5 Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.

Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.

It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.

The Immaculate Conception became a symbol of the universality of the Catholic Church and was used for the conversion of populations across Spain’s global empire. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642) | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883

Like 'The Little Country Maid', this painting was executed while the artist lived near Pontoise, north-west of Paris.

During the 1880s he became interested in painting rural market scenes, several of which were based on the markets at Pontoise and its neighbouring villages.

Such subjects allowed Pissarro to combine the study of the human figure with depictions of outdoor scenes of everyday rural life.

Although he wrote to his son Lucien that he wished the painting to have a 'certain naive freshness', hence the light and informal brushstrokes, the central figure of the 'charcutière' was painted from the model and the pose carefully studied.

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883 | Tate Gallery

5 Important artworks at the Tate Gallery

Tate is a family of art galleries in London, Liverpool and Cornwall, known as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool + RIBA North.

When Tate first opened its doors to the public in 1897 it had just one site, displaying a small collection of British artworks.

Today we have four major sites and the national collection of British art from 1500 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art, which includes nearly 70,000 artworks.

Henri Matisse | Reading Woman with Parasol, 1921 | Tate

Matisse painted this work while renting a house near Nice in the South of France.

The relaxed, relatively naturalistic style is typical of his work of the early 1920s.

It was bought by the Contemporary Art Society in 1926 with the intention of presenting it to the Tate Gallery.

Matisse wrote that the painting ‘will represent me as well as possible - moreover, I think that it will not frighten the acquisitions committee of the Modern Museum in London'.

In fact, the Tate initially turned it down, but accepted it in 1938.| Source: © Tate

Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) | Reading Woman with Parasol, 1921 | Tate Collection

8 Notable artworks at the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes more than 63,000 artworks and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts.

The museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, and performing arts and is a leader in digital innovations.

One of the top comprehensive art museums in the nation, recognized for its award-winning Open Access program and free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the University Circle neighborhood.

John French Sloan | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art

Trained as a journalist, the young John French Sloan (1871-1951) explored social issues more vigorously than most of the painters of his time, portraying working-class urbanites engaged in ordinary activities.

He observed this particular scene through a rear window of his Manhattan apartment.

Perched on a narrow fire escape, a woman hangs fresh laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between tenements.

As evidenced by the painting, the labors of American women at the turn of the 1900s were most often confined to the domestic realm. | Source: © Cleveland Museum of Art

John French Sloan (American, 1871-1951) | A woman's work, 1912 | Cleveland Museum of Art

Salon des Indépendants, Paris 1884

Since 1884, the Salon des Indépendants has played a key role in the history of world art.

Salon des Indépendants, annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, held in Paris since 1884.

In the course of revolutionary developments in painting in late 19th-century France, both artists and the public became increasingly unhappy with the rigid and exclusive policies of the official Salon, an exhibition held sporadically between 1667-1737 and annually thereafter by the Académie Royale de Peinture, which had maintained almost total control over the teaching and exhibition of art since about 1661.

Edgar Degas | Repasseuses | Musée d'Orsay

5 Masterpieces at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875

In Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, Renoir’s language is wholly impressionistic: in a setting lacking a visible horizon, the flowers and shrubs are created with tiny dabs of colour, providing a constant interweaving of textures around the two small figures.

The woman, whose parasol shades her from the sun, stands close to the man as he leans down, perhaps to pick a flower, hinting at an intimate relationship.

Contrary to what one may think, this canvas was not painted in the countryside but in the garden of Renoir’s new studio in Montmartre.

His friend George Rivière recalled: "As soon as Renoir entered the house, he was charmed by the view of this garden, which looked like a beautiful abandoned park".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875 | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Pascal Campion, 1973 | Conceptual illustrator / animator

Pascal Campion is a French American prolific illustrator and storyteller. He has worked decades in the field of animation, illustration and commercials.

Born in River Edge, New Jersey, Pascal began his art career at a very young age of seven when his older brother Sean, gave him the task of "copying" comic books covers in exchange for Pascal to read the comics!

At the age of three, his family relocated back to the south of France, where he spent hours sketching and drawing both comics and the beautiful landscapes of Provence.

In 1998 Pascal began his studying narrative illustration at Arts Decoratifs de Strasbourg, in France.

Gustave Caillebotte | Les Jardiniers, 1877

Exhibited publicly only once in the past century and a half, Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848-1894) Les Jardiniers is a celebrated early example of the artist’s garden compositions, which was rediscovered in the 1990s, having remained in the same family collection for over a hundred years.

Painted in 1877, the scene depicts the well-appointed kitchen garden at the Caillebotte family’s country home in the village of Yerres, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris.

The artist was a teenager when his parents acquired the property as a summer residence, drawn by the grand, Neo-Classical style house and extensive grounds that stretched down to the banks of the nearby river Yerres.

Gustave Caillebotte | Les jardiniers, 1875 | Christie's

Camille Claudel (1864-1943)

Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and graphic artist.

In 1882 the sculptor Auguste Rodin agreed to supervise a small group of young women students, one of whom was the seventeen-year-old Camille Claudel.

Auguste and Camille fell in love almost at first sight.

Happy Birthday to Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer !

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer - a French artist and a leading exponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau - was born on this day, September 30, 1865 to a Jewish family in Algiers, French Algeria.

His works include paintings, drawings, ceramics, furniture and interior design.

In 1865, he began studying drawing and sculpture in Paris at the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in 1879.

He first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882 where he showed a small ceramic plaque.

Claude Monet | Woman Seated under the Willows, 1880

A woman sits among loosely painted, crescent-shape blades of emerald and lemon-lime green grass, under tall trees in this vertical scene.

The brushstrokes are unconnected and visible, so many of the details difficult to make out.

Facing our left almost in profile, the woman’s form is suggested with thick strokes of eggshell white, periwinkle blue, mint green, and deep pink.

We get the impression of a light-colored dress that pools around her hips and legs, and a hat atop dark hair. Her face is painted with an area of blush peach.

Claude Monet | Woman Seated under the Willows, 1880 | National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881

The corner of the balcony visible at lower left in this composition indicates Renoir’s vantage point overlooking the bay of Naples.

His position afforded an iconic view of the harbor with the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the background, wafting smoke into the sky.

Inspired by the southern Italian light, Renoir painted another version of this vista at a different time of day (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.).

James Duncan, a wealthy sugar refiner, purchased the present work in 1883, making it the first Impressionist picture acquired by a Scottish collector.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ferdinand du Puigaudeau | Neo-Impressionist painter

French painter Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau (1864-1896) is often known for his mystical scenes of processions and carnivals around Pont Aven and by his association with the Gauguin and the Pont Aven School.

Still, after Gauguin moved on to the Pacific and many of the other artists of the group to Paris, Puigaudeau remained on the coast, moving an estate called Kervaudu at Le Croisic, near the mouth of the Loire.

Once there, he turned his attention to the beautiful landscape of the region: coastal cliffs with twisting fig trees, flowering fields dotted with small villages.

Odilon Redon | Portrait of Marie Botkine, 1900

Odilon Redon | Portrait of the ceramist Marie Botkin, pastel | Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

Portrait of Marie Botkine

Autor: Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Date: 1900

Style: Symbolism

Genre: Portrait

Media: Pastel, paper

Dimensions: 48 x 64 cm

Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "La mia Italia" | Le lettere..

Italia, autunno 1881.

Alla signora Charpentier,

Dovevo pranzare un mattino con voi, e mi avrebbe fatto infinitamente piacere, perché è già passato tanto tempo.

Ma sono diventato improvvisamente viaggiatore e mi ha preso la febbre di vedere Raffaello .

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Un jardin à Sorrente, 1881 | Sotheby's

Jean-Honoré Fragonard | Rococo painter

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), French Rococo painter whose most familiar works, such as The Swing (1767), are characterized by delicate hedonism.

Fragonard was the son of a haberdasher’s assistant. The family moved to Paris about 1738, and in 1747 the boy was apprenticed to a lawyer, who, noticing his appetite for drawing, suggested that he be taught painting.

François Boucher | Rococo painter

François Boucher (1703-1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style.

Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes.

He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century.

Alfred Boucher | The Mentor to Camille Claudel

A French sculptor and painter, Alfred Boucher (1850-1934), was Camille Claudel's teacher and the founder of the artists' city La Ruche in Paris.

Born in Bouy-sur-Ovin (Nogent-sur-Seine), he was the son of a farmhand who became the gardener of the sculptor Joseph-Marius Ramus, who, after recognizing Boucher's talent, opened his studio to him.

He won the Grand Prix du Salon in 1881 with La Piété Filiale.

Jean-François Millet: "To tell the truth, peasant subjects suit my nature best.."

• "Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature".

• "L'arte non verrà mai se non da qualche piccolo angolo trascurato dove un uomo isolato e ispirato sta studiando i misteri della natura".

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes | Symbolist painter

French painter Pierre Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) is known for his mural painting - large-scale decorative painting - in the Symbolism style.

Puvis's work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors, particularly the works of the Modernists.

One of his protégés was Georges de Feure.