Milliners trimmed and sold hats to customers, which appeared to be more rewarding, and the chance to wear the latest fashions.
Degas
Fifteen images of paintings by twelve artists which were shown at the First Impressionist Exhibition present a more coherent overview. But history is capricious.
Only the gods wore sandals in the ancient world. Then the state of your footwear told much about you, with fashion opting for the outrageously impractical.
Paintings of open fires and stoves from 1565 to 1884 show how we lived through the winter before central heating.
Describing himself as a Realist, normally avoiding painting landscapes, but concentrating on ballet dancers and ‘modern life’, he was the odd one out.
From Venus covering herself with her hair, to combing through the hair for nits and lice. Artists include Botticelli, Rossetti and Degas.
More accomplished as a print-maker, his views of the beach at Berck are desolate. A good friend of Degas, he exhibited at the Salon, so dropped from the 3rd exhibition.
As tried by Pissarro, Degas, Carl Larsson, Gauguin, Anders Zorn, Charles Conder, and Louis Welden Hawkins.
From Robert Nanteuil’s first pastel portraits in the 1660s to Ants Laikmaa in 1929, a history of the greatest pastel painters and links to articles about individual artists.
An amateur artist until 1883, he was a collector and patron, and continued to show his work at each of the Impressionist Exhibitions until 1886.
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