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| Jean Béraud Sunday at the Church of Saint Philippe du Roule, Paris 1877 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"When this painting was exhibited in the Salon of 1877 it was seen as a document of contemporary Parisian life. Béraud depicts a view of the rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, which had recently become a fashionable shopping street. The church was designed in the eighteenth century by the architect J.F. Chalgrin."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Samuel Butler Mr Heatherley's Holiday - An Incident in Studio Life 1874 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"It was Heatherley's that set me wrong. This is Butler's largest and most successful painting. It satirises the dusty, macabre jumble out of which 'grand style' Victorian classicism was expected to arise. Heatherley's art school in Newman Street, which Butler attended for a number of years, was run by the old man shown here, who famously never took a holiday. His mending of a skeleton misused by students pinpoints Butler's rejection of academicism."
– curator's notes from Tate Gallery
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| Charles Chaplin Young Girl Drawing ca. 1860-66 oil on panel Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham |
"Chaplin rarely used dark colours, preferring to apply a standard palette of pastel shades of pink, blue and yellow. His fondness for these shades accentuates his almost transparent flesh tones. His contemporaries praised his handling of lavish fabrics, paying tribute to his life-like portrayal of satins, gauzes and taffetas."
– curator's notes from the Bowes Museum
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| Thomas Eakins Between Rounds 1898-99 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
"Most of Eakins's paintings after 1886 were portraits, but he returned to sporting subjects in the late 1890s with a series that he began after attending professional boxing matches at the Philadelphia Arena (then located at the intersection of Broad and Cherry Streets, diagonally across from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). The resulting canvases were as revolutionary in their subject matter as his rowing scenes had been more than two decades earlier."
– curator's notes from the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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| Thomas Eakins Billy Smith - Sketch for Between Rounds ca. 1898 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
"Eakins fastidiously planned Between Rounds. Susan Macdowell Eakins later recalled, 'In Between Rounds every person in the picture posed for him. The interior was the Hall used by the fighters.' Although the painting does not depict a specific bout, Eakins combined details from several to give it verisimilitude and worked diligently to capture the atmospheric effects of dust and smoke in the arena."
– curator's notes from the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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| circle of Théodore Géricault Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1822-23 oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
Acquired in the 1940s by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, at a time when the painting was still erroneously believed to be a Géricault self-portrait.
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| William Michael Harnett Still Life with Bric-a-Brac 1878 oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
"This painting portrays a group of exotic objects from the collection of William Hazleton Folwell, the Philadelphia dry-goods importer who commissioned the work. Comprising genuine antiques, contemporary ceramics, and modern replicas, Folwell's collection reflects the eclecticism of Victorian taste and the influence of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition held in 1876. This international fair introduced Americans to objects form around the world and sparked widespread interest in collecting exotica."
– curator's notes from the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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| Antonio Mancini St John the Baptist ca. 1890-95 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"Provenance: Until 1920, Mary Smyth (Mrs. Charles) Hunter (b. 1856 - d. 1933), London and Hill House, Epping, England. Mrs. Hunter almost certainly acquired the painting directly from the artist. She and her husband patronized him, and Mancini stayed with them during a visit to London in 1908. Sold in 1920 by Mrs. Hunter to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for £2000 ($8200)."
– curator's notes from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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| Édouard Manet The Brioche 1870 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Manet reportedly called still life the 'touchstone of the painter.' From 1862 to 1870 he executed several large-scale tabletop scenes of fish and fruit, of which this is the last and most elaborate. It was inspired by the donation to the Louvre of a painting of a brioche by Jean-Siméon Chardin, the eighteenth-century French master of still life. Like Chardin, Manet surrounded the buttery bread with things to stimulate the senses – a brilliant white napkin, soft peaches, glistening plums, a polished knife, a bright red box – and, in traditional fashion, topped the brioche with a fragrant flower."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Jean-François Millet Retreat from the Storm ca. 1846 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"The impending storm poses a real threat to this woman and her child, whose subsistence depends on the stray sticks of firewood they have gathered. Throughout the 1840s the number of homeless peasants increased dramatically in France, reaching a crisis in the recession of 1847 and contributing to the fall of King Louis-Philippe in the 1848 revolution."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Eduardo Rosales After the Bath ca. 1869 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
"Este desnudo es uno de los cuadros más unánimemente admirados del pintor – hasta el punto de haber sido comparado con la Venus del espejo (National Gallery, Londres) de Diego Velázquez – aun cuando se trata, sin lugar a dudas, de un boceto. Representa a una mujer madura en pie, desnuda ye de espaldas, que se inclina hacia la izquierda para secarse la pierna, levemente flexionada, con un paño blanco. El cortinaje verde, que cae ampuloso por la derecha, ye la pose de la modelo, refinada y cauta, aseguran que se trata de una composición de estudio."
– curator's notes from Museo del Prado
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| Paul Signac Jetty at Cassis - Opus 198 1889 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Between 1887 and 1891 Signac spent the warmer months pursuing his two passions, marine painting and boating, on excursions to seaside resorts. One of five views made during a trip to the Mediterranean port of Cassis in April-June 1889, this work was singled out for praise when the series debuted at the Salon des Indépendants later that year. At Cassis, Signac found 'white, blue and orange, harmoniously spread over the beautiful rise and fall of the land – all around the mountains, with rhythmic curves.' Until 1894 he evoked analogies with musical compositions by inscribing each of his pictures with an opus number."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Alfred Sisley The Seine at Port Marly - Piles of Sand 1875 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
"Of all the landscapes Alfred Sisley painted in and around Marly-le-Roi, where he lived from 1875 to 1878, this scene of workers dredging sand to facilitate barge traffic is perhaps the most original. Generally, the Impressionists showed the Seine as a place of weekend leisure for Parisians, painting activities such as boating, yachting, promenading, and dining. Sisley depicted the river during the workweek, along with some of the men who depended on it for their livelihood."
curator's notes from the Art Institute of Chicago
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec The Streetwalker ca. 1890-91 oil on cardboard Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"As early as 1901 the woman in this painting was identified as a streetwalker. Her name, however, has been lost to history, only the nickname La Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet), which refers to her wig, has survived. She sits in the garden of Monsieur Forest, Lautrec's neighbor in Montmartre."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum