After exhibiting his popular painting, Prisoners from the Front, at the National Academy of Design in 1867, Homer followed it to Paris where it was displayed at the Exposition Universelle. With no formal art training, he painted landscapes while working as an illustrator, and in Paris he studied the new art that was being produced by artists such as Millet, Manet and Courbet. His own style involved clear contrasts of tone and color, dynamic groupings of people and vigorous and energetic brushwork. He followed the traditions of the Hudson River School, a mid-19th-century group of American landscape painters influenced by Romanticism and the French Barbizon School. His professional background gave him effective skills in close observation and confident contours and compositions.
In 1875, Homer left his job as a commercial illustrator, intending to survive on his painting alone. But despite the praise critics heaped on him, he struggled financially. During the 1870s he painted in watercolor as well as oils, producing mostly rural or idyllic scenes of farm life, children playing and courting couples. His watercolors often sold more readily than his oils. In all his works, he explored the luminous and translucent effects of light and increasingly painted outdoors, in front of his subject. For two years, he lived and painted in an English fishing village in Northumberland; he returned to the US in 1882 and settled on the Maine coast, in isolation. Moving away from the spontaneity and brightness of his earlier work, a mood of the overpowering strength of nature characterized his later work.
Key Works
Artists Sketching in the White Mountains 1868, PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART, PORTLAND, ME, US
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) 1876, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
Cloud Shadows 1890, SPENCER MUSEUM OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE, KS, US
CÉZANNE
1839–1906 • IMPRESSIONISM, POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Still life with Apples and Oranges
c.1895–1900 OIL ON CANVAS
74 × 93 CM (29 × 36 IN)
MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
This is one of a series of six still lifes that Cézanne painted in his Parisian studio. Although he painted still lifes throughout his career, this is more intricate than his earlier examples. Avoiding classical perspective, he placed the objects at particular angles so he could portray them from several viewpoints at once. The tablecloth links all the elements together and emphasizes the solidity of all the objects in the painting.
Paul Cézanne was the single most influential artist in shaping 20th-century art movements. His aim was to find an enduring pictorial form that would make sense of the world and he changed the history of art completely. Both Matisse and Picasso declared that Cézanne “is the father of us all.”
Cézanne’s art was misunderstood and ridiculed by the public for most of his life, but it eventually changed many of the conventional values of 19th-century painting. He was born into a wealthy family in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France—his father was a hat-maker and banker. While at school he formed a close friendship with Émile Zola (1840–1902). Like Manet and Degas, he initially began studying for a career in law, but after two years he joined Zola in Paris, intending to become an artist. Rejected from the École des Beaux-Arts, he enrolled at the Académie Suisse, where he met Pissarro and his circle. In 1863 he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés. Every year from 1864 to 1869 he submitted work to the official Paris Salon, but was constantly rejected. At that point, his work consisted of dark, thickly painted portraits, often created with slabs of paint applied with palette knives. He also painted from his imagination—inspired by Delacroix—in a fairly crude manner.
As part of the group, Cézanne exhibited twice with the Impressionists, in 1874 and in 1877. By then he was dividing his time between Provence and Paris, but during the Franco-Prussian War he moved to L’Estaque near Marseilles, where he painted landscapes. In 1872, he briefly moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, just outside Paris and went on painting expeditions with Pissarro, who lived nearby. For a long time, Cézanne described himself as Pissarro’s pupil and under his influence, began to lighten his palette and use smaller brushstrokes. Nearly a decade later, he also painted in the countryside with Renoir and Monet. But whereas most of the Impressionists sought to capture the effects of light, Cézanne was always more interested in exposing the underlying structures of things. His work attracted the most scathing reviews of all the artists in the Impressionist group.
Cézanne’s father had a studio built for his son at the family home in Provence, the Jas de Bouffan. There Cézanne evolved a technique of applying even strokes that followed the surfaces they depicted, using a restricted palette. In 1886 his father died, leaving him relatively wealthy, and he spent even more time in Aix, painting still lifes, portraits and local landscapes. By that time, he was painting interlocking patches of color to represent forms. He abandoned traditional perspective and painted objects from several angles at once to try to show more of each form. He attempted to extract the essential structure of things by eliminating superfluous details. A year after his death, Cézanne’s work received rave reviews from artists including Picasso, Matisse and Braque.
Key Works
The House of the Hanged Man 1873, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
Hortense Fiquet in a Striped Skirt 1877–8, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, MA, US
The Bridge of Maincy near Melun c.1879, MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
Canyon of Bibemus 1898, BARNES FOUNDATION, LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
Mont Sainte-Victoire 1900, HERMITAGE, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
MONET
1840–1926 • IMPRESSIONISM
The Lunch: decorative panel
c.1873 OIL ON CANVAS
160 × 201 CM (63 × 79 IN)
MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE
Monet exhibited this in the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876. He captured a spontaneous moment when lunch has just been eaten, but has not yet been cleared away; figures can be seen in the cool shadows. In the dappled shade, his son Jean plays quietly and where the sunlight falls, color seems to sparkle.
Recognized as the leader of Impressionism, Oscar Claude Monet was the most constant and prolific artist of the movement. In rejecting the idea of painting a given subject according to a set of rules governing technique and ideals of beauty, his innovative techniques led to a complete rethinking of the practice and purpose of art.
While still at school in Le Havre, Monet earned money selling caricatures of locals. In 1858 he met Eugène Boudin (1824–98), who encouraged him to paint in the open air. After undergoing military service in Algeria, Monet went to Paris. Rejecting conventional art training, he joined the Académie Suisse, where he met Pissarro and Cézanne. In 1862 he entered Gleyre’s studio, where he met Bazille, Renoir, and Sisley and soon became one of the central figures in the circle of young, radical artists. At the 1863 Salon des Refusés, he was overwhelmed by the ideas in Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe and after a difficult start, the two artists became close friends.