Artist: Charles Courtney Curran

Year: 1889

Medium: Oil on panel

Charles Courtney Curran’s intimate In the Luxembourg (Garden) presents a casual glimpse of public life in a modern city park. In the foreground, a young woman in black is seated on one of a pair of slender chairs set along the edge of a path. Leaning down to feed a cluster of small birds, she turns her back on the activity taking place on a distant but parallel path beyond a strip of shaggy lawn. There, shaded by the dense foliage of chestnut trees, a frieze-like arrangement of random visitors offers a spectacle of passing life. A barefoot running boy and a robed priest pass in opposite directions, a small child tugs against his nursemaid’s protective grasp, and other park-goers are caught in accidental, momentary arrangements as they sit, stroll, chat, and read. None of the figures seems to notice the conspicuous bronze sculpture that dominates the middle ground. Its larger-than-life scale and dramatic subject--a lion standing triumphantly over its prey--contrasts with the prosaic immediacy of the surroundings, especially in such practical details as the furled umbrellas carried by the priest and nursemaid and resting on the empty chair in the foreground.

Curran painted this work during the second year he spent in Paris as a student at the popular Académie Julian. Like many fellow American artists studying and working in Paris in the late nineteenth century, he was fascinated by daily life in the French capital. Between 1853 and 1870, Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, Emperor Napoléon III’s urban planner, reformed the old city. From its chaotic layout and dearth of public green spaces emerged a modern metropolis of broad boulevards, handsome apartment blocks, and vast parks ornamented with statuary and fountains. The Luxembourg Gardens, originally a private preserve designed in the 1620s for the palace of Marie d’Medici, was one of the more celebrated Parisian parks, and it attracted numerous artists, including Maurice Prendergast, as seen in his The Luxembourg Garden, Paris (TF 1992.68). Among the sculptures there was The Nubian Lion and Its Prey (1870) by French artist August Nicolas Cain (1822–1894), seen in Curran’s painting.

The formal grandeur of Cain’s sculpture evokes the traditional training imbibed in Parisian academies by artists such as Curran and reflected in his painting’s high degree of finish and naturalistic illusionism. His subject, in contrast, demonstrates his awareness of current trends in art. French impressionist painters in particular had focused unconventionally on such settings of contemporary leisure activity as urban streets, railroad stations, and parks. Curran in this image emphasized the independence of the modern middle-class woman—literally so by placing the solitary female figure in the foreground of his picture. His model, shown with her face mostly shielded from view by the brim of her large hat, probably was his wife, Grace, who also posed for Curran’s Lotus Lilies (TF 1999.35). Although the nearby empty chair seems to invite a companion to join her, she is conspicuously unchaperoned, yet quite at ease—a representative of Gilded Age urbane cosmopolitanism

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Artist: August Macke

Year: ca. 1912

Medium: Oil on canvas

For his portraits, Macke often chose motifs from his familiar surroundings. He repeatedly portrayed his first son Walter, born on 13 April 1910. He is not shown here, however, but represented by his toys: stuffed animals, balls and a Russian doll were arranged by the artist on a tablecloth. With its bright colours and the objects’ contours, Macke flattened the painting’s structure. This style can be traced back to his intense analysis of Henri Matisse’s works, an influence that was clearly noticeable between 1910 and 1912.

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Artist: Jean Béraud

Year: ca. 1880

Medium: Oil on canvas

In his pursuit of an active composition and naturalistic image, Béraud was known to sit in his carriage and observe the scenes of the city with his sketchbook in hand, a habit shared by his contemporaries Jean-François Raffaëlli and Giusseppe De Nittis. In the present work, Béraud has placed himself on the Boulevard de Sébastopol and Avenue Victoria, looking through the bustle of the street towards the monumental Tour Saint Jacques. He described his very public process in an undated letter to an unknown correspondent, writing: "you have to vanquish your feelings of artistic modesty so you can work among people who take the most irritating kind of interest in what you're doing. If you cannot overcome your disgust, you will end up locking yourself away in your house, and painting a woman or a still life, like all your colleagues. For some artists, that was all they needed to produce a masterpiece. But I believe that today, we need something different" (as quoted in Patrick Offenstadt, Jean Béraud 1849-1935, The Belle Époque: A Dream of Times Gone By, Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne, 1999, p. 10).

The Tour Saint Jacques is an ornately decorated gothic tower and all that remains of the sixteenth century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (Saint James of the butchery) which was demolished in 1793. The tower was purchased by the city of Paris in 1836 and declared a Historic Monument in 1862. The rich decoration reflects the wealth of the church’s patrons, the wholesale butchers of the nearby Les Halles Market, and it is likely no coincidence that Béraud has included a butcher in the active scene below, easily identified by his white apron and the knife sharpener hanging from his belt. Among other types de Paris that Béraud has included are a fashionable woman seen with a hat box and juxtaposed with the humble market girl who walks with her basket of wares; a flâneur stands and smokes while smartly dressed businessmen stroll the street or rush for cabs. Béraud created a body of work that is deeply inquisitive, voyeuristic, and often humorous. He was intrigued by all aspects of la vie parisienne, and was one of its most scrupulous and devoted observers. He once wrote to fellow artist Alfred Roll "I find everything but Paris wearisome" (as quoted in Offenstadt, p. 14). His sophisticated eye was drawn to the characters who populated the bustling streets, cafés and theatres of Paris and his affection for all of these people granted him notoriety and popularity. Marcel Proust described him as "a charming creature, sought in vain, by every social circle" (as quoted in Offenstadt, p. 7). He was described as a perfect gentleman, impeccably dressed and above trends and fashion, likely allowing him to "blend in".

Abandoning his previous ambitions to become a lawyer, Jean Béraud joined Parisian artistic circles and studied portraiture with a leading artist of the third republic, Léon Bonnat. Many of Béraud's well-known contemporaries also passed through Bonnat's studio, including Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred Roll and Toulouse-Lautrec. While Béraud initially emulated his master's choice of subject and painted portraits of women and children as well as genre scenes, he was quickly drawn to representing modern urban life and developed an idiosyncratic style of tight draftsmanship, a light and sophisticated palette, and fine brushwork. The opulent spectacle of the newly created public spaces of Paris became Béraud's choice subject.

This painting was most likely in the collection of Béraud's friend and patron, Armand Dorville. The Musée Carnavalet houses the most important collection of paintings by Jean Béraud as a result of Mr. Dorville's generous donation in 1944.

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Artist: Alphonse Mucha

Year: 1897

Medium: Colour lithography

“The Lily” (1897) by Alphonse Mucha is one of the artist’s most celebrated decorative panels from his golden Art Nouveau period. This vertical, narrow-format work features a single female figure who emerges amid a profusion of white lilies, their elegant forms entwined with her presence. The figure’s draped white gown seems to grow organically from the floral stems at her feet, while her upward gaze and slightly parted lips suggest a moment of spiritual awakening or serene transcendence. A radiant, circular halo—suggestive of the sun—looms behind her head, framing her face and linking her to a symbolic solar energy. Mucha’s signature sinuous lines, muted pastel palette, and integrated ornamentation fuse figure, flower, and background into a harmonious whole that epitomizes the ideals of Art Nouveau. (...)

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Artist: Eckart Hahn

Year: 2024

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Eckart Hahn completed a one-year introductory course in photography in 1990–91. He then studied art history at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and graphic design at the Johannes Gutenberg School in Stuttgart from 1991 to 1993. He lives and works in Reutlingen.

Hahn’s surreal-looking paintings, which appear as three-dimensional collages of photorealistically rendered everyday objects, are executed with old-master perfection. A virtuoso glazing technique lends the depicted objects a metallic sheen. The objects—alienated from their familiar contexts and assembled into collages—are presented using central perspective. This creates illusions reminiscent of dreamscapes or hallucinations.

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Artist: Joaquín Sorolla

Medium: Oil on canvas

Year: 1896

Cosiendo la vela (English: Sewing the Sail) is a large-format painting by Joaquín Sorolla from 1896. It is classified as Realism and belongs to the period of the artist’s career following his return to his native Spain after his time in Italy. The painting depicts the light-filled patio of a house in Valencia, where several people are busy repairing the sail for a fishing boat. Sorolla first exhibited it in 1897 at the Salon de Paris.

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Artist: Henry Alexander (1860–1894)

Year: ca. 1885–87

Medium: Oil on canvas

This is one of several interior scenes in which Alexander showed people at work, surrounded by their equipment. The portrait d’apparat—an image in which a figure appears along with objects associated with his or her daily life—reflects Alexander’s training in the Munich academy of fine arts and showcases his skills both as a portraitist and as a still-life painter. His subject here is the chemist and assayer Thomas Price (1837–1912), and the setting is Price’s San Francisco laboratory. A consultant to international mining companies, Price was noted for his practical and theoretical knowledge of metals and mines.

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Artist: Ramon Casas

Year: 1899

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Ramon Casas (1866-1932) unveiled this painting in Barcelona in November 1899 in a monographic show of his original drawings and a few oil paintings for the magazine Pèl & Ploma. This oil painting, rendered in Paris, served as the basis of the exhibition poster in Barcelona, which featured the oil and the original drawing. The “decadent” is a young woman who is exhausted from having danced so much. She is the Parisian model Madeleine Boisguillaume, clad in black, and we can see her in the Museum of Montserrat next to another Casas painting in which she is featured.

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Artist: Richard Estes

Year: 1971

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Richard Estes describes himself as a realist painter although he is more often described as a Photorealist. In fact, he is regarded as one of the founders of the Photorealist movement which emerged in America in the late 1960s. His paintings, in reproduction at least, may remind us of photography, and Estes has always used the camera to collect and record information from which he can paint, but he has never been concerned with copying the appearance of a photograph. Unlike many Photorealists, Estes is not interested in making paintings which show how the camera records information. He avoids painting areas of photographic focus and blur. Photography enables him to capture a moment in all its complexities and has resulted in a remarkably intricate representation of refracted light. However, because a photograph is limited by mechanics of exposure, focus and a single fixed lens, Estes compensates by painting from an assemblage of many photographs. Taken by himself, on location, what Estes' paintings share with photography is an authenticity. As with photography, we regard Estes' paintings to be a truthful representation of reality. But, on examination, it is clear that the means by which Estes represents the world is very different from photography. Estes, for example, introduces directional mark making to reveal form, in contrast to the homogenous flatness of the photograph, and makes substantial alterations to the construction of illusionistic space. The truth in an Estes painting is very different from that of the truth of a photograph. Ultimately, it is authentic not to the reality of our world, but the world created by the individual painter. As a realist, Estes utilises the particularities of the world around him to extend and develop his own artistic vision, and in so doing, orientates himself within a long tradition of painters such as Vermeer, Bellotto, Eakins, Hopper and Sheeler, all of whom he admires.

People's Flowers is early, pivotal, well known and one of Richard Estes' very best and most important paintings. The clarity, colour, subject matter and composition indicate a totally mature and fully developed Estes, leader of the Photorealist Movement at a point in time when all but a few of the other artists were still struggling to perfect their visions and styles.

First, it is interesting to note that there are only five major Estes paintings with a vertical format (over four feet, or 125 cm, high). This was not a favoured format for the artist. However, the composition is innovative and flawlessly conceived. The concentric rectangles of the buildings and window frame bring the eye to the central focus point, the neon sign People' s Flowers. The line of trucks and the outdoor plants point to the sign as well. The sky in the reflection on the window also does the same thing. The descending width of the mirrored sign and the awning sign also bring the eye to the centre of the painting. The clarity of the reflection and the contrast of the primary-coloured red brick above the secondary-coloured green below are striking visual effects. Artists try forever to create this kind of eye-arresting imagery. It is the domain of the Photorealist, however, to discover and recognise this vision in the world around him, and then to capture it with the camera and recreate it with brush and paint.

You who view this painting can and will begin to realise how to "look" and "see" and will be aware of the world you exist in in a new way.

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Artist: René Magritte

Year: 1965

Medium: Oil on canvas

The Blank Signature (Le blanc-Seing) is a 1965 painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. The work is part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It was one of Magritte’s last works before his death in 1967. The painting depicts a woman on horseback riding through a forest. Due to an optical illusion employed by the artist, the image is partially fragmented, although at first glance the viewer may perceive it as a coherent whole. The woman and the horse are simultaneously in front of, between, and behind the trees. Her right arm is partially hidden behind a tree that, upon closer inspection, is located in the background. One possible interpretation is that the merging of the forest with the horsewoman suggests a unity of humanity and nature. But as is usually the case with Magritte, the work primarily raises questions, a sense further heightened by the enigmatic title. The painter himself believed that his works required no specific interpretation; every viewer can interpret the work in their own way. He also noted that art critics sometimes saw more—or something entirely different—in his works than he himself had consciously intended.

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Artist: John Sharman

Year: ca. 1918

Medium: Oil on canvas

This composition is an intricate network of trellis, railing, and awning. Upon this framework Sharman lavished broad strokes of brilliant color, applied with the sensitivity to light and shade that he acquired from the Impressionist practice of painting outdoors. This technique created a portrait of summer sun that casts deep shadows on the porch and transforms vines into a wave of white blossoms. Although not well known today, Sharman received many excellent reviews in his day, especially in his native Boston. A critic for the Boston Transcript described At the End of the Porch as “a beautiful, luminous and joyous picture of a place where one would like to be.”

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