On this day 11 February one hundred years ago, in 1924, Jean-François Raffaëlli died in Paris. This is the second article of two celebrating his life and art, and picks those up around 1890, when he was starting to concentrate more on cityscapes.

Although the mainstream Impressionists kept to oil on canvas in the main, those on the periphery like Raffaëlli were more experimental in their choice of media: his Parisian Rag Pickers from about 1890 was made using mixed media of oil paints and oil crayons.

From about 1890, Raffaëlli concentrated on paintings of Parisian street scenes, such as his Notre-Dame de Paris from 1890-95, and in print-making. While the couple of nuns appear novel to this painting, I’m sure we’ve seen the old man seated in the foreground in one of his social realist paintings from the previous decade.

He seems to have travelled extensively over this period, and in about 1893 painted these two Fishermen of Scotland puffing on their clay pipes as they stare into the distance.

More typical, though, is this view of the imposing north side of Les Invalides in Paris from about 1896. The Hôtel des Invalides is a large and prominent complex of buildings in Paris, at that time primarily providing accommodation for retired military veterans, and hospital facilities for them. It also housed military museums.

During Raffaëlli’s second visit to the USA, when he served on the jury of the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1899, he painted The Fletcher Mansion, New York City. This mansion was the private residence of Isaac D Fletcher and his family, and stands on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 79th Street.

The building had only been completed the previous year, and Fletcher died there in 1917. He had been an art collector, and left his collection and the house to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which sold the house on to the oil magnate Harry F Sinclair. It’s now better known by his name, but is owned and has been restored by the Ukrainian Institute of America.

Around the turn of the century, Raffaëlli’s style became more painterly, even Impressionist perhaps, as shown in this view of Les Champs-Elysées in Paris, from about 1900.

Raffaëlli still kept quite fine detail in this view of Notre Dame Seen from the Quai de la Tournelle, painted around the turn of the century in 1897-1902.

The Abandoned Road (1904) is perhaps one of his finest paintings, showing where an old road running along the top of a sea cliff had been lost in a large landslip. The whaleback ridge in the foreground has an almost animal feel to it, and his use of figures and the village church gives the scene a grander scale.

The Boulevard shows the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris, and probably dates from 1900-05. His style is here at its loosest, with highly gestural figures, and details of buildings appear to have been sketched in briskly.

This painting of a Street in Asnières was probably made at about this time. This town has now been swallowed up as a suburb of Paris, to the north-west, and sits on the north bank of the River Seine.

The Water’s Edge in Spring shows his continuing sketchy style from 1909.

At this time, the International Olympic Committee had decided to add an art competition, introduced in the fifth Olympiad held in Stockholm, Sweden, in July 1912. Raffaëlli was selected to represent France, although he didn’t win a medal. There’s no record of the work he submitted, which was intended to adopt the theme of sport, although it seems most likely that he entered a colour etching depicting horse-racing in Paris.

Around 1913, Raffaëlli visited Venice, where he painted this view of Le Quai des Esclavons (‘Venice’).

In 1918, he continued to paint Paris street scenes in looser style, such as his Boulevard Saint Michel, located in the Latin quarter near the Sorbonne and Luxembourg Gardens. During his final years, he concentrated more on print-making, and died in Paris on 11 February 1924 at the age of seventy-three.

In his day, Raffaëlli was acclaimed and successful, and his views of Paris proved particularly popular. Although his paintings are today in many major public collections throughout Europe, North and South America, he’s no longer associated with French Impressionism, just as Monet had wanted.