From Hobbema in 1663 to Sisley in 1884, here are views of the canals of Europe carrying commercial traffic, and in their later decline.
Monet
A group portrait which failed so badly that he cut it up after it was shown at the Salon, a portrait of Manet, and another group portrait which inspired Impressionists.
Met and painted with Sisley, Boudin, and the young Claude Monet, but so poor that other artists auctioned their works to relieve his poverty.
Four years of landscapes, becoming increasingly painterly. Early views of major Impressionist themes around Paris and the coast at Étretat, over a decade before Monet.
From groups in the countryside, he turned his attention to scandalous women bathing in the woods, then a series of superb landscapes.
Examples of the work of Thomas Jones, Constable, Corot, Blechen, Boudin, Jongkind, Pissarro, CĂ©zanne, Sargent, Monet, and more.
In 1873, he went to Italy, fell in love with Venice, and returned there to paint every year. His paintings of Venice secured his reputation.
The finest landscapes, from Marsden Hartley, Pierre Bonnard, Ferdinand Hodler, and others in 1918.
With Monet’s grainstacks and fog on the River Thames, by the 20th century the effects of fog had become part of Western landscape painting.
Until about 1800, Western landscape painting sought to reveal rather than to hide. It was JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich who popularised the effect of fog.
The Eclectic Light Company 