Twenty-five superb Impressionist canvases surrounded by myths about their creation. Here’s something closer to the truth.
Impressionism
He remained in Paris during the siege, and lost most of his earlier work during the war. Afterwards he worked with Monet and Renoir to develop the Impressionist approach to landscapes.
Although he only painted 14 oils in England, they mark an early peak in his art. Subsequent landscapes around Louveciennes and Pontoise are numerous and superb too.
His parents intended him to run the family business, but he met the Impressionists in 1862 and became hooked on painting landscapes.
Some of Pissarro’s finest landscapes from 1854 to 1870 show his evolution from realism through Barbizon to Impressionism.
To see his art, look not at Fantin’s groups of human figures, but at these crowds of flowers and fruit.
He continued to exhibit at the Salon until he was almost 94, and was one of the leading painters of trees of his time. Celebrating his bicentenary today.
A late starter, his career spanned the whole of the last half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. Wonderful landscapes.
Not an Impressionist by any means, he was a close friend of Whistler and Manet, who painted some of the major group portraits of the late 1800s.
A major influence of realism, leading to Naturalism, and on Impressionism, Courbet was one of those who paved the way for modern art.
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