With Manet’s assistance, Monet found lodging in suburban Argenteuil in late 1871, a move that initiated one of the most fertile phases of his career. Impressionism evolved in the late …

Manet came from a well–to–do family, and this painting provides a glimpse of the sophisticated Parisian world he loved. He was uncomfortable in the countryside, preferring instead the finery of …

The Gare Saint–Lazare, in 1873 the largest and busiest train station in Paris, is unseen in this painting. Advances in industrial technology and train travel, intrinsic to most contemporary depictions …

African American artist Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872) was widely recognized during his lifetime for pastoral landscapes of American, Canadian, and European scenery. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to focus on …

In 1811 Johan Christian Dahl moved from his native Bergen to Copenhagen, where the twenty-three-year-old landscape painter studied in the Academy of Fine Arts. Dahl combined an interest in Dutch …

Harding was born at Conway, Massachusetts. Brought up in the wilderness of New York state, he was a lad of robust physique, standing over 6 feet 3 inches. His family …

Careful examination of the details embedded in this portrait reveals the key to David’s success as a painter during the time of Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Napoleon: the artist’s ability …

Watson and the Shark’s exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1778 generated a sensation, partly because such a grisly subject was an absolute novelty. In 1749, 14–year–old Brook Watson had …

Perhaps more than the work of his two teachers, Boucher and Chardin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s bravura handling of brushwork and color embodies 18th-century painting aesthetics. In A Young Girl Reading, the …

Largillière’s father, a merchant, took him to Antwerp at the age of three. As a boy, he spent nearly two years in London. Sometime after his return to Antwerp, a …