined as the aesthetic attitude in
general: the experience of the qualities of things without
regard to their use or cause or consequence." Further-
more, painters almost always used neutral backgrounds
for still lifes, but in many works Cezanne introduced
patterned backgrounds, such as wallpaper, suggesting
that his own ideas about pictorial composition were
related to the abstract principles of decorative art.
This is one of five stilllifes and two figure paintings of
about r 877 in which Cezanne used a variation of the
wallpaper pattern seen here; it is one of twelve paintings
in which he chose a wallpaper pattern with a geometric
motif for the background. The suggestion of stability in
the composition results entirely from Cezanne's manip-
ulation of shapes and colors. The V-shape that results
from the broken pattern, for example, is echoed in the
drapery hanging over the front of the table. The lines of
the V in the drapery continue and complete the lower
part of a diamond composed of four sections of the
wallpaper design. A pervasive geometric pattern can be
sensed, and it evokes a delicate pictorial harmony
among objects that might otherwise seem to be arranged
with no underlying purpose.

181
PAUL CEZANNE
French, 1839-1906
Madame Cezanne
in the Conservatory
Oil on canvas, 361/4 x283/4 inches
HORTENSE PIQUET MET Cezanne in Paris in the late

186os and bore him a son in 1872, fourteen years before
they married. She is said to have been a lively, talkative
woman, although in Cezanne's numerous pictures of her
she appears impassive. Judging from complai~ts by
other sitters that Cezanne was a tyrant who forced his
models to remain motionless during long sessions, often
dozens of them, Hortense's expression probably indi-
cates resignation to tedium.
This unfinished portrait, of 1891, offers a clue to
Cezanne's working methods at that time. After indicat-
ing the contours of objects, he put down broad areas of a
single tohe with relatively diluted, transparent paint
and then applied increasingly opaque colors. Though he
may have developed color relationships as he proceeded,
Cezanne had d.etermined this picture's compositional
interrelationships at the outset. The diagonals of the
garden wall and the fruit tree, for example, cradle the
tilted oval of the head and integrate the figure with the
background.

PAUL CEZANNE
the painting. The pattern of leaves against the back-
ground is unusual in Cezanne's work, as is the highly
Still Life: finished surface. But, with the exception of the prim-
rose, the objects in the picture appear frequently in the
Apples and a Pot of Primroses artist's stilllifes: the scalloped table, the cloth pinched
Oil on canvas, 283/4 x 363/s inches up in sculptural folds, and the apples nestled in isolated
groups. When Cezanne visited Monet at Giverny in
MoNET, AN ARDENT gardener, once owned this paint- 1894, he met the critic Gustave Geffroy, to whom he
ing of fruit and a pot of Chinese primroses. In 1925 he explained in reference to his stilllifes that he wanted to
lent it to an exhibition at the ~us~e des Arts Dec;oratifs, astonish Paris with an apple. He never did so during his
Paris. At that time it was said to have been painted in lifetime, for his works were always considered unaccept-
1886. It has also been dated as early as 188o and as late able by Salon juries.
as 1894. Controversy about the date results in part trom
what has been called the "quiet, almost static quality" of Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951 51.112.1
PAUL CEZANNE
Near the Pool at the Jas de Bouffan

Oil on canvas, 25 1h x31 7/s inches
IN 1859 CEZANNE's father bought the Jas de Bouffan

("Abode of the Winds"), an estate that included an
eighteenth-century house, a landscaped park, and sev-
eral acres of farmland. Cezanne regarded it as his home
until 1899, when it had to be sold after his mother's
death.
During the late 188os Cezanne painted several pic-
tures of a road on the estate that was bordered with
evenly spaced chestnut trees. Visible at the right in this
picture, it led from the back of the house to the gardens.
Near the railing dividing the two areas was a collecting
pool and a washing trough, the low stone structures
behind the trees. The pool was flanked with waterspout
sculptures of lions, one of which is shown here from
behind.
186
PAUL CEZANNE
French, 1839-1906
The Gulf of Marseilles

Seen from L'Estaque
DISENCHANTED WITH the competitive atmosphere of

the Parisian art world, Cezanne preferred to work in his
native Provence, where several carefully selected land-
scape motifs engaged his attention. One was a pano-
ramic view from the town of L'Estaque toward a low
range of mountains across the Gulf of Marseilles. In the
summer of 1876 he described his fascination with this
view in a letter to Pissarro: "It's like a playing card. Red
roofs over the blue sea .... The sun is so terrific here that
it seems to me as if the objects were silhouetted not only
in black and white, but in blue, red, brown and violet. I
may be mistaken, but this seems to me to be the
opposite of modeling."
In the early 188os Cezanne returned to L'Estaque and
executed more than a dozen closely related pictures of
the view. Pissarro and Monet independently adopted
similar working methods. Their primary purpose, how-
ever, was to record transient effects of light, whereas
Cezanne was interested in the variations in composition
that resulted when he changed his vantage point or
slightly shifted his angle of vision. This picture is the
most complex of three paintings made from the same
position. (The other two are in the Louvre, Paris, and
the Art Institute of Chicago.) In all three Cezanne
contrasted the closely packed geometric forms of reddish
buildings in the foreground with the more scattered and
irregularly shaped mountains that appear blue in the
distance. The composition is intriguing, for from the
elevated position scale is distorted, and the nearby
buildings seem comparable to the mountains in size.

189
PAUL CEZANNE
Gardanne
Oil on canvas, 3 1 1h x 2 51/4 inches
CEZANNE PAINTED IN Gardanne, a hill town near

Aix-en-Provence, during the autumn of r885 and
throughout most of the next year. Many of his composi-
tions of this period, and particularly the views of Gar-
danne, develop outward from the center, becoming less
dense toward the edge of the canvas; in his works of the
late r88os, on the other hand, a formal balance is
sustained over the entire field of vision. A similar devel-
opment is observable in the Analytic Cubist paintings of
Braque and Picasso. Indeed, Cezanne's tendencies to
interpret form through facet and to restrict his palette
underscore the importance of such works as Gardanne as
forerunners of Cubism.
Cezanne painted two other views of Gardanne: a
horizontal picture (Barnes Foundation, Merion, Penn-
sylvania), observed from a closer point of vantage; and a
vertical picture (Brooklyn Museum), depicting the hill
town from the opposite direction.
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Franz H. Hirschland, 1957

PAUL CEZANNE
Mont Sainte-Victoire
Oil on canvas, 2 5 3/4 x 3 21/s inches
DURING A JOURNEY to Marseilles in the spring of

1878, Cezanne noticed "a stunning motif ... Ste Vic-
toire and the rocks that dominate Beaurecueil," but not
until the late 188os did he address the subject. Four
pictures, including this one, were painted from a hill at
Bellevue, where Cezanne's brother-in-law Maxime
Conil had an estate that overlooked the Arc River valley,
with Mont Sainte-Victoire in the background. In these
works Cez.anne studied the distant mountain's silhou-
ette in its relationship to his immediate surroundings-
in particular, to a group of pines. Their tall, thin trunks
~id green crowns serve as foils to the ·indistinct
mass of the mountain.
During the next decade Mont Sainte-Victoire became
Cezanne's favorite landscape motif, but in later pictures
he virtually eliminated contrasts between foreground
and background, stressing instead the mountain's domi-
nance over the surrounding countryside.

PAUL CEZANNE
Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress

Oil on canvas, 45 7/s x351f4 inches
THIS IS ONE OF twenty-seven portraits by Cezanne of molding behind the chair and the adjacent mantelpiece
his wife, Hortense Piquet. It was painted about 1890 in are drawn from different vantage points, combining two
the artist's house on the Quai d'Anjou, Paris. Cezanne's disparate perspective systems, and the molding itself is
paintings of his wife are compositional studies based on aligned slightly differently on either side of the chair.
the figure rather than portraits in the conventional Even the two sides of Madame Cezanne's face, especially
sense. In this work she does not sit comfortably in her her eyes, are treated differently. Meyer Schapiro's de-
chair but tilts to the right, echoing the axis of the fire scription of Cezanne's Portrait of Gustave Geffroy (Rene
tongs on the left and the curtain on the right. The left Lecomte Collection, Paris) seems pertinent in this con-
side of the chair back bows slightly as if responding to text: "The painting is a rare union of the realistic vision
the curve of her right arm, and the pattern of the of a piece of space, seen directly in all its accidents of
upholstery merges almost imperceptibly with the fabric richness of detail, with a powerful, probing, rigorous
of her dress. Moreover, the flower that she holds in her effort to adjust all that is seen in a coherent balanced
hand seems neither more nor less real than those in the structure with its own vitality and attraction. The whole
curtain at the right side of the painting. The reflection looks intensely contrived and intensely natural. We pass
of a similar curtain is visible in the rectangular shape on often from the artifice of composed forms to the chaos of
the wall that we might not otherwise recognize as a a crowded room, and from the latter we are soon brought
mirror. The displaced image in the mirror is in keeping back to the imposing order invented by the artist; the
with the spatial dislocations evident in the artist's inter- oscillation is permanent."
pretation of the scene as a whole. For example, the The Mr. and Mrs. Henry ltdeson, Jr. Purchase Fund, 1962
194
PAUL CEZANNE
Still Life with a Ginger Jar

and Eggplants
Oil on canvas, 281/2 x36 inches
ABOUT 1890 CEZANNE added several objects to the

repertory of items that he kept in his studio to use in still
lifes. The new objects included the heavy blue curtain
decorated in a bold abstract floral pattern, the dark wine
bottle with raffia lacing, and the round ginger jar, also
bound in raffia, that appear in this painting. These were
combined with such things as the green crockery jar and
the table, visible in a number of earlier works.
The ginger jar appears in four paintings executed
between 1890 and 1894. The compositions of these and
Cezanne's other still lifes of the early 189os are more
elaborate than those of earlier pictures. Almost every
shape and contour in this work is interrupted by another
that overlaps it. The pattern of the fabric is itself broken
by folds and creases that result in new shapes and
rhythms as integral to the composition as those created
by the disposition of the three-dimensional objects.
Indeed, the composition is predicated upon pictorial
needs rather than the demands of ordinary logic and
vision. Even the artist's vantage point changes to suit
the picture: the height of the table in the background
indicates that the arrangement is set very close to the
floor, but the objects in the foreground do not seem to be
observed from an unusually high vantage point. As
Meyer Schapiro has noted, the origins of abstract art lie
in such works: "Freely and subtly introduced ... parallel
lines, connectives, contacts, and breaks which help to
unite in a common pattern elements that represent
things lying in the different planes of depth .... These
devices are the starting point of later abstract art, which
proceeds from the constructive function of Cezanne's
stroke, more than from his color."
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960

PAUL CEZANNE
The Cardplayers
Oil on canvas, 2 5 3/4 x 3 21/4 inches
THE MAJORITY OF Cezanne's works are either land-

scapes, still lifes, or portraits. In r890, however, he
undertook this ambitious genre scene of peasants play-
ing cards, possibly in emulation of Mathieu Le Nain,
whose painting of the same subject was on view in the
museum at Aix. The subject continued to engross
Cezanne, and during the next years he painted five
versions of the scene, as well as numerous oil studies and
drawings for individual figures.
On stylistic grounds, the largest picture (Barnes
Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania) is thought to be the
earliest, the Museum's painting the next. As he pared
away extraneous details in each successive version,
Cezanne's psychological characterization of the event
became more penetrating. In the last three (Courtauld
Institute, London; Louvre, Paris; private collection,
Stockholm) Cezanne dispensed with everything except
the figures of two players starkly confronting one
another across the table.
From the beginning, Cezanne emphasized the som-
ber concentration of the participants. Expression and
even personality have been suppressed by their interest
in the cards. The pyramidal forms of the players can be
compared to the apples turned in different directions in
Cezanne's tabletop stilllifes. Yet their bulk and weight
suggest the seriousness of the game, the mute suspense
of which intrigues the slimmer standing figure, whose
intense scrutiny must have mirrored Cezanne's own as he
analyzed the scene before him from his easel.
Bequest ofStephen C. Clark, 1960 6I.IOI.I

199
PAUL CEZANNE
These shifts in perspective with regard to the table are
comparable to the varied spatial orientations of the
pieces of fruit resting on it. Tilted this way and that, the
Still Life: Apples and Pears pears as a group offer the multiple points of view usually
Oil oh canvas, 17 5/sx231/s inches associated with three-dimensional volumes experienced
in the round, like sculpture. Sculptural mass is further
IN CEZANNE'S STILL LIFES mundane objects are' the suggested by the relationship between the table and the
starting point for complex meditations about mass and corner of the room seen behind. The banded wall that
space. Traces of a previous pictorial idea visible at far changes direction echoes the shape of the table like a cast
right suggest that this picture of 188s-87 was never shadow, suggesting a counterpoint of solid and void,
entirely resolved. Nevertheless it exemplifies the artist's light and dark, straight and askew. Every object seems
analytical approach to representation. Rejecting the to twist, as if to break loose from the flat surface. This
limitations of one-point perspective, Cezanne shifted twisting draws attention to the crux of Cezanne's art, the
his point of view from side to side. He observed the table relationship between three-dimensional reality and two-
at eye level from the front and again from slightly to the dimensional representation.
right, but he viewed the tabletop from slightly above. Bequest ofStephen C. Clark, 1960 61.101.3
200
View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph
Oiloncanvas, 25~/sx32 inches Painted in I 887, according to the testimony of
Signed (lower right): P. Cezanne Cezanne's son, the picture is a view of an estate owned by
the Jesuits until I90I, when they were expelled by the
DESPITE TH~ MANY areas of canvas left bare, this state. The property was situated on a hill known locally
landscape is one of the few paintings that Cezanne as the Colline des Pauvres, on the road between Aix-en-
signed and thereby certified as "finished." It was the Provence and the village of Le Tholonet. Cezanne found
first of his works to enter an American museum; the many of his favorite landscape motifs, including the
Metropolitan acquired it from the historic Armory Show Chateau Noir, along this same road.
in I 9 I 3. Its price was higher than that of any other work Wolfe Fund, 1913 13.66
included in the exhibition. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection
20I
PAUL CEZANNE
French, r839-r9o6
Rocks in the Forest

Oil on canvas, 28 7/s x 363/s inches
WHEN LIONELLO VENTURI catalogued Cezanne's

works in r936, he called this painting simply Rocks, and
speculated that it might have been painted in the forest
of Fontainebleau, a mecca for landscape artists since the
r83os. It has subsequently been suggested that the
picture was painted near Aix, but scholars who have
combed the countryside there have failed to identify this
motif. The thinly applied layers of paint that give this
picture a lustrous fullness are typical of Cezanne in the
mid- r 89os, when he applied certain watercolor tech-
niques to his oils. He is known to have made working
trips to Fontainebleau at this time, as he had since the
late r87os and as he would continue to do until r904.
Yet two oils, both early, are apparently all that has
survived from these campaigns, except possibly Rocks in
the Forest.
Meyer Schapiro, who described this as a "somber
passionate painting ... saturated by the catastrophic
mood," also compared it to an extraordinary passage in
Flaubert's novel of r848, L'Education sentimentale: "The
light ... subdued in the foreground planes as if at sun-
down, cast in the distance violet vapors, a white lumi-
nosity .... The rocks filled the entire landscape, ...
cubic like houses, flat like slabs of cut stone, supporting
each other, overhanging in confusion, like the unrecog-
nizable and monstrous ruins of some vanished city. But
the fury of their chaos makes one think rather of vol-
canos, deluges and great forgotten cataclysms."
Flaubert's scene is set in the forest ofFontainebleau; the
mood is that of Cezanne's haunting landscape.

202
PAUL GAUGUIN
Ia Orana Maria
Oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x 34 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower right): P Gauguin 91
Inscribed (lower left): IA ORANA MARIA
A SAILOR BETWEEN the ages of seventeen and twenty,

Gauguin began a successful career as a stockbroker in
I 87 2. During the next eleven years he was also an
enthusiastic amateur painter. Although one of his pic-
tures was accepted by the Salon jury in I876, he did not
devote himself entirely to art until I883. In I887
Gauguin visited Panama and Martinique, his first trip
to the tropics since his youth, and in I89I he made his
first trip to Tahiti in search of an unspoiled paradise, a
kind of Polynesian Garden of Eden.
Ia Orana Maria is the most important picture that
Gauguin painted during his first trip to the South
Pacific, from I89I to I893· The title is native dialect
that translates, "I hail thee, Mary," the angel Gabriel's
first words to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. In a
letter written in the spring of I 892, Gauguin described
the painting to his friend Daniel de Monfreid: "An angel
with yellow wings who points out to two Tahitian
women the figures of Mary and Jesus, also Tahitians.
Nudes dressed in pareus, a kind of flowered cotton
which is wrapped as one likes around the waist. In the
background somber mountains and blooming trees. A
dark purple road and an emerald green foreground. To
the left some bananas. I am rather pleased with it."
The religious symbolism of Ia Orana Maria is linked
to that of Gauguin's earlier Breton canvases, in which he
used the vernacular art and customs of Brittany to
express Christian themes. Here, the only elements that
he has taken from traditional representations of the
Annunciation are the angel, the salutation, and the
halos around the heads of the Mother and Child. Every-
thing else in the picture is rendered in Tahitian idiom,
except the composition, which Gauguin adapted from a
bas-relief in the Javanese temple ofBarabudur. He had a
photograph of the bas-relief with him in Tahiti.
Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951 5I.ll2.2
204
PAUL GAUGUIN
Two Tahitian Women

Oil on canvas, 37x28 1h inches
Signed and dated (lower left): 99 I P Gauguin
FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS curtailed Gauguin's those of artists such as Millet and van Gogh, who vener-
first stay in Tahiti, from 1891 to 1893, but after spend- ated the world of the European peasant.
ing two years in Paris he returned in 1 89 5 and remained The woman on the left has been identified as
in the islands until his death in 1903. Two Tahitian Gauguin's mistress Pahura. The pose of the other
Women, painted in 1899, depicts the uncorrupted na- woman appears in several works that Gauguin executed
tives that Gauguin admired because they were unaf- between 1896 and 1899; the position of her hands
fected by the aesthetic, intellectual, moral, and human derives (as does the composition of Ia Orana Maria,
shortcomings of European civilization. By using simpli- illustrated on pages 204-5) from carvings in the Java-
fied forms and broad areas of a single color, and by nese temple ofBarabudur. Unlike the figures of many of
focusing on Polynesian subject matter, Gauguin hoped Gauguin's Tahitian paintings, these women are veiled in
to create a style appropriate to the simplicity, mystery, neither a Christian nor a Tahitian mythological tradi-
and directness of the values and way of life of the Maori tion. They confront us with beauty and grace.
culture. Not surprisingly, his goals were very similar to Gift of William Church Osborn, I 949 49·58. I
206
VINCENT VAN GOGH
The Potato Peeler

Oil on canvas, I6x I21/2 inches
THE POTATO PEELER, painted in February-March Eaters are equally applicable to The Potato Peeler: "All
I 88 5, is typical of the work that culminated in van winter long I have had the threads of this tissue in my
Gogh's first important painting, The Potato Eaters, fin- hands, and I have searched for the ultimate pattern; and
ished in September-October I885 (Rijksmuseum Vin- though it has become a tissue of rough, coarse aspect,
cent van Gogh, Amsterdam). Although the image in nevertheless the threads have been chosen carefully and
the Metropolitan's picture is not directly related to any according to certain rules. And it might prove to be a
of the figures in the final version of The Potato Eaters, it real peasant picture. I know it is. But he who prefers to see
resembles the figure at the extreme right of the first the peasants in their Sunday best may do as he likes. I
sketch, made in February-March I885 (Rijksmuseum personally am convinced that I get better results by
Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam). painting them in their roughness than by giving them a
The blockiness and apparent crudeness of the figure conventional charm."
reflect a goal that van Gogh had been striving to achieve
since I883: "The figure essentially simplified with in-
tentional neglect of those details which do not belong to
the real character and are only accidental." His remarks
made in April I885 abou,t his progress on The Potato Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat
Oil on canvas, I 6 x I 2 1h inches
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH A STRAW HAT was probably

painted toward the end of van Gogh's two-year stay in
Paris, from March I 886 to February I 888, not long
before he departed to live and work in the Proven~al city
of Aries. The palette and directional brushstrokes are
evidence of the influence of Divisionism, especially as
represented by the work ofSeurat and Signac. Neverthe-
less, van Gogh has clearly mastered the Neo-Impres-
sionist current in his painting. This self-portrait reflects
the bold temperament of the individual who in Decem-
ber I885 wrote to his brother, "Ipreferpaintingpeople's
eyes to cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that
is not in the cathedral, however solemn ·and imposing
the latter may be-a human soul, be it that of a poor
streetwalker, is more interesting to me." Further insight
into the remarkable vitality of Self-Portrait with a Straw
Hat is provided by van Gogh's comment in August
1888,_ "It is true that at moments, when I am in a good
mood, I think that what is alive in art, and eternally
alive, is in the first place the painter and in the second
place the picture."

209
VINCENT VAN GOGH
van Gogh, Amsterdam. Van Gogh's fascination with

Sunflowers sunflowers culminated in I 888 with the series Sun-
Oil on canvas, 17 x24 inches flowers, which he painted to decorate his studio in Aries.
Signed and dated (lower left): Vincent 87 By late in the summer of I887, van Gogh's incipient
pantheism had begun to manifest itself in a preference
THIS IS ONE OF three paintings of sunflowers that van for natural forms that suggest an underlying universal
Gogh made in Paris late in the summer of I 887. The force. The flamelike petals and the patterned faces of
Museum's version and the one in the Kunstmuseum, sunflowers attracted him for the same reasons that undu-
Bern, Switzerland, depict two sunflowers; the example lating cypresses and olive trees were to appeal to him
in the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Miiller, Otterlo, the Neth- two years later in Saint-Remy. He had already started to
erlands, shows four. All are horizontal in format and are seek in nature the easily exaggerated forms that fulfilled
signed and dated I887. In addition, there is a sketch for his growing need for an expressive pictorial vocabulary.
the Museum's painting in the Rijksmuseum Vincent Rogers Fund, 1949 49-41
2IO
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Oleanders
Oil on canvas, 233/4 x 29 inches
Inscribed (lower left, on cover of book):
EMILE ZOLA I LAjoie de I VIVRE; (lower left,
on spine of book): La joie de I vivre I Emile I Zola
AFTER HIS ARRIVAL in Aries in February I888, van

Gogh increasingly favored subjects that are inherently
expressive, such as oleanders, sunflowers (pages 2 I o-
I I), cypresses (pages 2I6-I7), images of cultivation,
and the star-filled evening sky. In this work of August-
September I888, the artist placed Emile Zola's novel La
J oie de vivre on the table in front of the flowers and
thereby provided a key to the metaphorical significance,
or what he called the "symbolic language," of the sub-
ject. In a letter to his brother written during the last
week of September I 888, he elaborated on the meaning
that the oleanders held for him: " ... raving mad; the
blasted things are flowering so riotously that they will
catch locomotor ataxia. They are loaded with fresh
flowers, and quantities of faded flowers as well, and
their green is continually renewing itself in fresh, strong
shoots, apparently inexhaustibly." Van Gogh saw the
oleander as a symbol of fervent generation and regenera-
tion, the driving procreative forces of the cycle of life.
Images with similar associations attracted him through-
out his career, but especially during his Aries, Saint-
Remy, and Auvers periods (February r888-July r89o).
Van Gogh's visionary pantheism permitted him, like
William Blake, "To see the world in a grain of sand/And
a heaven in a wild flower."
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Loeb, 1962

213
VINCENT VAN GOGH
L'Arlesienne: Madame Joseph-

Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien)
Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 inches
THIS IS ONE OF the most beautiful portraits that van them. While van Gogh painted and Gauguin drew, the
Gogh painted during the fourteen months (February latter is said to have mollified the sitter by constantly
r888 to May r889) he spent in Aries. It was executed repeating, "Madame Ginoux, Madame Ginoux, your
with exceptional speed, as the artist reported to his portrait will be placed in the Louvre in Paris." Coin-
brother in a letter written during the week of November cidentally, another version-apparently a variant of this
I I, r888: "I have an Arlesienne at last, a figure (size 30 portrait-was given to the Louvre in I944.
canvas) slashed on in an hour, background pale citron, The large areas of a single color and the bold contours
the face gray, the clothes black, black, black, with of the figure reflect the influence of Japanese prints and
perfectly raw Prussian blue. She is leaning on a green medieval cloisonne enamel technique. Van Gogh's
table, seated in an armchair of orange wood." highly abstract use of line and color was undoubtedly
L'Arlesienne was painted during the two-month period approved of by Gauguin, who, with their mutual friend
that Gauguin spent with van Gogh in Aries, from late Emile Bernard, advocated such syntheses of form and
October through late December I888. The two artists color, in contrast to the empiricism of Impressionism.
reportedly cajoled the reluctant patronne of the Cafe de
Ia Gare into posing by inviting her to have coffee with Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951
2I4
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Cypresses
Oil on canvas, 363/4 x29 1/s inches
VAN GOGH PAINTED Cypresses in June 1889, not long

after the beginning of his year-long voluntary confine-
ment at the Asylum of Saint Paul in Saint-Remy. On
June 2 5 the artist wrote to his brother and reported that
he was working on two paintings of cypresses. He
included a cursory drawing of the Museum's painting in
his text and remarked, "I think that of the two canvases
of cypresses, the one that I am making this sketch of will
be the best." The cypress represented a kind of perfect
natural architecture in van Gogh's canon of pantheism:
'_'It is as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian
obelisk." Olive trees and cypresses embodied what van
Gogh called "symbolic language," though he never
explained exactly what he meant. We only know that he
related the trees to sunflowers, which he once said
symbolized gratitude: "The cypresses are always occupy-
ing my thoughts, I should like to make something of
them like the canvases of sunflowers" (June 25, 1889);
and, "When I had done the sunflowers, I looked for the
contrast.and yet the equivalent, and I said-It is the
cypresses".(February 2, 1890).
The loaded brushstrokes and the swirling, undulat-
ing forms are typical of van Gogh's late work. Neverthe-
less, the subject posed an extraordinary technical
problem for the artist, especially with regard to realiz-
ing the deep, rich green of the tree: "It is a splash of black
in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interest-
ing black notes, and the most difficult to hit off that I
can imagine" Oune 25, 1889).
Rogers Fund, 1949 49·30
216
VINCENT VAN GOGH
First Steps
Oil on canvas, 281/2 x35 7/s inches
DURING THE LAST week of October r889, Theo van

Gogh sent reproductions of the work of Millet, paint,
and canvas to his brother at the Asylum of Saint Paul in
Saint-Remy. Vincent wrote to thank him immediately:
"Thank you for a package of paints, and finally, last
night the canvas arrived and the Millet reproductions, of
which I am very glad." The day that the letter was
written van Gogh had begun a painting based on a
reproduction of Millet's The Diggers, but a reproduction
of another work immediately caught his eye: "How
beautiful that Millet is, 'A Child's First Steps'!"
In a letter written the following January, van Gogh
explained the purpose of the many copies after Millet
that he made while in the hospital in Saint-Remy: "The
more I think about it, the more I think there is justifica-
tion for trying to reproduce some of Millet's things
which he himself had no time to paint in oil. Working
thus on his drawings or woodcuts is not purely and
simply copying. Rather it is translating-into another
language-that of color-the impressions of light and
shade in black and white." A few paragraphs later he
said that he was about to begin a copy of The First Steps.
Millet made several drawings that, with minor varia-
tions, treat the theme of a child learning to walk. It is
not known which was depicted in the reproduction that
van Gogh received from his brother in October.
The peasant subjects of Millet had an especially
strong appeal for van Gogh, and he made more copies
after Millet than after any other artist. Among the
others whose work he "translated" from black-and-
white reproductions were Delacroix, Lavieille, Dore,
Rembrandt, Hiroshige, and Hokusai.
Gift of George N. and Helen M. Richard, 1964
219
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Irises
Oil on canvas, 29x361f4 inches
IN MAY 1890 van Gogh was released from the Asylum

of Saint Paul in Saint-Remy. He had been there for
about a year for the treatment of an illness characterized
by seizures and bizarre behavior. During his last month
in the asylum, he enjoyed a period of relative calm and
productivity. He wrote his brother, "All goes well. I am
doing ... two canvases representing big bunches of vio-
let irises, one lot against a pink background in which the
effect is soft and harmonious because of the combination
of greens, pinks, violets ... the other ... stands out
against a startling citron background, with other yellow
tones in the vase and the stand on which it rests, so it is
an effect of tremendously disparate complementaries,
which strengthen each other by their juxtaposition."
The first picture described is the Museum's Irises, the
background of which has faded considerably; the second
is Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background
(Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam). The
entirely different effects achieved through slight altera-
tions in his palette emphasize van Gogh's interest in the
symbolic meaning as well as the formal value of color. As
he wrote in another context, "I am always in the hope of
making a discovery there, to express the love of two
lovers by a wedding of complementary colors, their
mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibra-
tions of kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow
by the radiance of a light tone against a somber back-
ground" (September 3, 1 888).
Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958
220
221
GEORGESSEURAT
The Gardener
Oil on wood, 6 1/4 x93/4 inches
ABOUT 1881 SEURAT began to work out-of-doors like scenes that Seurat preferred. The Impressionists seldom
the Impressionists, but he developed his own working worked on toned grounds.
methods to pursue their goal of reproducing the appear- By Impressionist standards, Seurat's studies lack
ance of colors in daylight. His lively, hatched brushwork spontaneity; he seems to have planned even such small-
clearly derives from the loose facture introduced by scale compositions as The Gardener in advance. The
Monet and Renoir to suggest dappled lighting effects. measured relationship between the rounded silhouettes
But whereas the older Impressionists generally brought of the figure and the basket, and the interplay between
full-sized canvases to a chosen site, Seurat preferred to the slender tree trunks and their shadows suggest
make small studies on wooden cigar-box lids that mea- Seurat's admiration for such carefully composed pictures
sure approximately six by ten inches. Easily portable, as Millet's idealized peasant subjects and Puvis de
these studies in many cases served as notes for larger Chavannes's stately decorative allegories.
works executed later on canvas in the studio. The golden
brown of the wood beneath these painted studies en-
riches the green tones that are predominant in the rural Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967 67 . 187.102
Study for
A Sunday on La Grandejatte
Oil on wood, 61/s x9 1h inches
Inscribed (by Paul Signac, on reverse): Seurat #96
DURING JUNE AND JULY 1884 Seurat began a group This study, in the Museum's Lehman Collection, was
of more than two dozen oil sketches on wooden cigar- painted relatively early in the sequence of oil sketches. It
box tops that relate to the composition of his monumen- shows that initially Seurat considered accenting the
tal A Sunday on La Grande]atte (Art Institute of Chicago), right side of the painting with the trunk and branches of
which he finished in 1886 and exhibited that year in the a tree, and that he had not originally intended to place
eighth and last of the Impressionists' group shows. The the horizon line as high as he did in the final composi-
site depicted is the bank of an island in the Seine located tion (pages 224-25). Nevertheless, here Seurat estab-
between the Parisian suburbs of Neuilly and Courbe- lished the vantage point for the completed painting.
voie. The finished painting is often referred to as A Although later stages in the work's development include
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande ]atte, but many more figures, this sketch shows that their eventual
during the artist's lifetime the painting was known only placement was a primary consideration as Seurat deter-
as A Sunday on La Grande]atte. If the assumption that mined the composition of the landscape.
the painting depicts an afternoon scene is correct, Seurat
placed his easel on the western bank of the island,
looking toward Courbevoie. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 1975· 1.207
223
224
GEORGESSEURAT
French, I859-I89I
Study for
A Sunday on La Grandejatte
Oil on canvas, 273/4 x41 inches
THIS PAINTING IS Seurat's final sketch for his master-

piece depicting Parisians enjoying their day off on an
island in the Seine (Art Institute of Chicago), which was
first shown in the eighth Impressionist exhibition, in
I886. About August IS, I884, Seurat began work on
the final canvas, which is ten feet high and over six feet
wide, after having studied every detail painstakingly in
at least thirty-two small preparatory drawings and oil
studies. The Metropolitan's picture was presumably ex-
ecuted shortly before mid-August. Although there are
only minor differences in compositional detail between
this study and the final work, the pictures represent
distinct stages in the development of Seurat's color
theory. For the study he prepared the canvas with a red
ground, upon which he applied layers of saturated colors
in hatched strokes. He may have begun the large version
in a similar fashion, but eventually he chose a white
ground and applied his paints in small, discrete dabs.
Later, in I88s, following Pissarro's advice, Seurat re-
painted the large version, using pigments that had
already begun to lose their brilliance by I 892. Conse-
quently, the Metropolitan's study is an important record
of the chromatic range that the artist intended to achieve
in the full-scale picture.
Based upon optical mixture (the phenomenon that
causes two tones seen at a distance to form a single hue),
Seurat's ideas about color were indebted to the technical
treatises ofM. E. Chevreul (La Loi du contraste simu/tane
des cou/eurs, I839) and 0. N. Rood (Modern Chromatics,
I879). If his concepts were to work successfully in a
painting, Seurat had to weigh each color relationship
precisely. About I88s he began to add borders to his
pictures in order to insulate them from the unrelated
colors of.frames and walls. These borders were painted in
the tiny dotlike brushstrokes characteristic of his Poin-
tillist technique. Presumably he added a border to this
study because he intended to exhibit it as a finished
work in its own right.
Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 19:51 :51.112.6
GEORGESSEURAT
French, I859-1891
Invitation to the Sideshow

(Parade de Cirque)
Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 59 inches
INCLUDED IN THE fourth exhibition of the Societe des

Artistes Independants, in 1888, this picture represents
the parade of the Corvi Circus, which had set up in the
Place de la Nat ion in Paris the previous spring. A parade
is a sample entertainment performed on the street to
entice passersby to purchase tickets. The onlookers at
the far right are queued on stairs leading to the box
office. Observed as if from the rear of the audience,
magnifying our sense that we are part of the crowd, the
entertainers include a trombonist isolated on a platform
and four additional musicians lined up on a catwalk just
behind him. Standing at the right, to oversee the per-
formance, is Monsieur Loyal, the ringmaster, accompa-
nied by a clown. Seurat was keenly interested in the
effect of different types of light upon colors; this paint-
ing records the ashen shimmer produced by gaslights,
here installed above the performers. Darkened and sil-
houetted by their glow, the circus players appear more
sinister than merry. Perhaps derived from ancient Egyp-
tian tomb paintings, their rigid poses add to the sense of
exotic gloom, as does the leafless tree, its branches
seeming to dance to the music like a charmed snake.
Using a fine brush, Seurat covered the surface of the
painting with precise, interspersed,-orange, yellow, and
blue touches. Though his research in optics and percep-
tual psychology was highly scientific, the luminous
shadows endow objectively observed facts with mystery.
Forms seem to fade into or emerge from the moody
light, and figures seem to levitate, since where they
stand is hidden from view, and railings suggest ramps
that lead nowhere. In this world where nothing is cer-
tain to the eyes, Seurat suggests a parity between fact
and fantasy. To classify pictures like this one, in which
light imbues commonplace appearance with poetry,
Seurat's contemporaries generally used the termfierique,
which means enchanted.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960 6I.IOI.I7
227
PAUL SIGNAC
French, 1863-1935
The Jetty at Cassis

Oil on canvas, x8lf4 x 25"/s inches
Signed, dated, and inscribed (lower left): P. Signac 89;
(lower right): Op. 198
Inscribed and monogrammed (on stretcher): La.Jetee de
Cassis-PS
SIGNAC PAINTED The jetty at Cassis between April and

June 1889, during a visit to the fishing village of Cassis,
about ten miles from Marseilles. It was the third in a
group of five paintings and one sketch that Signac made
on this trip. In 1893 he referred to them in his journal:
"I believe that I have never painted pictures as 'objec-
tively exact' as those of Cassis. In this region there is
only white; the reflected light everywhere devours local
colors and gray shadows." The small dots that compose
the painting are called Divisionist, or Pointillist, brush-
strokes. The technique was developed by Seurat,
Signac, and their associates to represent with scientific
accuracy the oscillating appearance of light.
Until 1894 Signac inscribed each of his pictures with
an opus number, as if it were to be considered as a
musical composition. Like Whistler, who referred to
some of his works as Symphonies, Signac sought a
pictorial art based upon harmonious intervals and or-
chestrated colors. Such an art would be primarily evoca-
tive, as music is, and only secondarily representational.
Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975 1976.201. 19

229
PAUL SIGNAC
French, I863-I935
View of the Port of Marseilles

Oil on canvas, 3 5 x 4 5 3/4 inches
Signed and dated (lower right): P Signac I 1905
SIGNAC PAINTED IN the Impressionist style of Monet

until he met Seurat and became interested in his theory
of Neo-Impressionism and his technique of painting
with tiny dots or "points" of color (which is called, for
this reason, Pointillism). Signac went even further than
Seurat in his methodical studies of the division of light
into its component elements of pure color, and he
arranged rectangular brushstrokes like tesserae in a
mosaic. To achieve the utmost luminosity, he did not
mix his colors on the palette but depended upon their
blending in the spectator's eye. Signac's view of Mar-
seilles, crowned by the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-
Garde, seems to vibrate under the meridional sun like
the broken reflections of boats in the harbor waters.
In I 90 I Signac had painted a smaller version of this
composition. Compared to the pale tonalities of the
earlier worki, the color in the Metropolitan's picture of
I905 is brilliant. Signac's changed attitude toward color
was brought about by conversations with the young
Fauve painters Henri-Edmond Cross and Henri Matisse,
who were at Saint-Tropez during the summe.r of I904,
as was Signac. They, in turn, were influenced by
Signac's Pointillist technique.
Gift of Robert Lehman, 1955 55.220. I

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
Rene Grenier
Oil on wood, 1 3 3ls x 10 inches
Inscribed (on reverse): Mon portrait par I Toulouse
Lautrec I en 1887 I atelier rue Caulaincourt I (Grenier?}
RENE GRENIER AND Lautrec were fellow students in

the atelier of Fernand Cormon during the early r88os.
Before establishing his own studio in the Rue Caulain-
court in r886, Lautrec lived with Grenier and his wife,
Lili, an actress and model, both of whom occasionally
posed for him.
Fascinated with so-called primitive portraits by Hol-
bein, Cranach, and their contemporaries, Lautrec often
preferred to work on colored supports, such as wood
panels, and to use thin paints so that the underlying
tone perceptibly enriched his final surface. For this
portrait Lautrec carefully drew Grenier's features in pen-
cil before adding the predominantly muted colors. For
highlights he added accents in impasto. The result is a
sensitive character study, dignified, yet at the same time
informal, since Grenier has removed his coat. In effect,
Lautrec's portrait closely resembles works by his favorite
contemporary artist, Degas.
Bequest of Mary Cushing Fosburgh, 1978

French, I864-1901
Woman in
the Garden of
Monsieur Forest
Oil on sized linen, 2 I 7/s x I 81/4 inches
Signed (lower left): T-Lautrec
THE UNIDENTIFIED sitter for this portrait, like most the color complementary to the reddish tone of her hair
ofLautrec's female models, is redheaded and belongs to and complexion. In addition, as if investigating current
the working class. Like van Gogh, Lautrec was fasci- theories that complementary colors intensify one an-
nated by coarse features that express tenacity and blunt other, Lautrec posed the model in a deep pink smock,
candor. Beginning about I 888, he often posed his sub- whiCh the eye perceives as particularly vivid in conjunc-
jects in the private garden belonging to a man called tion with the green background. The interplay between
Forest, situated near his studio. Presumably the setting line and color suggests the fluidity of light conditions
appealed to him because the green foliage provided a out-of-doors.
richly decorative background and because shadows out- Characteristically, Lautrec first sketched the outlines
of-doors are deeply colored. This latter phenomenon had of the model and her surroundings and then added colors
been systematically studied by Seurat and Signac, whose in thinned paints.
theories intrigued Lautrec. Reflecting their ideas, he
rendered the shadows on his model's neck in vivid green, Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975 1976.201.15
234
French, I864-I90I
The Englishman
at the Moulin Rouge
Oil and gouache on cardboard, 33V4x26 inches
Signed (lower left): T-Lautrec
No LATER THAN I 885 Lautrec began a series of pic-

tures of Montmartre cafes and dance halls frequented by
prostitutes and their clients. His candid, psychologi-
cally penetrating studies, which are comparable to epi-
sodes in Zola's novels, appealed immediately to artists
and dealers who appreciated art based upon the realities
of modern life. The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge is the
preparatory study for a color lithograph commissioned
by the Boussod & Valadon Gallery in I 892.
To heighten the illusion of intimacy, with all that the
word implies, Lautrec chose a vantage point close to the
shoulder of a seated woman with bright orange hair who
wears a black choker and long black gloves. Her right
hand is placed on the thigh of a top-hatted gentleman,
whose chair has been pulled up to hers. He regards her
advances with smug expectation. A second woman
watches the open sexual advances. Lautrec drew her eyes
in an exaggerated slant, like a eat's, and colored green
the lock of hair falling over her brow, evoking the
luridly gaslit interior of the Moulin Rouge, as well as
the passions of lust and jealousy that bind the three
figures together. The model for the man was William
Tom Warrener, an artist and friend ofLautrec's.

French, 1864-1901
The Sofa
Oil on cardboard, 243/4 X31 7/s inches
Stamped (lower left): HTI {monogram]
INTRIGUED BY EROTIC Japanese prints, as well as by

Degas's small monotypes of brothel scenes (which were
not intended for public exhibition), Lautrec set out to
document the lives of prostitutes in a series of pictures
executed between 1892 and 1896. Himself a social
outcast on account of his grotesque physical deformities,
Lautrec was accepted by the whores and keenly appre-
hended the dreary sadness of their lives. Since they were
accustomed to being observed, the whores made unaf-
fected models, never compromising Lautrec's commit-
ment to utter candor. At first Lautrec made sketches in
the brothels. Hampered by the insufficient lighting,
however, he eventually had his models pose in his studio
on a large divan. The writer Jules Renard was shocked to
find the women there in 1894 when he visited Lautrec.
Bonded together by their occupation, and excluded
from permanent relationships, the prostitutes often fell
in love with one another. Lautrec was sympathetic to
lesbianism, perhaps because he understood that the
women's tenderness toward each other was a reality that
transcended any feelings they might have for their male
clients. This picture is closely related to two others (Dr.
Peter Nathan Collection; Staatliche Kunstsamm-
lungen, Dresden). Although the explicitly sexual theme
is calculatedly shocking, Lautrec's characterization of
the lovers was no less consciously intended to be deeply
touching.
Rogers Fund, 1951

239
ODILON REDON
French, 1840-1916
Flowers in a Chinese Vase

Oil on canvas, 28Ys x 217'4 inches
Signed (twice, lower left and at base of vase): ODILON REDON
A FIGURE OF GREAT importance to the Symbolist

movement of the late nineteenth century, Redon cham-
pioned an aesthetic ideal based on the primacy of the
imagination. Nonetheless, the visionary character of his
work is rooted in the observation of nature, as this
painting of about 1906 demonstrates. His stated inten-
tion was "to place the logic of the visible at the service of
the invisible." In his still lifes, most of which were
painted during the last two decades of his life, he
depicted the subject in great detail but placed it in a
misty, undefined field.
Flowers in a Chinese Vase was exhibited in New York in
1906, seven years before Redon's work became familiar
in the United States as a result of the Armory Show. It
was included in the Metropolitan Museum's fiftieth-
anniversary exhibition in 1920. The picture was owned
at that time by the American lawyer and prominent art
patron John Quinn, who assembled one of the first great
collections of early twentieth-century European and
American art.
Bequest of Mabel Choate, in memory of her father, Joseph Hodges Choate, 1958
59·16.3
ODILON REDON
French, 1840-1916
Madame Arthur Fontaine

Pastel on paper, 28 1h x 22 1h inches
Signed, dated, and inscribed (upper left): fait aSt-Georges-de-
Didonne I Septembre-1901- I ODILON REDON
THE WEAL THY INDUSTRIALIST Arthur Fontaine and

his wife often entertainid in their Paris apartment a
circle of friends that included Claude Debussy, Paul
Claude!, Andre Gide, Odilon Redon, and other promi-
nent artists, writers, and musicians. In September 1901
the Fontaines visited Redon and his wife at the seaside
resort of Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, and Redon exe-
cuted a red-chalk portrait of Monsieur Fontaine as well as
this remarkable pastel of Marie Escudier Fontaine.
The combination of real and imagined elements in
this work seems perfectly natural. Madame Fontaine
herself is portrayed relatively realistically, but her face is
seen in a subtle half-light that lends her mystery and
permits the colorful flowers around her to play a
stronger role. The fictive garland suggests a personality
that is colorful, vibrant, and gentle. Clearly these ethe-
real blossoms establish a context that is appropriate to
the sitter, but it is impossible to assign them a specific
meaning. One of the aims of Symbolism was to create
statements about subjective truths and states of feeling
for which there are no corresponding words. As this
portrait demonstrates, Redon was particularly adept at
fashioning images that function as metaphors and ex-
press otherwise incommunicable significances.
The Mr. and Mrs. Henry lttleson, Jr. Purchase Fund, 196o
HENRI ROUSSEAU
(LE DOUANIER)
French, I844-I9IO
The Banks of the Bievre near Bicetre

Oil on canvas, 21 1h x 18 inches
Signed (lower right): H Rousseau
RoussEAu's SOBRIQUET "I.e Douanier" refers to his

career as a customs official. Self-taught as a painter, he
began to exhibit at the Societe des Artistes lndependants
in I 886. After his retirement in I 89 3, he devoted
himself entirely to painting. His unique style, charac-
terized by fanciful distortions of perspective and scale,
simplification of detail, and an emphasis upon pattern,
was· appreciated by avant-garde writers and painters,
including Apollinaire, Jarry, and Picasso.
Rousseau identified the subject of this picture (which
on the basis of style can be dated about I897) as the
banks of a stream near Bicetre, an area on the outskirts of
Paris known for its asylum, workhouse, and prison. The
Bievre rises near Versailles and empties into the Seine
after running, mostly underground, through Paris. Al-
ready in Rousseau's time it was contaminated with
sewage. The picturesque simplicity of Rousseau's land-
scape, thus, should be understood as ironic.
Gift of Marshall Field, 1939
244
HENRI ROUSSEAU
(LE DOUANIER)
French, 1844-1910
The Repast of the Lion

Oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x63 inches
Signed (lower right): Henri Rousseau
RousSEAU HAD BEGUN to paint imaginary scenes set

in the jungle by 1891. The Metropolitan's picture,
which shows a lion devouring a jaguar, was probably
first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1907. The
vegetation in Rousseau's jungle paintings is evidently
based upon exotic plants that the artist had studied at
the botanical garden in Paris, but, disregarding their
actual sizes, Rousseau invented forests that dwarf his
figures of natives and animals. Reminiscent of Dela-
croix's studies of fighting lions, Rousseau's animals are
often closely based upon photographs in a children's
book that his daughter owned. Riding in a blue sky, the
full moon partly visible beyond a hill in the background
intensifies the incongruous, dreamlike character of the
scene. It is as if the moon's influence has brought
violence to the lush paradise.
Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS FREQUENTLY CITED: Emile Blanche, Propos de Peintre: De David a Degas, Paris, I9I9,
p. 47·
Moffett, Impressionism Pages 22-23: Still Life with Pansies
Charles S. Moffett, in Anne Dayez, Michel Hoog, and Charles S. MmeFantin-Latour, Cataloguedel'oeuvrecomplet, p. 8o(no. 735).
Moffett, Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition (Centenaire de
l'impressionnisme), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Edouard Manet
Grand Palais, Paris, I974-75· Pages 24-25: The Spanish Singer
George Heard Hamilton, Manet and His Critics, New Haven,
I954, pp. 24-31. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 27-30. George
Rewald, Impressionism
Mauner, Manet: Peintre-Philosophe, University Park, Pa., and
John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th rev. ed., New London, I975, pp. I56-59. Denis Rouart and Daniel Wilden-
York, I973· stein, Edouard Manet: Catalogue raisonne, 2 vols., Lausanne and
Paris, I975, vol. I, p. so (no. 32).
Rewald, Post-Impressionism Pages 26-27: Boy with a Sword
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 30-33. Rouart and Wildenstein,
John Rewald, Post-Impressionism from van Gogh to Gauguin, 3d
Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. 54 (no. 37).
rev. ed., New York, I978.
Pages 28-29: Mademoiselle Victorine in the Costume ofan Espada
Sterling -Salinger Hamilton, Manet, pp. 43-52. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
33-35. Beatrice Farwell, "Manet's 'Espada' and Marcantonio,"
Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger, French Paintings: Metropolitan Museum journal, vol. 2 (I969), pp. I97-207. John
A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rewald, "The Impressionist Brush," Metropolitan Museum ofArt
3 vols., vol. 2, XIX Century, New York, I966; vol. 3, XIX-XX Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 3 (I973-74), p. 7 (no. 2). Rouart and
Centuries, New York, I967. Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. 66 (no. s8).
Pages 30-3I: Young Man in the Costume of a Majo
Hamilton, Manet, pp. 42-51. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
35-36. Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. So
Johan Barthold Jongkind (no. 70).
Pages I4-I 5: H onfleur
Pages 32-33: The Dead Christ, with Angels
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 2, p. I33· Victorine Hefting,]ongkind:
Hamilton, Manet, pp. 55-64. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
sa vie, son oeuvre, son epoque, Paris, I975, p. I66 (no. 344).
36-40. Mauner, Manet, pp. III-I4. Rouart and Wildenstein,
Charles C. Cunningham, Susan D. Peters, and Kathleen
Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. 82 (no. 74).
Zimmerer, jongkind and the Pre-Impressionists, catalogue of an
exhibition at Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Wil- Pages 34-35: Peonies
liamstown, Mass., and Smith College Museum of Art, North- Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuvres, Paris, I947, pp. 94-95.
ampton, Mass., I976-77, p. 40 (no. 9). Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. 92 (no. 87).
Pages 36-37: Woman with a Parrot
Eugene Boudin
Hamilton, Manet, pp. n4-22. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
Pages I6-I7: On the Beach at Trouville
40-43. Mona Hadler, "Manet's Woman with a Parrot ofi866,"
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 2, pp. I35-36. Robert Schmit, Eugene
Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 7 (I973), pp. n5-22. Mof-
Boudin, 2 vols., Paris, I973, vol. I, p. 86 (no. 27I).
fett, Impressionism, pp. IIO-I4 (no. I9). Mauner, Manet, p.
Pages I8-I9: Village by a River I36. Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. n2
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 2, pp. I34-35· Schmit, Eugene Boudin, (no. ns).
vol. I, p. 297 (no. 833), dates it about I872-73.
Pages 38-39: Madame Edouard Manet
Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, pp. II2-I3
Ignace Henri jean Theodore Fantin-Latour
(no. n7).
Pages 20-2I: Still Life with Flowers and Fruit
Mme Fantin-Latour (Victoria Dubourg), Catalogue de /'oeuvre Pages 40-4I: Boating
complet de Fantin-Latour, Paris, I9II, p. 40 (no. 288). Jacques- Hamilton, Manet, pp. 2I4-I7. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
249
45-47. Rewald, "Impressionist Brush," p. 3I (no. I9). Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, pp. 57-58, vol. 2, pp. 110-11 (no.
Moffett, Impressionism, pp. I24-26 (no. 22). Rouart and 2I4). Boggs, Portraits, pp. 27, 6I, 119. Moffett, Degas, pp. 7,
Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. I86 (no. 223). 8-9·
Pages 42-43: Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier Page 6I :joseph Henri Altes
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 47-48. Rouart and Wildenstein, Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. 54, vol. 2, pp. 90-9I (no. q6).
Edouard Manet, vol. 2, pp. 6-7 (no. I5). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. 65. Boggs, Portraits, pp. 92 (no.
40), I08. Moffett, Degas, pp. 7-8.
Pages 44-45: George Moore
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 48-50. Rewald, Impressionism, Pages 62-63: Madame Gobillard-Morisot (Yves Morisot)
p. 401. Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. 2, p. Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 1, pp. 57-58, vol. 2, pp. 110-11 (no.
4(n0. II). 2 I 3). Boggs, Portraits, pp. 27, 3 I, 6I, I I9. Sterling-Salinger,
vol. 3, pp. 65-66. Moffett, Degas, pp. 8-9.
Pages 46-47: The Monet Family in Their Garden
Tabarant, Manet, pp. 246-57. Rewald, Impressionism, pp. 34I- Pages 64-65: Sulking
43· Rouart and Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, vol. I, p. I90 Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. 83, vol. 2, pp. 174-75 (no. 335).
(no. 227). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 7 I -7 3. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp.
Pages 48-49: George Moore (Au Caje) IO, 90, 93, I I6-20, I44-45, I62-64, 2I6, 228, 232, 272,
George Moore, Modern Painting, London and New York, I893, 315 (nn. 74, 8o). Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas, 2
p. 31. Anne Coffin Hanson, Edouard Manet: I832-1883, cata- vols., Oxford, I976, vol. I, pp. 20-2I, 110-11, I22, I5I,
logue of an exhibition at Philadelphia Museum of Art and Art vol. 2, notebook 25, pp. 36, 37, 39· Theodore Reff, "Degas: A
Institute of Chicago, I966-67' pp. I 58-59 (no. I45). Ster- Master among Masters," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
ling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 50-5 I. Rouart and Wildenstein, vol. 34, no. 4 (I977), pp. 22-23. Moffett, Degas, p. IO.
Edouard Manet, vol. I, pp. 234-35 (no. 296). Pages 66-67: The Dancing Class
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. 69, vol. 2, pp. I48-49 (no. 297).
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas Ronald Pickvance, "Degas's Dancers," Burlington Magazine, vol.
Pages 50-5 I: Self-Portrait I05, no. 723 (I963), pp. 256-59, 265-66: Sterling-Salinger,
Paul Andre Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, 4 vols., Paris, 1946- vol. 3, pp. 67-71. Rewald, "Impressionist Brush," p. 23 (no.
49, vol. I, pp. q, 20, vol. 2, pp. 6-7 (no. 12). Jean Sutherland I3). Moffett, Impressionism, pp. 94-98 (no. I5). Reff, Notebooks,
Boggs, Portraits by Degas, Berkeley and Los Angeles, I962, pp. vol. I, pp. 7 (n. 2), 9 (nn. 6, 7), 2 I (n. 6), I I 5, I I9-20.
9, 87 (no. 36), I05. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 56-57. Moffett, Degas, p. I I.
Charles S. Moffett, Degas: Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, I979, p. 5· Pages 68-69: The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. 68, vol. 2, pp. I44-45 (no. 294).
Pages 52-53: A Woman with Chrysanthemums Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 66-69. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp.
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I' pp. 55-56, 239 (n. I q), vol. 2, pp. 22 I, 327 (n. 33), 329 (n. 88). Reff, Notebooks, vol. I, pp. 7
62-63 (no. I25). Boggs, Portraits, pp. 31-32, 37, 4I, 59, (n. 2), 9 (n. 7), 2 I (n. 6), I I9-20, vol. 2, notebook 24, pp. IO,
I I9. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 57-60. John Rewald, "The II, I3, I5, I6, q, I9. Reff, "MasteramongMasters,"p. 26.
Impressionist Brush," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. Moffett, Degas, pp. 9-IO.
32, no. 3 (I973-74), p. 8 (no. 3). Moffett, Impressionism, pp.
70-75 (no. Io). Theodore Reff, Degas: The Artist's Mind, Pages 70-7 I: The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage
New York, I976, pp. 48-49, 62-65. Moffett, Degas, p. 6. Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, pp. 9I-92, vol. 2, pp. 2I8-I9 (no.
400). Pickvance, "Degas's Dancers," pp. 259-66. Sterling-
Pages 54-55: Portrait ofa Lady in Gray Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 73-76. Theodore Reff, "The Technical
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 2, pp. 64-65 (no. I28). Sterling- Aspects of Degas's Art," Metropolitan Museum journal, vol. 4
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 6o-61. Moffett, Degas, pp. 6-7. (I97I), pp. I51-52. Reff, Artist's Mind, p. 274. Reff, Note-
Page 55: Mademoiselle Marie Dihau books, vol. I, pp. 7 (n. 2), 9(n. 7), 2I (n. 6), II5, II9-20, vol.
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 2, pp. 88-89 (no. I72). Boggs, Portraits, 2, notebook 24, p. 27. Moffett, Degas, p. I2.
p. Io6. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 61-62. Moffett, Degas, p. Pages 72-73: A Woman Ironing
7· Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. 87, vol. 2, pp. I88-89 (no. 356).
Pages 56-57: The Collector of Prints Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 77-78. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp.
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 2, pp. 70-7I (no. I38). Sterling- I66-68, 32 I (n. 68). Moffett, Degas, p. IO.
Salinger, vol. 3, p. 61. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp. 98-IOI. Mof- Pages 74-75: Dancers Practicing at the Bar
fett, Degas, pp. 7-8. Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, pp. 93, 239 (n. 118), vol. 2, pp. 224-
Pages 58-59:jacquesjoseph Tissot 25 (no. 408). Sterling-Salinger, pp. 78-8I. Reff, Artist's Mind,
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, pp. 56,240 (n. IJ7), vol. 2, pp. 90- pp. 277-78. Moffett, Degas, pp. I I-I2.
9I (no. I75). Boggs, Portraits, pp. 23, 32, 54, 57, 59, 106,
Pages 76-77: At the Milliner's
I3I. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 62-64. Moffett, Impression-
George Moore, Confessions ofa Young Man (I 888), reprinted New
ism, pp. 76-79 (no. I I). Reff, Artist's Mind, pp. IOI-IO.
York, I959, p. 45· Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 2, pp. 382-83 (no.
Moffett, Degas, pp. 7-8.
682). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 8I-82. Reff, Artist's Mind,
Pages 6o-61: Portrait of Yves Gobillard-Morisot pp. I68-7o, 322 (n. 92). Reff, "Master among Masters," pp.
38-39. Moffett, Degas, p. IO. Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. 22 5 (no. I 036).
Camille Pissarro, Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, New
Pages 78-79: The Singer in Green (La Chanteuse Verte)
York, I943, p. 329 (letter from Rouen, I9 August I898, and a
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 3, pp. 440-4I (no. 772). Sterling-
photograph of the site). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 2I-22.
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 82-83. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp. 66-67, 69,
John Rewald, "The Impressionist Brush," Metropolitan Museum
3IO (n. 87). Moffett, Degas, p. I2.
of Art Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 3 (I973-74), pp. 44 (no. 28), 54·
Page 8o: The Bather
Pages I02-3: The Garden of the Tuileries on a Winter Afternoon, II
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 3, pp. 602-3 (no. I03I his). Sterling-
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. 233 (no. I097).
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 90-9I.
Pissarro, exhib. cat., p. 146.
Pages 8o-8I: A Woman Having Her Hair Combed
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. I, p. I2I, vol. 3, pp. 488-89 (no. 847). Claude Oscar Monet
Douglas Cooper, Pastels by Edgar Degas, New York and Basel, Pages I04-5: The Green Wave
I952, pp. 22-23. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 86-88. Re- Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I24. Daniel Wildenstein, Claude
wald, Impressionism, pp. 524-25. Reff, Artist's Mind, pp. I43- Monet, 3 vols., vol. I, I84o-18BI (Paintings), Lausanne and
44• 274-76, 3Io (n. 87), 3I9 (n. I65), 336 (n. I9). Moffett, Paris, I974, pp. 35, I 52-53 (no. 73).
Degas, pp. I3-I4·
Pages Io6-7: The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest
Pages 82-83: Dancers, Pink and Green Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I24-25. Kermit S. Champa,
Lemoisne, Degas, vol. 3, pp. 590-9I (no. IOI 3). Sterling- Studies in Early Impressionism, New Haven and London, I973, p.
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 85-86. Theodore Reff, in Edgar Degas, 5. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 17, 29, I42-43
catalogue of an exhibition at Acquavella Galleries, New York, (no. 6o).
I978, n.p. (no. 45). Moffett, Degas, pp. I2-I3·
Pages I08-9: The Beach at Sainte-Adresse
G. Poulain, Bazille et ses amis, Paris, I932, p. 92. Sterling-
Camille Jacob Pissarro
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I25-26. Champa, Studies, pp. I9-20.
Pages 84-85:}allais Hill, Pontoise
Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 38, 47, I62-63 (no.
Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro:
9I). Joel Isaacson, Claude Monet: Observation and Reflection,
son art-son oeuvre, 2 vols., Paris, I939. vol. I, p. 85 (no. 55).
F. W. J. Hemmings and Robert J. Niess, Emile Zola Salons, Oxford and New York, I978, pp. I6, 69, I99· Helene Adhe-
Geneva and Paris, I959, pp. I28-29. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, mar et al. , Hom mage aClaude Monet, catalogue ofan exhibi cion at
Grand Palais, Paris, I98o, pp. 8o-8I (no. I6).
pp. I5-I6. Rewald, Impressionism, pp. I58, I85-86. Moffett,
Impressionism, pp. 17I-75 (no. 33). Pissarro, catalogueofanexhi- Pages I I o- I I : Terrace at Sainte-Adresse
bition at Hayward Gallery, London, Grand Palais, Paris, and Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet: sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre, Paris,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I98o-8I, pp. 75-76 (no. 9). I922, p. 98. John Richardson, Claude Monet, catalogue of an
Pages 86-87: A Cowherd on the Route du Chou, Pontoise Arts Council of Great Britain exhibition at Tate Gallery, Lon-
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. I I6 (no. 260). don, and Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, I957, p. 20.
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I 6- 17. Pissarro, exhib. cat. , pp. William C. Seitz, Claude Monet, New York, I96o, pp. 72 f.
20-28. Rene Gimpel, DiaryofanArtDealer, New York, I966, p. I52.
Important Impressionist and Modern Drawings, Paintings, and Sculp-
Pages 88-89: Barges at Pontoise ture, special sale catalogue, Christie, Manson, & Woods, Lon-
Pissarroand Venturi, CamillePissarro, vol. I, p. I3I (no. 358). don, I December I967, p. 23. Douglas Cooper, "The Monets in
Pages 90-9 I : La Mere Larcheveque the Metropolitan Museum," Metropolitan Museum journal, vol. 3
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. I 53 (no. 5 I 3). (I970), pp. 28I, 284 f., 300, 302, 305. Champa, Studies, pp.
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I8-I9. I 3 ff., 17 f., 20, 30. Rewald, Impressionism, pp. I 52-54.
Moffett, Impressionism, pp. I40-44 (no. 26). Wildenstein,
Pages 92-93: Two Young Peasant Women Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 38, 47, I64-65 (no. 95). Grace
Lionello Venturi, Les Archives de l'impressionnisme, 2 vols., Seiberling, "The Evolution of an Impressionist," in Paintings by
Paris and New York, I939, vol. 2, pp. 32, 34, quotes Camille Monet, catalogue of an exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago,
Pissarro to Durand-Ruel, I3 and I9January I892. Pissarro and I975, pp. 24, 25, 6o (no. 6). John House, Monet, Oxford and
Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, pp. 6I, I92 (no. 792). Everett New York, I977, pp. 5 f. Robert Herbert, "Method and Mean-
Fahy, The Wrightsman Collection, vol. 5, Paintings, Drawings, ing in Monet," Art in America (September I979), pp. IOO-IOI,
Sculpture, New York, pp. I 5 I-57. I04, 108.
Pages 94-95: Poplars, Eragny Pages I I 2- I 3: La Grenouillere
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. 208 (no. 920). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I26-27. Champa, Studies, pp. 63,
Pages 96-97: Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen 65-66. Rewald, Impressionism, pp. 227-32. John Rewald, "The
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. 2 I 5 (no. 964). Impressionist Brush," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol.
32, no. 3 (I973-74), pp. I9, 2I (no. I2). Moffett, Impression-
Pages 98-99: The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning
ism, pp. I45-49 (no. 27). Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I,
Pissarro and Venturi, Camille Pissarro, vol. I, p. 217 (no. 987).
pp. 45, 48, I78-79 (no. I34), 427 (letter 53, 25 September
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 20-21.
I869). Seiberling, "Evolution," pp. 25, 28,73 (no. I9). House,
Pages 100-IOI: Rue de I'Epicerie, Rouen Monet, p. 6. Isaacson, Claude Monet, pp. 17-I9, 22, 77, 20I f.
Pages I I 4- I 5: Landscape near Zaandam vol. I, pp. 388-89 (no. 634), vol. 2, pp. I 3 (n. I4 5), 44 (n.
Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 56, 200-20I (no. I86). 465), 47 (n. 484). John House, "The New Monet Catalogue,"
George Szabo, The Robert Lehman Collection, New York (Metro- Burlington Magazine, vol. I2o, no. 907 (I978).
politan Museum), I975, p. 98 (no. 88).
Page I 34: The Manneporte, Etretat, I
Pages I I 6- I 7: Apple Trees in Bloom Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 3 5. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro-
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I28. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro- politan," pp. 29I-92, 302, 303, 304, 305. Wildenstein,
politan," pp. 287-88, 290, 302, 303, 305. Rewald, "Impres- Claude Monet, vol. 2, pp. IO, I2, 38 (n. 392), 44 (n. 465), I04-
sionist Brush," p. 25 (no. I5). Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 5 (no. 832).
I, pp. 65, 230-3I (no. 27I). Herbert, "Method and Meaning,"
p. I08. Page I35: The Manneporte, Etretat, II
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 36. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro-
Pages I I8-I9: The Pare Monceau, Paris politan," pp. 29I, 292, 294, 302, 303, 304, 305. Isaacson,
William C. Seitz, Claude Monet, New York, I96o, p. 26. Claude Monet, pp. 37-38, I32, 2I7. Herbert, "Method and
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I28-29. Remus Niculescu, Meaning," p. I08. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 2, pp. 43,
"Georges de Bellio: I'ami des impressionnistes" (I964), reprinted 45, I84-85 (no. I052), vol. 3, p. 66 (n. I278). Grace Seiber-
in Paragone, nos. 247, 249 (I970), pp. 9, 11, 3I, 57, 68 £, 88. ling, Monet's Series, New York and London, I98I, pp. 65-68,
Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 82, 84 (n. 602), 286- 271.
87 (no. 398).
Pages I36-37: Rapids on the Petite Creuseat Fresselines
Pages I 20-2 I: Parisians Enjoying the Pare Monceau Seitz, Claude Monet, p. I 36. Daniel Wildenstein, Impressions,
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I29. Niculescu, "Georges de Bel- Lausanne, I967, p. 5 I. Cooper, "Monets in the Metropolitan,"
lio," pp. I 5, 3I, 57, 69, 88. Cooper, "Monets in the Metropoli- pp. 292, 305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 3, pp. I9, 20,
tan," pp. 288-90. Moffett, Impressionism, pp. I64-76 (no. 3I). (n. 820), 2I (n. 825), I28-29 (no. I239), 30I (letter I36, 9
Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 90, 3I6-17 (no. 466). November I900). Seiberling, Monet's Series, p. 77.
Pages I22-23: Apples and Grapes Pages I38-39: Poplars
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I29-30. Cooper, "Monets in the Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I36-37. Cooper, "Monets in the
Metropolitan," pp. 296-97, 303, 305. Wildenstein, Claude Metropolitan," pp. 29I, 297-99, 302, 304, 305. Andrew
Monet, vol. I, pp. Ioo, Io6, 350-5 I (no. 545). Forge, "Monet at Giverny," in Claire Joyes et al., Monet at
Pages I24-25: Path in the lie Saint-Martin, Vitheuil Giverny, London, I975, p. I 1. Monet's Years at Giverny: Beyond
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 32. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro- Impressionism, catalogue of an exhibition at Metropolitan
politan," pp. 302,304,305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, Museum of Art, New York, I978, pp. 6o-6I (no. I6). Isaac-
pp. I04, 368-69 (no. 592), 440 (letters I88, 30 June I88o; son, Claude Monet, pp. 4I, I5I, 222. Herbert, "Method and
I9I, sJuly I88o). Meaning," p. Io8. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 3, pp. 42-
43 (n. I05I), 47 (n. I083), 66 (n. I278), I 52-53 (no. I309).
Pages I26-27: The Seine at Vitheuil Seiberling, Monet's Series, pp. u6-I7, 365 (no. 23).
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 3 1. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro-
politan," pp. 30I, 304, 305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, Pages qo-4 I: Haystacks in Snow
pp. 115, 370-7I (no. 599), vol. 3, r887-1898 (Paintings), Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I37-38. Cooper, "Monets in the
Lausanne and Paris, I979, p. 66 (n. I278). Metropolitan," pp. 298-99, 302, 303, 304, 305. Herbert,
"Method and Meaning," p. I08. Wildenstein, Claude Monet,
Pages 128-29: Vitheuil in Summer vol. 2, P· 34 (n. 355), vol. 3, PP· I3 (n. 745), 38, I42-43 (no.
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I30-31. Cooper, "Monets in the I279). Seiberling, Monet's Series, pp. 93, 96, 358 (no. 23).
Metropolitan," pp. 29I-92, 302, 304, 305. Wildenstein,
Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. us, 372-73 (no. 6os). Herbert, Pages I42-43: The Thaw (La Debacle)
"Method and Meaning," p. Io8. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 38. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro-
politan," pp. 295, 304, 305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 3,
Pages I30-3I: Sunflowers
pp. 49, I6o-6I (no. I335), 292 (letters I354, 23 November
Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2d
I896; I355, 30 December I896; I357, 17 January I897), 293
ed., 3 vols., Greenwich, Conn., I959, p. 108 (letter 563, early
(letters I36I, 2oJanuary I897; I364, 22January 1897).
December I888). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I 32-33.
Konrad Hoffman, "Zu van Goghs Sonnenblumenbildern," Pages I44-45: Rouen Cathedral
ZeitschriftfiirKunstgeschichte, vol. 3I, no. 1 (I968), pp. 28-29. George Heard Hamilton, Claude Monet's Paintings of Rouen Ca-
Cooper, "Monets in the Metropolitan," pp. 292-93, 296-97, thedral, London, I96o, p. 26. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
302,303,305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. I, pp. 382-83 I 38-40. Cooper, "Monets in the Metropolitan," pp. 297-30I,
(no. 628), vol. 2, r882-1BB6 (Paintings), Lausanne and Paris, 304, 305. Rewald, "Impressionist Brush," p. 43 (no. 27).
I979, pp. I3 (n. I45), 44 (n. 465), 47 (n. 484). Robert Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 3, pp. 44-46, 52, 66 (n.
Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition, I278), I56-s7 (no. 1325). Seiberling, Monet's Series, pp. 155-
New York, I975, pp. 86-87. s6, I60-6I, 27I, 365 (no. 4).
Pages I 32-3 3: Chrysanthemums Pages 146-47: Morning on the Seine near Giverny
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 3 3. Cooper, "Monets in the Metro- Gustave Geffroy, Histoire de l'impressionnisme: /~a vie artistique,
politan," pp. 296-97, 303, 304. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, 3d ser., 8 vols., Paris, I894, vol. I, p. 170. Sterling-Salinger,
vol. 3, p. I 4 I . Cooper, "Monets in the Metropolitan," pp. 299, Pages I68-69: By the Seashore
300, 302, 304, 305. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, vol. 3, pp. 79, Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3' pp. I 55-57. Daulte, Auguste Renoir,
84 (n. I440), 2I2-I3 (no. I482). Seiberling, Monet's Series, pp. no. 448. John Rewald, "The Impressionist Brush," Metropolitan
I89, 225. Museum ofArt Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 3 (1973-74), p. 37 (no. 23).
Pages I48-49: Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies Pages I70-7I: In the Meadow
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I4I-42. Cooper, "Monets in the Jean Renoir, Renoir, p. 248. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 158-
Metropolitan," pp. 297-300, 302, 304, 305. Robert Maillard, 59· Daulte, Auguste Renoir, no. 610. Oakley, Pierre Auguste
in Denis Rouart and Jean-Dominique Rey, Monet Nympheas, Renoir, p. 14.
Paris, I972, p. I54· Monet's Years, exhib. cat., p. 82 (no. 3I).
Pages I72-73: Young Girl Bathing
Pages I 50-5 I: The Houses of Parliament Renoir, Centennial Loan Exhibition, Duveen Galleries, New
Seit.z, Claude Monet, p. 148, quotes Monet to Durand-Rue!, York, 1941, pp. 87, I 58 (no. 65). Fran~ois Fosca, Renoir, trans.
I903. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I42-43· Cooper, "Monets Mary I. Martin, New York {1970], p. 205. Elda Fezzi, L'Opera
intheMetropolitan,"pp. 299, 30I, 302,304,305. Seiberling, completa di Renoir nel periodo impressionis/a 1869-1883, Milan,
Monet's Series, p. 375 (no. 4I). I972, p. I 19 (no. 669). George Szabo, The Robert Lehman
Collection, New York (Metropolitan Museum), 1975, p. 92 (no.
Alfred Sisley
92).
Pages I 52-53: The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne
Fran<;ois Daulte, Alfred Sisley: catalogue raisonne de /'oeuvre peint, Pages I74-75: Two Young Girls at the Piano
Lausanne, I959· no. 37. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I I9-20. Jean Renoir, Renoir, pp. 389-90. Michel Robida, Renoir Chil-
Moffett, Impressionism, pp. 20I-4 (no. 4I). dren, trans. Diana Imber, Lausanne, 1962, p. 35· Szabo, Robert
Pages 154-55: View of Marly-le-Roi from Coeur-Volant Lehman Collection, p. 92 (no. 93).
Daulte, Alfred Sisley, no. 208.
Paul Cezanne
Pierre Auguste Renoir Pages 176-77: Dominique Aubert (Uncle Dominic)
Page I 56: A Road in Louveciennes Lionello Venturi, Cezanne: son art-son oeuvre, 2 vols., Paris,
As of this date, this picture is apparently unpublished. I936, no. 73· John Rewald, Cezanne, Paris, 1939, pp. 167-68.
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 96-97.
Page I 57: A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant
Jean Renoir, Renoir: My Father, trans. Randolph and Dorothy Pages I78-79: Bathers
Weaver, Boston and Toronto, I962, p. 232. Linda Nochlin, Venturi, Cezanne, no. 265. Lawrence Gowing, An Exhibition of
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, 1874-1904 :Sources and Doc- Paintings by Cezanne, Arts Council of Great Britain, Tate Gal-
uments, Englewood Cliffs, I966, p. 5, quotes Edmond Duranty, lery, London, and Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, I954,
La nouvelle peinture, I876. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I47- no. 14.
48. Fran~ois Daulte, Auguste Renoir: catalogue raisonne de /'oeuvre Pages I8o-8r: Still Life
peint, vol. I, Les Figures ( r86o-9o), Lausanne, I97 I, no. I or. Venturi, Cezanne, no. 213. Meyer Schapiro, Cezanne, 3d
Pages I 58-59: Young Girl in a Pink and Black Hat ed., New York, 1965, pp. I7, 6o. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3,
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I48-49. Daulte, Auguste Renoir,. pp. 98-99·
no. 595· Pages 182-83: Madame Cezanne in the Conservatory
Pages I6o-6I: Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguerite Lemonnier) Gerstle Mack, Paul Cezanne, New York, 1935, pp. I69-72.
and Her Children, Georgette and Paul Venturi, Cezanne, no. 569. Schapiro, Cezanne, p. 82. Sterling-
Ambroise Vollard, Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre-Auguste Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 100-102. John Rewald, "The Impression-
Renoir, 2 vols., Paris, I918, vol. 2, p. 9I (n. 362). Sterling- ist Brush," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 3
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 149-52. Daulte, Auguste Renoir, no. 266. (1973-74), p. 4I (no. 26).
Moffett, Impressionism, pp. I90-94 (no. 38).
Pages I 84-85: Still Life: Apples and a Pot of Primroses
Pages I62-63: Marguerite (Margot) Berard Venturi, Cezanne, no. 599· Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I52-I53· Daulte, Auguste Renoir, 102-4.
no. 286. Lucy Oakley, Pierre Auguste Renoir, New York, I98o,
Pages I86-87: Near the Pool at thejas de Bouffan
pp. IO-I I.
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 648. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
Pages 164-65: View of the Seacoast near Wargemont in Normandy I04-5·
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 53· Oakley, Pierre Auguste Renoir,
Pages 188-89: The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L'Estaque
p. I I.
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 429. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 105-
Page 166: Still Life with Peaches and Grapes 6. Rewald, "Impressionist Brush," p. 38 (no. 24). Moffett,
Maurice Berard, Renoir a Wargemont, Paris, I938, pp. I2-13. Impressionism, pp. 59-63 (no. 8). Paul Cezanne, Letters, ed. John
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I 53-54. Rewald, 4th rev. ed., New York, 1976, pp. 145-46.
Page 167: Still Life with Peaches Pages I 90-9 I: Gardanne
Berard, Renoir a Wargemont, pp. I2-I3. Sterling-Salinger, vol. Venturi, Cezanne, no. 432. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
3. p. I54· 106-7.
253
Pages I 92-9 3: Mont Sainte-Victoire Gogh, pp. I74 (no. F 375), 626. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh, p. 8.
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 452. Cezanne, Letters, London, I94I, p. Hulsker, Complete Van Gogh, pp. 292, 298-99 (no. I 329).
I I4 (letter to Zola, I4 April I878). Schapiro, Cezanne, p. 66.
Pages 2 I 2- I 3: Oleanders
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I07-8.
Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 3, pp. 47 (letter 54 I, about 23
Pages I 94-95: Madame Cezanne in a Red Dress or 24 September I888), IS8 (letter 587, 25 or 26 April I889).
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 570. Schapiro, Cezanne, p. 94· Sterling- Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I83-85. De Ia Faille, Works of van
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I09-I I. Gogh, pp. 242-43 (no. F 593), 634. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh,
p. 8. Hulsker, Complete Van Gogh, pp. 356, 358-59 (no. I s66).
Pages I 96-97: Still Life with a Ginger jar and Eggplants
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 597. Schapiro, Cezanne, p. IO. Sterling- Pages 2I4-I5: L'Ar/esienne: Madame joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I I I- I 2. julien)
Pages I98-99: The Cardplayers Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 3, pp. 100 (letter 559, Novem-
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 559· Kurt Badt, The Art of Cezanne, ber I888), I28 (letter 57 3, 2 3 January I889 ), I82 (letter 595,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, I965, pp. 94-97, I 17-22. Sterling- I9 June I889). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I85-88. De Ia
Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I I 2- I 5. Faille, Works of van Gogh, pp. 2 I9 (no. F 488), 630. V. Jirat-
Wasiutynski, Paul Gauguin in the Context ofSymbolism, New York
Page 200: Still Life: Apples and Pears
and London, I978, pp. IOI-2. Rewald, Post-Impressionism, pp.
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 502. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, p. I09.
238-40. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh, p. IO. Hulsker, Complete Van
Page 20 I: View of the Domaine Saint-]oseph Gogh, pp. 372, 374 (no. I624). Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov,
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 66o. Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, catalogue of an
IIS-17· exhibition at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, I98I, pp. I42-
44 (no. 30), I88, I89 (n. 4).
Pages 202-3: Rocks in the Forest
Venturi, Cezanne, no. 673. Schapiro, Cezanne, p. I I8. Sterling- Pages 2 I 6- I 7: Cypresses
Salinger, vol. 3, p. I 17. Cezanne: The Late Work, catalogue of an Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 3, pp. I8s-86 (letter 596, 25
exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, New York, I977, p. 389 June I889). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I88-89. De Ia Faille,
(no. 8). Works of van Gogh, pp. 246-47 (no. F 6I3), p. 635. Hulsker,
Paul Gauguin Complete Van Gogh, pp. 398, 404 (no. 1746).
Pages 204-5: Ia Orana Maria Pages 2I8-I9: First Steps
Georges Wildenstein, Gauguin, Paris, I964, pp. I67-68 (no. Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 3, pp. 224-2 5 (letter 6n, about
428). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 170-71. RichardS. Field, 25 October I889). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I90-9I. De Ia
Paul Gauguin: The Paintings of the First Voyage to Tahiti, New Faille, Works of van Gogh, pp. 262-63 (no. F 668), 637. Charles
York and London, I977, pp. 54, 58-74, 78, 3oi, 306, 3IS, Chetham, The Role ofVincent van Gogh's Copies in the Development of
360. V. Jirat-Wasiutynski, Paul Gauguin in the Context ofSymbol- His Art, New York and London, I976, p. I90. Moffett, Vincent
ism, New York and London, 1978, p. 276. Rewald, Post-Impres- van Gogh, p. I3. Hulsker, Complete Van Gogh, pp. 432-33 (no.
sionism, pp. 466, 476, 477. I883).
Pages 206-7: Two Tahitian Women Pages 220-2I: Irises
Wildenstein, Gauguin, p. 246 (no. 583). Sterling-Salinger, vol. Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 3, pp. 26 (letter 53I, 3 Septem-
3, pp. 176-78. Franc;oise Cachin, Gauguin, Paris, I968, pp. ber 1888), 269 (letter 663, 11 or 12 May 1890). Sterling-
30I ff., 349 (n. 24). Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I91-92. De Ia Faille, Works of van Gogh,
pp. 266-67 (no. F 68o), 638. Rewald, Post-Impressionism, pp.
Vincent van Gogh 354, 355, 368. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh, p. I3. Hulsker,
Page 208: The Potato Peeler Complete Van Gogh, pp. 448, 450, 452 (no. I978). Welsh-
Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2d Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. I s8.
ed., 3 vols., Greenwich, Conn., I959, vol. I, pp. 77 (letter
299, about I I July I883), 370 (letter 403, last week of April Georges Pierre Seurat
I88s). J .-B. de Ia Faille, The Works of Vincent van Gogh: His Page 222: The Gardener
Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam, I970, pp. Io6 (no. F 365 Henri Dorra and John Rewald, Seurat, Paris, I959· p. 47 (no.
recto), 624. Charles S. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh, New York, 48). C. M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, 2 vols., Paris, I96I,
I979, pp. s-6. Jan Hulsker, The Complete Van Gogh, New York, vol. I, pp. 62-63 (no. 101).
I98o, pp. I45 (no. 654), I so.
Page 2 2 3: Study for A Sunday on La Grande jatte
Pages 208-9: Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat Dorra and Rewald, Seurat, p. I20 (no. I I3). De Hauke, Seurat,
Van Gogh, Complete Letters, vol. 2, p. 462 (letter 44I, I9 vol. I, p. 72 (no. I 17). Andre Chaste! and Fiorella Minervino,
December I885), vol. 3, p. 445 (letter W 8, about 26 August L'Opera completa di Seurat, Milan, I972' p. 99 (no. I Is). George
I888). De Ia Faille, Works of van Gogh, pp. I7I (no. F 365 Szabo, The Robert Lehman Collection, New York (Metropolitan
verso), 625. Moffett, Vincent van Gogh, p. 7· Hulsker, Complete Museum), I975, p. 93 (no. 98).
Van Gogh, pp. 300, 302, 304-5 (no. I354).
Pages 224-25: Study for A Sunday on La Grandejatte
Pages 2 I o- I I : Sunflowers Daniel C. Rich, Seurat and the Evolution of "La Grande jatte,"
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I8I-82. DelaFaille, Worksofvan Chicago, I935, pp. 24-25 (no. 49). Dorraand Rewald, Seurat,
254
pp. I50-5I (no. I38). De Hauke, Seurat, vol. I, pp. 94-95
(no. I42). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I94-97.
Pages 226-27: Invitation to the Sideshow (Parade de Cirque)
Dorra and Rewald, Seurat, pp. 225-27 (no. I8I). De Hauke,
Seurat, vol. I, pp. I 50-53 (no. I87). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3,
pp. I97-200. Robert L. Herbert, "Parade de Cirque de Seurat et
l'esthetique scientifique de Charles Henry," Revue de /'Art, no.
50 (I980), pp. 9-23.
Paul Signac
Pages 228-29: The jetty at Cassis
Franc;;oiseCachin, Pau/Signac, Paris, I97I, pp. 4I-42.
Pages 2 30-3 I : View of the Port of Marseilles
Signac, catalogue of an exhibition at Musee du Louvre, Paris,
I963-64, pp. 74-75 (no. 66). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
20I-2. Cachin, Paul Signac, p. 91.
Henri Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa

Pages 232-33: Rene Grenier
Franc;;ois Gauzi, Lautrec et son temps, Paris, I954, pp. 27, 58.
M. G. Dortu, Tou/ouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre, 6 vols., New York,
I 97 I, vol. 2, p. I 38 (no. P. 304).
Pages 234-35: Woman in the Garden of Monsieur Forest
Dortu, Tou/ouse-Lautrec, vol. 2, p. I72 (no. P.344). Naomi E.
Maurer, in Charles F. Stuckey, Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, cata-
logue of an exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, I979. pp.
I 52-53 (no. 40).
Pages 236-37: The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge
Dortu, Tou/ouse-Lautrec, vol. 2, p. 256 (no. P-425). Charles F.
Stuckey, in Stuckey, Toulouse-Lautrec, pp. 24, 26.
Pages238-39:TheSofa
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 204-5. Dortu, Tou/ouse-Lautrec,
vol. 3, p. 370 (no. P.370). Naomi E. Maurer and Charles F.
Stuckey, in Stuckey, Toulouse-Lautrec, pp. 25I-53·
Bertrand Jean (called Odilon) Redon

Pages 240-4I: Flowers in a Chinese Vase
Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon-Fantasy and Colour, New York and
London, I965, p. 204 (no. 308). Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp.
8-9·
Pages 242-43: Madame Arthur Fontaine
Roseline Bacou, Odi/on Redon, 2 vols., Geneva, 1956, vol. I, p.
I 53, vol. 2, p. 54 (no. 76). Roseline Bacou [?), Odi/on Redon,
catalogue of an exhibition at Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris, I956-
57, pp. 49-50 (no. 89). Berger, Odilon Redon, p. 2 I I (no. 393).
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. 7-8. From Realism to Symbolism,
catalogue of an exhibition at Wildenstein & Co., New York, and
Philadelphia Museum of Art, I97I, pp. 118-I9 (no. I20).
Richard Hobbs, Odi/on Redon, Boston, I977, pp. I45, I48,
I83.
Henri Julien Felix Rousseau (Le Douanier)

Pages 244-45: The Banks of the Bievre near Bicetre
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I67-68. Giovanni Arcieri, Rous-
seau il Doganiere, Milan, I969, p. I02 (no. I62).
Pages 246-4 7: The Repast of the Lion
Sterling-Salinger, vol. 3, pp. I66-67. Arcieri, Rousseau, p. I05
(no. I93).
255

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Who is considered the father of Impressionism?

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Post-Impressionist

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

The photographs for this volume were

Composition by Innovative Graphics

Johan BartholdJongkind, Dutch, I8I9-I89I 14

Eugene Boudin, French, I824-I898 16

Edouard Manet, French, I 832- I 883

Alfred Sisley, British, I839-I899 152

Pierre Auguste Renoir, French, I84I-I9I9 156

Vincent van Gogh, Dutch, I853-I89o 208

Georges Seurat, French, I859-I89I 222

Paul Signac, French, I863-I935

Honfleur dead to art." However, in I86o Jongkind returned to

On the Beach at Trouville

BouDIN FREQUENTLY painted landscapes along the

Gift of Arthur J. Neumark, I 959 59· 140

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

IN THE EARLY years of his career, Fantin-Latour under-

Still Life with Pansies

MADAME FANTIN-LATOUR, in a catalogue of her hus-

The Spanish Singer

MANET MADE HIS public debut at the Salon of 1861

Gift of William Church Osborn, 1949 49-58.2

Boy with a Sword

ASSESSING MANET's CAREER shortly after his death,

Gift ofErwin Davis, 1889

LIKE ALL THE WORKS submitted by Manet to the Salon

Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.53

AccoRDING TO HIS close associates, Manet painted so

Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.54

The Dead Christ, with Angels

PERHAPS BECAUSE RECENT work by Courbet and

Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975

Woman with a Parrot

MANET PAINTED Woman with a Parrot in his studio in

Gift of Erwin Davis, 1889

Madame Edouard Manet

THE SITTER IS MANET' S wife, Suzanne Leenhoff,

Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967

BOATING WAS PAINTED during the summer of 1874,

Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.100.11'5

Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier

BORN IN r 86o, Isabelle Lemonnier was the daughter of

Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29. roo. 56

A GROUP OF ARTISTS that included Manet, Degas, and

Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes and its guests, among

Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929 29.1oo.ss

The Monet Family in Their Garden

George Moore (Au Cafe)

IN THIS UNFINISHED portrait of the writer George