Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The Balcony (French: Le balcon) is an 1868–69 oil painting by the French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts four figures on a balcony, one of whom is sitting: the painter Berthe Morisot, who married Manet's brother Eugène in 1874. In the centre is the painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is Fanny Claus, a violinist. The fourth figure, partially obscured in the interior's background, is possibly Léon Leenhoff, Manet's son.

It was exhibited at the 1869 Paris Salon, and then kept by Manet until his death in 1883. It was sold to the painter Gustave Caillebotte in 1884, who left it to the French state in 1894. It is currently held at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. 

In 1950, René Magritte made a wry diversion of it in which coffins replace the characters: Perspective II, Manet's Balcony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balcony_(Manet)

The Balcony
1868-69
Oil on canvas
170 x 124.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-balcon-707

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)

Immediately after the Franco-Prussian War, during which Claude Monet had sought exile in London, the artist travelled to the Netherlands. He and his family sojourned in a small town near Amsterdam called Zaandam, which was popular with tourists. “One would be busy for an entire painter’s life,” he wrote to his friend Camille Pissarro. While Paris lay in ruins, Monet depicted happy scenery. The soft light of a summer’s day is shimmering on the picturesque houses, which are reflected in the water on the bank of the Zaan River. The artist captures the carefree atmosphere of this idyllic location with Impressionist brushstrokes.

https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/houses-by-the-bank-of-the-river-zaan

Houses on the Zaan River at Zaandam
1871 -72
Oil on canvas
47 x 73.7 cm 
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/houses-by-the-bank-of-the-river-zaan

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

On January 1, 1867, Zola published in La Revue du XIXe siecle a second important article on Manet. "What a splendid New Year's present," wrote Manet, thanking him. The following year he expressed his gratitude to the writer by painting this portrait and presenting it to him. Zola posed for the painting in Manet's studio in the rue Guyot, but he is shown working at his desk in his own surroundings. Manet has pinned up on the wall a reproduction of Olympia and a Japanese print; there is also a Japanese screen. The picture radiates an astonishing freshness, and, as with Degas's portrait of Duranty or Cezanne's of Gustave Geffroy, one feels that the artist is in sympathy with his subject. 


https://www.manet.org/portrait-of-emlie-zola.jsp

Portrait of Emile Zola
1868
Oil on canvas
146.5 x 114 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/oeuvres/emile-zola-713

Of his experience as a sitter, Zola wrote in L'Evinement illustre, May 10, 1868: 
 

I remember posing for hours on end.With limbs numb from remaining motionless and my eyes weary from staring at the light, the same thoughts kept murmuring in the back of my mind. The foolish chatter one hears everywhere, the lies of some and the platitudes of others, all that human noise that flows idly by like dirty water, was far away. It seemed to me that I had left the earth for a higher sphere of truth, and I was filled with pity and disdain for the poor wretches stumbling along down below. 

Now and again, half-dozing off as I sat there, I looked at the artist standing at his easel, his features taut, his eyes bright, absorbed in his work. He had forgotten me; he no longer realized that I was there. 

 Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)
 

 In the fall of 1870, Monet traveled to London and this painting is one of a series of works he created while based in the British capital. This view is of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament - covered in other pieces - as seen from Victoria Quay. Like many of Monet's other works, it has a photographic quality to it despite its Impressionist style. Again, Monet uses a fragmented brushstroke to create his magical movement in the river. He also, once again, alludes to the fog and smog that gripped London in the later part of the 19th century. The composition is made up of gray tones, with a pink hue that appears on the horizon. It was while in London that Monet met Paul Durand-Ruel who was to become his most supportive patron. 

https://www.claude-monet.com/the-thames-below-westminster.jsp

The Thames below Westminster
1871
Oil on canvas
47 x 73 cm
The National Gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-thames-below-westminster

 

Monet was captivated by London’s fog during his first stay in the capital from 1870 to 1871. Later in life he told the art dealer Rene Gimpel: ‘Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth.’ This misty composition is anchored by carefully positioned horizontal and vertical structures – the jetty in the foreground, Westminster Bridge marking the horizon, and the Houses of Parliament.
Every architectural element in the picture was new at the time. The Houses of Parliament had only just been finished, as had the Victoria Embankment on the right. St Thomas’ Hospital, the low rectangular shape on the far left, was also nearing completion before opening in the summer of 1871, and Westminster Bridge had been reconstructed in 1862. However, Monet is more interested here in broad effects than architectural detail; indeed he has exaggerated the height of the towers of the Houses of Parliament, making the building seem like a fairy tale palace.

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian is a series of paintings by Édouard Manet from 1867 to 1869, depicting the execution by firing squad of Emperor Maximilian I of the short-lived Second Mexican Empire. Manet produced three large oil paintings, a smaller oil sketch and a lithograph of the same subject. All five works were brought together for an exhibition in London and Mannheim in 1992–1993 and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006. 

Maximilian was born in 1832, the second son of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria of the House of Habsburg and Princess Sophie of Bavaria. After a career in the Austrian Navy, he was encouraged by Napoleon III to become Emperor of Mexico following the French intervention in Mexico. Maximilian arrived in Mexico in May 1864. He faced significant opposition from forces loyal to the deposed president Benito Juárez throughout his reign, and the Empire collapsed after Napoleon withdrew French troops in 1866. 
Maximilian was captured on Cerro de las Campanas in May 1867, sentenced to death at a court martial, and executed, together with Generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía, on 19 June 1867. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Emperor_Maximilian

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, June 19, 1867
1868
Oil on canvas
252 x 305 cm.
Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany
https://www.bildindex.de/document/obj20283837

The link to the site of the Mannheim Kunsthalle leads to a very dark version of the painting. I haven't been to Mannheim myself so I cannot judge about the accuracy but here is a detail from the MoMA website

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/8

Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926))
 

Monet left London and his friend Whistler in 1871 and traveled to Holland, where he was much more productive, possibly because he was joined by his wife Camille and son Jean. 

In the same year Monet painted this most untypical work depicting Camille reclining on a highly patterned sofa in an elegant room. Although Monet pointed Camille frequently, he rarely painted with such attention to detail. He has borrowed much from the work of Whistler, who painted a number of pictures in a similar style, showing a single figure seated within a strongly structured background. The dark, tonal treatment of the figure and the use of weighty background tones also recall the work of Monet's friend Manet, in turn, influenced by Velazquez. 

 

In stark contrast to Monet's painting is a work of the same subject by Renoir several years later. Renoir's is oil airy lightness, with the figure of Camille more Impressionist in style and wrought in pale, pastel tones. 

https://www.claude-monet.com/meditation.jsp

Méditation. Madame Monet au canapé
1871
Oil on canvas
48.2 x 174.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/oeuvres/meditation-madame-monet-au-canape-806 

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

On a trip to Spain in 1865, Édouard Manet visited the Prado, where the art of Diego Velázquez was a revelation. Upon his return to Paris in 1866, he began work on a new painting, depicting an anonymous regimental fifer of the Spanish army. In this picture, Manet presents the uniformed boy, in a manner that imitates and inverts the formula of Vélazquez's court portraits, against a barely inflected, flattened background of neutral tone, thus frustrating attempts to assess the figure's true size and, by extension, importance. 
The painting, entitled Le fifre, was rejected by the jury of the Salon of 1866. Outraged by the jury's decision, Émile Zola, an early champion of Manet's art, published a series of articles in the newspaper L'Évenement, that praised Manet's realist style and modern content. Following the example of Gustave Courbet, in May 1867, Manet personally funded and mounted an exhibition of his own work in a pavilion at the edge of the Éxposition universelle. The exhibition included Le fifre, which was ridiculed in the popular press for its unusual brushwork and inscrutable spatial setting. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifer

The Fifer
1866
Oil on canvas
160 × 97 cm.
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-fifre-709