Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
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.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
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."
Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Jacques Joseph Tissot, better known as James Tissot, was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé.
Portraits at the Stock Exchange is a painting by the French artist Edgar Degas. Completed in about 1879, the painting was already in the collection of the French banker Ernest May when it was listed in the catalogue of the fourth Impressionist exhibition that year. It may also have been shown in the next Impressionist exhibit in 1880, but it was not well known until it entered the collections of the Louvre in 1923. The canvas shows an interior corner of the open trading floor of the Paris Stock Exchange. May stands in the center of the picture wearing a top hat and pince-nez, listening to his colleague, a certain M. Bolâtre, leaning over his shoulder. They are likely discussing a document, possibly a bordereau, held aloft by a partially obscured third party.
Jean-Louis Forain was a French Impressionist painter and printmaker, working in media including oils, watercolour, pastel, etching and lithograph. Compared to many of his Impressionist colleagues, he was more successful during his lifetime, but his reputation is now much less exalted.
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.
Louis Kronberg (1872–1965) was an American figure painter, art dealer, advisor, and teacher. Among his best-known works are Behind the Footlights and The Pink Sash.
Les Choristes is an 1877 pastel on monotype by French artist Edgar Degas. Part of a series of similar works depicting daily public entertainment at the time, it shows a group of singers performing a scene from the opera Don Giovanni, the only work by Degas depicting an operatic performance without dancers.
The Child's Bath is an 1893 oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The painting continues her interest in depicting bathing and motherhood, but it is distinct in its angle of vision. Both the subject matter and the overhead perspective were inspired by Japanese Woodcut prints and Edgar Degas.
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando is an oil on canvas painting by the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. Painted in 1879 and exhibited at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris that same year, it is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London. It is Degas's only circus painting, and Miss La La is the only identifiable person of color in Degas's works. The special identity of Miss La La and the great skills Degas used in painting her performance in the circus made this piece of art important, widely appreciated but, at the same time, controversial.
Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic was a French artist, archaeologist and patron of the arts. He was styled as Vicomte Lepic until his father's death in 1875, when he succeeded to the title of Comte Lepic. He is best remembered today as a friend of Edgar Degas, who included him in some eleven paintings and pastels. He was among the original Impressionist group and later became a recognised marine painter.
The Dance Lesson is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist Edgar Degas created around 1879. It is currently kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. There is at least one other work by Degas by this title, also made in about 1879, which is a pastel.
Before the Race (1882–1884) is a painting by Impressionist painter, Edgar Degas, who began painting scenes with horses in the 1860s.
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair is an 1878 oil painting by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Edgar Degas made some changes in the painting.
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself is a pastel drawing by Edgar Degas, made between 1890 and 1895. Since 1959, it has been in the collection of the National Gallery, London. This work is one in a series of pastels and oils that Degas created depicting female nudes. Originally, Degas exhibited his works at Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, where he gained a loyal following.
Janice H. Levin (1913–2001) was an American businesswoman and philanthropist and art collector from New York City. She was a patron of the ballet and collected mostly French impressionist paintings. She was a supporter of higher education as well as charities in Israel. She donated many of her paintings to museums.
Girl Arranging Her Hair is an 1886 painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The painting currently is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. It was originally exhibited at the Eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, which opened on May 15, 1886.
