Saturday, May 19, 2018

French Painting from the Nineteenth Century

Anonymous French artist (imitator of Manet)
Still-life 
after 1883
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Gustave Courbet
River in a Mountain Gorge
ca. 1864
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Gustave Courbet
The Charente at Port Bertaud
1862
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gustave Courbet
La Roche à Bayard, Dinant
ca. 1856
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Honoré Daumier
The Serenade
ca. 1858
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Honoré Daumier
The Painter
1865
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

from The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House

Supposes the burlap bag to be the universe,
And black because its volume is the void
Before the stars were. At the painter's hand
Volume becomes one-sidedly a surface,
And all his depths are on the face of it.

Against this flat abyss, this groundless ground
Of zero thickness stretched against the cold
Dark silence of the Absolutely Not,
Material worlds arise, the colored earths
And oil of plants that imitate the light.

They imitate the light that is in thought,
For the mind relates to thinking as the eye
Relates to light. Only because the world
Already is a language can the painter speak
According to his grammar of the ground.

– Howard Nemerov (1968)

Edgar Degas
Before the Performance
ca. 1896-98
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Edgar Degas
Portrait of Diego Martelli (art critic)
1879
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Eugène Delacroix
Study for part of the Justice frieze for Palais Bourbon, Paris
ca. 1833-36
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Henri Fantin-Latour
Spring Flowers
1872
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Henri Fantin-Latour
Peaches on a dish
1873
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Henri Fantin-Latour
Roses
1888
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Henri-Joseph Harpignies
Cliffs near Crémieu
1847
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Georges Seurat
La Luzerne, Saint-Denis
1884-85
oil on canvas
formerly owned by Roger Fry
National Galleries of Scotland

Georges Seurat
Rue St Vincent, Paris, in Spring
ca. 1884
oil on panel (cigar-box lid)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge