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| Anonymous Maker Mantel Ornaments ca. 1870 glass Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Interrupted Reading ca. 1870 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Berthe Morisot Woman at her Toilette ca. 1875 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Antonin Mercié Gloria Victis ca. 1873 bronze statuette Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Ernest Meissonier The Defense of Paris 1870-71 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Still Life - Corner of a Table 1873 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
"These monetary crises in the fall of 1873 were followed by a world-wide depression which lasted almost until the end of the decade. . . . There was, at the time, the usual disagreement as to the causes of the depression and the remedies which should be applied. . . . The Dutch found that the fall in the price of German vinegar was an important contributing cause, while excessive speculation, the falling off in the production of wine, and the disappearance of fish from the coast of Brittany were among the causes advanced by the French. In 1885, a British Royal Commission succeeded in reducing the major causes to six, one of which was overproduction. And it is interesting to note that the Oxford Prize Essayist for 1879 already had found the "real and deep-seated cause" in the fact that "the whole world is consuming more than it has produced."
"In retrospect, it appears that the crises were largely traceable to the financial excesses which had characterized the five or six years preceding 1873. Governments and individuals borrowed to finance undertakings of almost every sort, especially railroad construction. The United States, Turkey, Egypt, and South American were supplied with funds from England, which loaned over 1.5 billion dollars in the brief period 1870-74; while Russia, Austria, and Italy were supplied chiefly by Germany, to whom France paid a war indemnity of five billion gold francs between 1871 and 1873. With the first scare, both stock and commodity prices fell, bonds went into default, over-extended bankers failed, and credit began to contract."
– from The Depression of 1873-79 by O.V. Wells (Journal of Farm Economics, May 1937)
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| Auguste Renoir Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) 1875 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Edward Burne-Jones Perseus and Andromeda (study for The Doom Fulfilled) 1875 gouache on board Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Auguste Rodin The Age of Bronze 1875-76 bronze (life size) Cleveland Museum of Art (Ohio) |
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| Charles Gifford Dyer Seventeenth-Century Interior 1877 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Paul Cézanne Plate of Apples ca. 1877 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Camille Pissarro At the Window, rue des Trois Frères 1878-79 pastel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| John Warrington Wood Rebecca 1878 marble (half life-size) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Edgar Degas Portrait after a Costume Ball (Portrait of Madame Dietz-Monnin) 1879 pastel and distemper on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |