Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon.
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings, of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.
Musée Marmottan Monet is an art museum in Paris, France, dedicated to artist Claude Monet. The collection features over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, including his 1872 Impression, Sunrise. The museum's fame is the result of a donation in 1966 by Michel Monet, Claude's second son and only heir.
Paul Durand-Ruel was a French art dealer associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. Being the first to support artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is known for his innovations in modernizing art markets, and is generally considered to be the most important art dealer of the 19th century. An ambitious entrepreneur, Durand-Ruel cultivated international interest in French artists by establishing art galleries and exhibitions in London, New York, Berlin, Brussels, among other places. Additionally, he played a role in the decentralization of art markets in France, which prior to the mid-19th century was monopolized by the Salon system.
The Dixon Gallery and Gardens is an art museum within 17 acres of gardens, established in 1976, and located at 4339 Park Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, United States.
Julie Manet was a French painter, model, diarist, and art collector.
The Swing is an 1876 oil on canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir who was a leading exponent of the Impressionist style. The painting measures 92 x 73 centimetres and is in the Musée d’Orsay. Renoir executed the painting in what are now the Musée de Montmartre gardens. He had rented a cottage in the gardens so that he could be closer to the Moulin de la Galette where he was engaged in painting Bal du moulin de la Galette.
Paule Gobillard was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter who was heavily influenced by the Impressionists. She is the niece of Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, the brother of Édouard Manet, who taught her lessons in painting as part of her education upon being orphaned at an early age. She was unknown in the art scene compared to her relatives. She exhibited with the Société des Indépendants in 1904 and in 1926.
Colin Barry Bailey is a British art historian and museum director. Bailey is currently the Director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. He is a scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art, specifically on the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Dance at Bougival is an 1883 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Described as "one of the museum's most beloved works", it is one of three in a collection commissioned by Paul Durand-Ruel. It depicts a scene in the French village of Bougival, about 15 km from the center of Paris, a site utilized by many Impressionists besides Renoir including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot.
The Stolen Kiss is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1787, located in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It has been historically attributed to the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). At 45 by 55 centimetres, the painting is a genre scene influenced by Dutch Golden Age painting, depicting a young couple in a secretive romance, set in the foreground – a subject that was favoured before the French Revolution among French aristocrats.
Lise Tréhot was a French art model who posed for artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1866 until 1872, during his early Salon period. She appeared in more than twenty paintings, including notable works such as Lise with a Parasol (1867) and In Summer (1868), and she was the model for almost all of Renoir's work featuring female figures at this time. Tréhot married Georges Brière de l'Isle in 1883 and raised four children to whom she bequeathed two of Renoir's paintings, Lise Sewing (1867–68) and Lise in a White Shawl (1872), both of which are currently held by the Dallas Museum of Art.
Lise with a Parasol is an oil on canvas painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1867 during his early Salon period. The full-length painting depicts model Lise Tréhot posing in a forest. She wears a white muslin dress and holds a black lace parasol to shade her from the sunlight, which filters down through the leaves, contrasting her face in the shadow and her body in the light, highlighting her dress rather than her face. After having several paintings rejected by the Salon, Renoir's Lise with a Parasol was finally accepted and exhibited in May 1868.
Marguerite Charpentier was a French salonist and art collector who was one of the earliest champions of the Impressionists, especially Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Victor Chocquet was a French art collector and an ardent propagandist of Impressionism. As a senior editor at the Directorate-General of Customs and Indirect Taxes, he was present at all the exhibitions where he defended painters confronted with mockery and insults. His collection was huge. It was dispersed after his death in 1899. Many of the paintings are currently in American museums.
A Couple also known as The Engaged Couple or Alfred Sisley and his Wife, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), created around 1868 during his early Salon period at a time when he focused on thematic works about couples. It was acquired by the Wallraf–Richartz Museum in 1912.
Femme en costume Mauresque is an Oil-on-canvas painting by the 19th century French impressionist artist Frédéric Bazille, completed in 1869. It has been in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, since 1997.
