Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826 E.J.

Marey, Chronophotography, 1886

Nadar, Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, 1865
Nadar, Portrait of Baudelaire, 1855
Nadar, Selfportrait, 1865
Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863
The Fifer, 1866
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538
Manet, The luncheon
on the grass
(Dejeuner sua
l’herbe), 1863
A Bar at the Folies Bergere by Manet, 1881-82
Las Meninas by Velazquez, 1656
Still Life by Willelm Claez Heda, 1635
Claude
Monet, Impression,
Sunrise, 1874
Alfred Sisley, Autumn:
Banks of the Seine near
Bougival, 1873
Claude Monet, Autumn
Effect at Argenteuil, 1873
Michel Eugene Chevreul

The Law of Simultaneous Color

Contrast  1839

Complementars colors (yellow and

purple; red and green; blue and orange)
exalts each other, instead bright colors
and dark colors, if juxtaposed, underlyne
their contrasts.
“Try to explain to
Renoir that a
woman’s torso is
not a mass of
decomposing flesh
with the purplish-
green splotches
that denote the
final stages of
putrefaction in a
corpse!”
(Albert Wolff)

Pierre Auguste
Renoir, Study: Torso,
effect of sun, 1875-76

Bather with a Griffon Dog –

Lise on the Bank of the Seine,
1870
Monet
La Grenouillère, 1869
Women in the Garden, 1866-1867
E. Muybridge, The horse in motion, 1878 Edgar Degas, Racecouse, 1885
Camille Pissarro, Apple harvest, 1888
Degas, Women ironing, 1884, oil and pastel

Michelangelo, The dying slave, 1513-1516, Musée

du Louvre, Paris
Caillebotte, Floor scrapers, 1875

Detail of Houssmann’s apartment interior design

Detail of Versaille’s room
Edgar Degas, At the Races in the Countryside, 1869
Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, 1857
Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean, 1856
Monet, Sea, 1881
Edouard Baldus, Notre Dame de Paris, 1850
Monet
Rouen Cathedral, 1893
Monet, Rouen Cathedral, 1893-1894 Monet, Japanese Bridge, 1899

Roy Lichtenstein, From Monet. Series II, 1969 Jackson Pollock, Light substance, 1946
Monet
Haystacks, End of Summer, 1891, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Haystacks, Snow effect, Morning, 1891, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Haystacks, Twilight, 1891, Art Institute of Chicago
 Hiroshige, Bamboo Yards, Kyobashi
Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899 Bridge from One Hundred Views of Edo, 1857
Sisley, La Place du Chenil à Marly (effet de neige), 1876,
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen

U. Hiroshige, A snowy evening at Kambara station, Tokyo

National Museum
Auguste Rodin, The Walking Man, c. 1877, bronze
Rodin, The kiss, 1888-1889, Musée Rodin, Paris
Michelangelo, Pietà Rondanini, 1552-53
Edgar Degas,  Fourteen-year-old
little dancer, 1878-81; colored wax,
metal, human hair, silk and linen
ribbon, lace bodice, cotton and silk
tutu, silk slippers, on wooden base
 Post-impressionism
1880 – first years of XX Century
•Post-impressionism: term coined by Roger Fry in 1910 (Manet and the Post-
Impressionists’ exhibition at Grafton Galleries in London)

• Neo-impressionims or Pointillisme: Georges Seurat, Paul Signac

• Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin
Distinction between color as a
material (considered as a
physic material) and color as
light (light radiation that hits
the eye)

Ogden Rood, Modern chromatics : with applications to art and

industry, 1879
George Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1883-4, 201 x 300 cm
Piero della Francesca, Resurrection, 1465, Borgo San Sepolcro’s Church
George Seurat, A Sunday afternoon on the island of la Grand Jatte, 1884-86
 •Paul Signac: “The Neo-
Impressionist does not dot,
he divides»:
- Optical mixture of solely pure
pigments (all the tints of the prism
and all their tones);
- Separation of the different
elements (local color, color of the
lighting, their interactions, etc.);
- Equilibration of these elements
and their proportions (according to
the laws of contrast, of gradation,
and of irradiation);
- Choice of a brushstroke
commensurate with the dimensions
of the painting

Isaac Newton used a glass prism to separate white light into a

rainbow
Samples of Lefranc & Company’s oil paints from 1891
Paul Signac, Morning Calm, Concarneau, Opus 219
(Larghetto), 1891; Evening Calm, Concarneau, Opus 220
(Allegro Maestoso), 1891

Corot, Narni’s bridge, 1826

Seurat,
The
Models,
1888
Colour as a constructive element of form

•Cézanne: «Everything we see disappears, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but
nothing remains of it or of what appears. Our art must give the thrill of its duration, it must
make us enjoy of it eternally. What is behind the natural phenomenon? Maybe nothing,
maybe everything. So, I intertwine these wandering hands. I take its colors and shades [of
nature] from right, left, everywhere. I fix them, I put them together and they form lines,
they become objects, rocks, trees, without my thinking about them. They take on a
volume. My canvas grips hands, it does not waver; it is true, it is dense, it is full»
Paul Cézanne, Paul Alexis reading to Émile Zola, 1869-1870

The Bather, 1885-86

Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893 A Corner of the Table, 1895-1900
• Cezanne, The Bathers, 1898
• Cezanne, detail of Bathers, 1894
• Renoir said about his work: «I love greasy, smooth, greasy painting, I love to touch a picture, pass my hand over it»
• Cezanne, San-Victoire
Mountain, 1902-1904

• “In nature everything is

modelled according to three
fundamental modules: the
sphere, the cone and the
cylinder; you have to learn
to paint these very simple
figures, then you can do
whatever you want”.
• “To paint a landscape well
and I must first discover its
geological characteristics”.
Vincent Van Gogh in 1888 wrote to his brother Théo: “About
pointillism, I think it is an authentic invention […] but it is to be
expected that this technique, as any other, will become an
universal dogma. This is just one more reason because of
Grande Jatte of Seurat is destined to become during the years
more personal, more original”

The Pont-Aven School and Synthesism

Gauguin said to Paul Serusier: «How do you see these trees?

They’re yellow; so put some yellow. This shadow, it’s rather
blue, paint it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Put
vermillion» (Gauguin’s advice to Sérusier was recorded by his
friend Maurice Denis, “Paul Sérusier, sa vie, son oeuvre,” in
Sérusier, L’ABC de la peinture (Paris: Floury, 1942)

Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888

Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel),
1888
Hiroshige, woodcut, 1857
Paul Gauguin, Breton Girl and Goose by the Water, 1888; Paul Signac, The Bathing Cabins, Opus 185 (Beach of the Countess),
1888
Emile Bernard, Breton Women in the Meadow, 1888
Clasp, XII Century
 
Paul
Gauguin, The
Yellow Christ,
1889

Crucifix,
Notre-Dame
de Trémalo
Chapel, Pont-
Aven, 17th
century, wood
and
polychrome
Paul Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, 1897-98, oil on canvas, 139.1 x 374.6
cm
Van Gogh, Bedroom, 1889
Symbolism
Poetry: Baudelaire, «Correspondence», 1857; Mallarmé,
Valery
Gustave Moreau, Apparition (first version, detail; second
version), 1876
Odilon Redon, Eye balloon, 1878; Black sun, 1900
Puvis de Chavannes, Bathers, 1879; Woman on the
beach, 1887
Victor Horta, Hotel Tassel, 1892-93, Bruxelles

Art nouveau 1890 – 1910

Group Les Vingt, Brussels
Gallery L’Art Nouveau founded by Samuel Bing in Paris

• Formal and symbolic inspiration from nature

• Coexistence of artisanal and industrial techniques

Henry Van de Velde, "Introductory notes to a synthesis of art",

1895:

"We cannot admit any distinction intended to establish the

superiority of one of the aspects of art [...] art can only be
conceived within unity [...] an harmonic tension based on the
equality of all the component parts "
Examples of Art Nouveau’s decorations
Alphonse Mucha’s affiche
First Universal Exhibition, London, 1851 (Crystal Palace
designed by Paxton)
William Morris, Strawberry Thief, 1883, Victoria and Albert Museum
1897 ‘Vienna Secession’, led by
Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze,

1902
Olbrich, Secession Building, 1897

Richard Wagner, «total artwork»

(1849, Art and revolution; The
Artwork of the future)
Music by Wagner, The ride of
Valchyrie