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

Henri Matisse | Canal du Midi, 1898

Canal du Midi belongs to a series of pictures painted by Henri Matisse near Toulouse during the winter of 1898-1899. Matisse, who left Moreau's studio in the autumn of 1897, married Amélie Parayre in January of the following year. After a brief honeymoon in London, the couple sojourned for six months in Ajaccio, Corsica.

Then, in August 1898, Matisse and his wife travelled to Toulouse, and stayed for six months with Amélie's parents.

This was the first time Matisse visited the South and he always remembered it as his first encounter with light and colour. Many of the landscapes he painted during that period, including the one we are commenting on, were probably executed outdoors, directly from the model. Yet the colour in them is not naturalistic.

Michael Sweerts | Boy in a Turban Holding a Nosegay, 1658-1661

Title: Boy in a Turban Holding a Nosegay.

Author: Michiel Sweerts (Flemish Baroque Era painter, 1618-1664).

Date: ca. 1658 - 1661.

Medium: Oil on canvas.

Dimensions: 76.4 x 61.8 cm.

Current location: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain).

Camille Pissarro | Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Effect of rain, 1897

Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie ("Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Effect of rain") is an 1897 oil painting by Camille Pissarro.

The work was made towards the end of Pissarro's career, when he abandoned his experiments with Pointillism and returned to a looser Impressionist style.

It is part of a series of works that Pissarro made in 1897-98 from a window of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, looking down across the edge of the Place du Théâtre Français (now the Place André-Malraux) and along the rue Saint-Honoré, portraying the people, carriages and buildings, the trees, fountains and streetlamps, in an early afternoon shower of rain.

Camille Pissarro | Rue Saint-Honoré, in the afternoon. Effect of rain, 1897 | Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid