Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

In 1893 Monet bought a plot of land next to his house in Giverny. He had already planted a colourful flower garden, but now he wanted to create a water garden ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint'. He enlarged the existing pond, filling it with exotic new hybrid water lilies, and built a humpback bridge at one end, inspired by examples seen in Japanese prints. The water garden became the main obsession of Monet’s later career, and the subject of some 250 paintings.

Here, the bridge spans the width of the canvas but is cut off at the edges so that it seems to float unanchored above the water, its shape reflected in a dark arc at the bottom of the picture. The perspective seems to shift; it is as though we are looking up at the bridge but down on the water lilies which float towards the distance. The vertical reflections of the trees provide a counterpoint to the horizontal clumps of the lily pads.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-water-lily-pond

The_Water-Lily_Pond
1899
Oil on canvas
88.3 x 93.1 cm 
The National gallery, London
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-water-lily-pond

The bridge and he pond are still there in Giverny and you can visit them, but just as with the Mona Lisa, you won’t be alone:

For a list of these 250 paintings you can visit Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Lilies_(Monet_series)

For all the other paintings by Monet and Manet you can visit:

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

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

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (French: Un bar aux Folies Bergère) is a painting by Édouard Manet, considered to be his last major work. It was painted in 1882 and exhibited at the Paris Salon of that year. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris. The painting originally belonged to the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, a close friend of Manet, and hung over his piano. It is now in the Courtauld Gallery in London. 

The painting exemplifies Manet's commitment to realism in its detailed representation of a contemporary scene. Many features have puzzled critics but almost all of them have been shown to have a rationale, and the painting has been the subject of numerous popular and scholarly articles.
The central figure stands before a mirror, although critics—accusing Manet of ignorance of perspective and alleging various impossibilities in the painting—have debated this point since the earliest reviews were published. In 2000, however, a photograph taken from a suitable point of view of a staged reconstruction was shown to reproduce the scene as painted by Manet. According to this reconstruction, "the conversation that many have assumed was transpiring between the barmaid and gentleman is revealed to be an optical trick—the man stands outside the painter's field of vision, to the left, and looks away from the barmaid, rather than standing right in front of her." As it appears, the observer should be standing to the right and closer to the bar than the man whose reflection appears at the right edge of the picture. This is an unusual departure from the central point of view usually assumed when viewing pictures drawn according to perspective. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bar_at_the_Folies-Bergère

Un_Bar_aux_Folies-Bergère
1882
Oil on canvas
80 x 98 cm
Courtauld Gallery, London
https://courtauld.ac.uk/highlights/a-bar-at-the-folies-bergere/

https://youtu.be/OzBsRjJwbiQ?si=5K-yF-2-mz5-2P-3

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

Monet, who had already visited London in 1870-1871, made a first six-week stay in London in September 1899, accompanied by Alice and Germaine Hoschedé, with the aim of both painting and visiting his son Michel, had been living there since the spring. They stayed in a suite on the 6th floor of the prestigious Savoy Hotel, which offered spectacular views of the Thames and south London. Monet was invigorated by this visit, commenting, “I so love London! But I love it only in winter, for without the fog London wouldn’t be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth.”

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

Charing Cross Bridge, The Thames
1901
Oil on canvas
73,4 x 100.3 cm 
Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon, France
https://www.mba-lyon.fr/en/fiche-oeuvre/charing-cross-bridge-thames

Charing Cross Bridge (Monet series)

 

Charing Cross Bridge is a series of oil paintings by French artist Claude Monet. The paintings depict a misty, impressionist Charing Cross Bridge in London, England. Monet worked on the series from 1899 to 1905, creating a total of 37 paintings depicting the bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross_Bridge_(Monet_series)

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Self-Portrait with Palette (French: Autoportrait à la palette) is an 1878–79 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Édouard Manet. This late impressionistic work is one of his two self-portraits. Velasquez's self-portrait in Las Meninas was a particular inspiration for Manet's painting which despite its allusion to the previous artist's work is very modern in its focus upon the personality of the artist and loose paint handling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_with_Palette_(Manet)

Selfportrait 1879
1879
Oil on canvas
83 x 67 cm
Private collection (Sold at Sotheby’s on 22 June 2010)

https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2010/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-l10006/lot.9.html?locale=en 

 Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)

At Giverny Monet and his family worked and built up the gardens, and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as Durand-Ruel had increasing success in selling his paintings. The gardens were Monet's greatest source of inspiration for 40 years. In 1890, Monet purchased the house. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights. 
Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners. Monet purchased additional land with a water meadow. White water lilies local to France were planted along with imported cultivars from South America and Egypt, resulting in a range of colours including yellow, blue and white lilies that turned pink with age. In 1902, he increased the size of his water garden by nearly 4000 square metres; the pond was enlarged in 1901 and 1910 with easels installed all around to allow different perspectives to be captured.


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

Flowers in a Vase
1888
Oil on canvas
80 x 45 cm 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 
https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/7211097

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)

In his mid-forties Manet's health deteriorated, and he developed severe pain and partial paralysis in his legs. In 1879 he began receiving hydrotherapy treatments at a spa near Meudon intended to improve what he believed was a circulatory problem, but in reality he was suffering from locomotor ataxia, a known side-effect of syphilis.

Manet's last paintings were of flowers in glass vases. There are 20 such paintings known, with the last one painted in March 1883, barely two months before his death. Quoted in Venice thirteen years later, Manet is credited with stating that an artist can say everything he has to say with "flowers, fruit, and clouds." His last flower paintings are a demonstration of that belief.

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

Flowers in a Crystal Vase (French - Œillets et clématites dans un vase de cristal) is an 1882 painting by Édouard Manet, in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris since 1986. It shows clematis and 'oeillets', a French word used for several kinds of cut flowers, many from the Dianthus genus. It was probably executed in July 1882 at Rueil and forms part of a set of still life paintings produced by Manet at the end of his life, mainly showing flowers.

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

 Flowers in a Crystal Vase
1882
Oil on canvas
32 x 24 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/oeillets-et-clematite-dans-un-vase-de-cristal-1138

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

Monet painted more than thirty views of Rouen Cathedral in 1892–93. Moving from one canvas to another as each day progressed, he painted the facade with highly textured brushstrokes that convey the aspect of sculpted stone and make the atmosphere and light palpable. Monet later finished the works in his studio at Giverny, carefully adjusting the pictures both independently and in relation to each other. Hence, most are signed and dated 1894, as is this example. In 1895, Monet exhibited twenty of his cathedral pictures at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. This one was titled Le Portail (Soleil), or The Portal (Sunlight).

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437124
 

When Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral series, he had long since been impressed with the way light imparts to a subject a distinctly different character at different times of the day and the year and as atmospheric conditions change. For Monet, the effects of light on a subject became as important as the subject itself. Like his other series (such as the famous Water Lilies) in which Monet painted many views of the same subject under different lighting conditions, these works are an attempt to illustrate the importance of light in our perception of a subject at a given time and place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_(Monet_series)

Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (Sunlight)

 1894

Oil on canvas
99.7 x 65.7 cm 
The MET, N.Y.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437124

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)

Spring is a 1881 oil-on-canvas painting by Édouard Manet. It debuted at the Paris Salon of 1882 and was considered the greatest and final public success of Manet's Salon career.[1] It depicts Parisian actress Jeanne DeMarsy in a floral dress with parasol and bonnet against a background of lush foliage and blue sky, as the embodiment of Spring. The painting also became the first work of art ever to be published in color.

Spring was the first of a planned quartet of allegorical works using chic Parisian women to depict the four seasons. The idea came from Manet's friend, Antonin Proust, who suggested a series of seasons personified by contemporary ideals of women, fashion and beauty. The series was never finished and Manet died a year after finishing only the second of the series, Autumn.

In November 2014, the J. Paul Getty Museum paid more than $65 million for the painting, surpassing the previous record of $33.2 million for a Manet which was paid for Self Portrait With a Palette in 2010.

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

Le Printemps (Spring)
1881
Oil on canvas
74 x 51.5 cm
The Getty Center, L.A.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103QTZ

 <b>Claude Monet </b>
(1840 - 1926)

Haystacks is the common English title for a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The principal subject of each painting in the series is stacks of harvested wheat (or possibly barley or oats: the original French title, Les Meules à Giverny, simply means The Stacks at Giverny, obviously concerning stacks of straw). 

The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series (Wildenstein Index Numbers 1266–1290) which Monet began near the end of the summer of 1890 and continued through the following spring, though Monet also produced five earlier paintings using this same stack subject. A precursor to the series is the 1884 Haystack Near Giverny (Pushkin Museum). 

The series is famous for the way in which Monet repeated the same subject to show the differing light and atmosphere at different times of day, across the seasons and in many types of weather. 
The series is among Monet's most notable works. 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystacks_(Monet_series)

Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)
1891
Oil on canvas
60 x 100.5 cm 
Art Institute of Chicago, U.S.
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/64818/stacks-of-wheat-end-of-summer

In May 1891, Monet hung fifteen of these canvases next to each other in one small room in the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. An unprecedented critical and financial success, the exhibition marked a breakthrough in Monet’s career, as well as in the history of French art.

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)

 

Père Lathuille was a restaurant on Avenue de Clichy, not far from the famous Café Guerbois, which Manet frequented. In 1879, he asked the actress Ellen Andrée, who had frequently served as the painter's model, and Louis Gauthier-Lathuille, the owner's son, to pose in the restaurant's garden. Because Andrée failed to show up for a subsequent session, Manet replaced her with Judith French, a relative of the composer Jacques Offenbach. This approach is typical of Manet, who liked to give his paintings the impression of a snapshot, but meticulously staged them. 

The painting has an ambiguous character. At first glance, it appears to depict a love scene between a young man and a somewhat older woman. However, there are good reasons to question this interpretation. For instance, the young man does not appear to be sitting on a chair, but rather crouched next to the woman, and the table is set for only one person. The wine glass the boy is holding likely belongs to the woman. The latter gives a defensive impression, given her stiff, slightly hunched posture. Seen in this light, the painting could also depict a daring attempt at seduction. Some authors even refer to this as a gigolo. 
The waiter in the background also occupies an ambiguous position. He could be watching the scene as a kind of voyeur, but he could just as easily be waiting for the young man to leave the woman alone so he can pour her coffee from the pot in his hand.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bij_Père_Lathuille

Chez le Père Lathuille (At the Père Lathuille Restaurant)
1879
Oil on canvas
92 x 112 cm
Musée Des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Belgium
https://mba.tournai.be/collection/edouard-manet-chez-le-pere-lathuille

 Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

In February 1882, Claude Monet went to Normandy to paint, one of many such expeditions that he made in the 1880s. This was also a retreat from personal and professional pressures. His wife, Camille, had died three years earlier, and Monet had entered into a domestic arrangement with Alice Hoschedé (whom he would marry in 1892, after her husband’s death). France was in the midst of a lengthy economic recession that affected Monet’s sales. In addition, the artist was unenthusiastic about the upcoming seventh Impressionist exhibition—divisions within the group had become pronounced by this time—and he delegated the responsibility for his contribution to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel.
Disappointed in the area around the harbor city of Dieppe, which he found too urban, Monet settled in Pourville and remained in this fishing village until mid-April. He became increasingly enamored of his surroundings, writing to Hoschedé and her children: “How beautiful the countryside is becoming, and what joy it would be for me to show you all its delightful nooks and crannies!” He was able to do so in June, when they joined him in Pourville.The two young women strolling in Cliff Walk at Pourville are probably Marthe and Blanche, the eldest Hoschedé daughters. 

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/14620/cliff-walk-at-pourville

Cliff Walk at Pourville 
1882
Oil on canvas
66.5 x 82.3 cm 
Art Institute of Chicago, U.S.
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/14620/cliff-walk-at-pourville

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Manet was the quintessential "Painter of Modern Life," a phrase coined by art critic and poet Charles Baudelaire. In 1878-79, he painted a number of scenes set in the Cabaret de Reichshoffen on the Boulevard Rochechouart, where women on the fringes of society freely intermingled with well-heeled gentlemen. Here, Manet captures the kaleidoscopic pleasures of Parisian nightlife. The figures are crowded into the compact space of the canvas, each one seemingly oblivious of the others. When exhibited at La Vie Moderne gallery in 1880, this work was praised by some for its unflinching realism and criticized by others for its apparent crudeness.

https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.893/

At the Café
1879
Oil on canvas
47 x 58 cm
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, US
https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.893/

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

This is one of several views Monet painted of the cliffs and sand flats of Pourville, a small fishing village on the Normandy coast of France. The title indicates a momentary stage in the continuous cycle of nature, just as the quick, spontaneous application of paint reflects Monet's efforts to capture shifting effects of light, weather, and tide. The paint layers under the beach indicate that this part of the composition originally depicted water, as would have been appropriate for a depiction of high rather than low tide. Similar changes were made in the clouds during the painting process.

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1947.196

Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe

1882
Oil on canvas
65.4 x 104.7 cm 
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1947.196

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)

Plum Brandy, also known as The Plum (French: La Prune), is an oil painting by Édouard Manet. It is undated but thought to have been painted about 1877. 

Manet may have based the painting on observations at the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Paris. However, the background - the decorative grille and its gold frame - does not match other depictions of the café, and suggests the painting was made in Manet’s studio, where he is known to have had a café-style marble table on iron legs. Manet uses a simple style: for example, the plum in its glass and the fingers of the woman's left hand are created with just a few dabs of colour. 
The model is the actress Ellen Andrée, who was also depicted with Marcellin Desboutin in the similar 1876 painting L'Absinthe (or In a Café) by Edgar Degas. The similarities between the two paintings suggest that Manet's The Plum may be a response to Degas's L'Absinthe. Degas's painting shows a bleak scene of despair blunted by absinthe; Manet's is a more hopeful scene, where there is the chance that the sitter's loneliness may be broken. Andrée also appears in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 painting Luncheon of the Boating Party.


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

Plum Brandy
c. 1877
Oil on canvas
73 x 50 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 
https://www.nga.gov/artworks/53034-plum-brandy

In a Café or L'Absinthe, 1876, Degas

 <b>Claude Monet </b>
(1840 - 1926)

Why travel far in search of inspiration, when beauty lies right before your eyes? In Vétheuil, Claude Monet needed only to step down from his garden to find himself on the banks of the Seine. The river bends gracefully at the foot of the village church.
Across the water, on the opposite bank, he could see the houses of Lavacourt—a small hamlet clinging to the tip of the peninsula formed by the meander. The riverbed is scattered with little islands, shaded by willows. Monet would set up his easel here, perhaps working from his studio-boat, moored at the end of the garden. From the bank today, though, one cannot glimpse the precise angle he chose: the river curving into the distance, with the bell tower of Saint-Martin de La Garenne rising above the horizon. To rediscover that viewpoint, one has to venture out onto the water.

Monet first painted this landscape in 1878. He returned to it the following year with a series of four views, and again in 1880 with this large canvas (Lavacourt, Claude Monet, 1880, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas). According to the catalogue raisonné, although it shows a summer scene, the work (100 × 150 cm) was executed as early as March, based on the smaller canvases of 1879.

Monet sets the horizon at the center of the canvas. The open sweep of the foreground is echoed by the wide sky, dappled with clouds and mirrored in the shimmering water. It is morning: the light is gentle, subdued. Sunlight strikes the facades of the houses, whose reflections ripple across the river, making the colors dance. 

The Seine at Lavacourt
1880
Oil on canvas
98.43 × 149.23 cm 
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, US
https://dma.org/art/collection/object/5320662

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The Rue Mosnier with Flags is an 1878 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, showing the eponymous Parisian street, decorated with French flags for the first national holiday on 30 June 1878, the Fête de la Paix (Celebration of Peace). The Fête de la Paix was held during that year's Exposition Universelle, which together marked France's recovery after the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. The holiday was moved to 14 July in 1880 to become Bastille Day. The painting is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The painting depicts a scene on the Rue Mosnier, now the Rue de Berne [fr], which is overlooked by Manet's studio at 4 Rue de Saint-Pétersbourg  [fr]. It was painted from an upstairs window, with tricolour flags hanging from the buildings along the road, above passing pedestrians and carriages. In the foreground is a man with a ladder, and a one-legged man on crutches, possibly a veteran wounded in the Franco-Prussian War. Behind a fence to the left is rubble from building works to extend the Gare Saint-Lazare. The painting measures 65.4 cm × 80 cm (25.7 in × 31.5 in) and it is signed and dated in the lower left corner, "Manet / 1878". This work echoes the composition of another Manet painting of 1878, Road-menders in the Rue Mosnier. Another 1878 Manet painting of a similar scene of the Rue Mosnier, decorated with flags, is held in a private collection. 

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

The Rue Mosnier with Flags
1878
Oil on canvas
65.4 x 80 cm
Getty Center, L.A.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RJM

 Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

In 1876, Victor Chocquet made his apartment available to Claude Monet. Located on the fifth floor of a building at 198 rue de Rivoli in Paris, it offers a bird's eye view of the Tuileries Gardens, which inspired four of Monet's paintings. The version in the Musée Marmottan Monet is the most accomplished. It is distinguished by the balance of its composition. The mass of the Marsan pavilion, on the left, and the very high horizon line define the framework devoted to the description of the French-style park. Ponds, flowerbeds, and groves form the poetic setting, completed by the regular layout of the pedestrian walkways and the uninterrupted arrangement of the sculptures. The palette of blond ochres and shades of green, blue, and pink recalls that of On a Walk Near Argenteuil and, more generally, the works of the mid-1870s.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monet-Tuileries-Marmottan.jpg

The Tuileries (Study)
1874
Oil on canvas
54 x 73 cm 
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
https://www.marmottan.fr/notice/4016/

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

In the Conservatory (French: Dans la serre) is an 1879 oil painting by Édouard Manet in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, depicting Manet's friends, a couple, in a conservatory. There is an ambiguity in the painting that has led art critics to characterize the couple's relationship in divergent ways. 

The setting is a conservatory at 70 Rue d'Amsterdam in Paris, then owned by painter Georg von Rosen and which Manet used as a studio for nine months in 1878 and 1879. Such a conservatory may have been more than a greenhouse; French painter Alix-Louise Enault's Consolation depicted the Parisian conservatory as a "luxuriously decorated and intimate locale—a secluded indoor area conducive to private rendezvous".At first glance, we see a double portrait of a fashionable and attractive couple of some social rank. They are Manet's friends, the Guillemets, who owned a clothing shop. Their married status is conveyed by their rings, and the proximity of their hands is the nearest hint of intimacy. The woman becomes the focus of the portrait, however, being more prominently placed and colourfully dressed. Their physical separation—with the husband Jules slouching in dark clothing behind the bench—their lack of engagement with the viewer, and their abstract gazes create a sense of detachment, which has been the primary theme in modern criticism of the work.

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

In the Conservatory 
1879
Oil on canvas
115 x 150 cm
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/962626

 And today my personal favourite of this summer theme:

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, sometimes known as The Stroll (French: La Promenade) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Claude Monet from 1875. The Impressionist work depicts his wife Camille Monet and their son Jean Monet in the period from 1871 to 1877 while they were living in Argenteuil, capturing a moment on a stroll on a windy summer's day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_with_a_Parasol_%E2%80%93_Madame_Monet_and_Her_Son

Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son
1875
Oil on canvas
100 x 81 cm 
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
https://www.nga.gov/artworks/61379-woman-parasol-madame-monet-and-her-son

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Nana is a painting by French painter Édouard Manet. It was completed in 1877 and was refused at the Salon of Paris the same year. Manet decided to show his painting in the window of a shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, one of Paris’s main streets. The painting gathered attention and crowds during its exhibition, due to Manet's fame in Paris. The work is now at the Kunsthalle Hamburg art museum in Germany. 
The painting shows a young and beautiful woman who stands before a mirror with two extinguished candles, her face turned to the spectator. Her dress is incomplete; she wears a white chemise, blue corset, silk stockings and high-heeled footwear. The interior suggests that it is a boudoir. Behind the woman is a sofa with two pillows. An elegantly dressed man, sitting on the sofa, can be partly seen on the right of the painting. On the left side, there is a chair, a table and a flowerpot. 
Both the title and the numerous details suggest that the picture represents a high class prostitute and her client. "Nana" was a popular assumed name for female prostitutes during the second half of the 19th century (much like the connotation "Candy" has had for English-speakers more recently). Even today the French word "nana" is used to describe a frivolous woman (or simply "a female" in argot).
The model for the painting was Henriette Hauser, a well-known courtesan of the era.

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

Nana
1877
Oil on canvas
154 x 115 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/en/objekt/HK-2376/nana?term=nana&context=default&position=0

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)

Though Monet preferred painting in the open air, for this work he brought his easel indoors to capture his first wife, Camille Doncieux, sitting at her embroidery loom. Quietly absorbed in her task, Monet's figure recalls the scenes of 17th-century Dutch masters, who were enjoying a revival in France at the time. Even indoors, light remains a primary concern for the artist; the touches of white flicker across the front of Camille's dress, creating a tapestry-like texture that perhaps alludes to her work on the loom.

https://collection.barnesfoundation.org/objects/5329/Madame-Monet-Embroidering-(Camille-au-metier)/

Madame Monet Embroidering (Camille au métier)
1875
Oil on canvas
65.5 × 56 cm 
The Barnes Foundation collection, Philadelphia
https://collection.barnesfoundation.org/objects/5329/Madame-Monet-Embroidering-(Camille-au-metier)/

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Chez Tortoni is a painting by the French artist Édouard Manet, painted ca. 1875.  

The painting depicts an unidentified gentleman sitting at a table in the Café Tortoni de Paris while drawing on a sketchpad. A half-empty glass of beer stands on the table.

Chez Tortoni hung in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, United States prior to its theft in 1990 and it has not yet been recovered. 
A $10 million reward is offered for the return of Chez Tortoni and the other stolen items.

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

Chez Tortoni
1875
Oil on canvas
26 x 34 cm
Whereabouts unknown since the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft in 1990

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Monet and his newly wedded wife Camille fled to England for fear of Monet's military conscription. Returning to France in late 1871, the couple settled in Argenteuil along the Seine.  While many of Monet's paintings of trains come from the Gare St. Lazare Station, The Train in the Snow represents Argenteuil station, which was the artist's "commuter stop." At the time of Monet's residence, Argenteuil was located in a suburban section of France, connected by railway to Paris, Le Havre, and Rouen; trains and engines were in constant view at Argenteuil station because of their storage or redirection there.

Throughout the winter of 1874-1875, Monet continuously painted snow scenes in and around his home at Argenteuil. Fascinated by the trains traveling through his local station on their way to Paris, the artist worked on his paintings while standing on the station platform. Out of his many paintings of trains, Monet seems to have only painted three scenes from 1875-1876 that take place in the snow, including this particular painting.

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

Train in the Snow
1875
Oil on canvas
59 x 78 cm 
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
https://www.marmottan.fr/notice/4017/

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Argenteuil is an 1874 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1875. It is one of Manet's first works to be regarded as a fully Impressionist painting due to its naturalistic style and its bold palette. The painting depicts a sailor and his companion sitting on a mooring dock surrounded by sailboats, the deep blue water of the Seine, and the town of Argenteuil on the far bank.
Manet's brother-in-law Rodolph Leenhoff posed for the figure of the man, who has an expression of intimacy in the painting; the woman, whose identity is unknown, appears less expressive, which the art historian Françoise Cachin attributes to the difficulty of posing for Manet

Art historians have described Argenteuil as a response to Claude Monet's depiction of similar subject matter.

Manet held the painting until his death. After his death, Henri Van Cutsem purchased it from Manet's widow, Suzzane Manet. Van Cutsem eventually bequeathed his collection to the city of Tournai, Belgium where the painting currently resides in the Musée des beaux-arts.

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

Argenteuil
1874
Oil on canvas
149 x115 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai, Belgium
https://mba.tournai.be/collection/edouard-manet-argenteuil

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)

In the same summer Monet also painted a portrait of Manet at work “en plain air”.
Sadly only a poor reproduction is available online, because nobody knows where it is.

Claude Monet’s Manet painting in Monet's Garden, was owned by the German Jewish artist Max Liebermann and his wife Martha. The painting was confiscated from the couple’s apartment at Pariser Platz 7, Berlin, in March 1943 after both Max and Martha’s deaths.
The painting, which Max Liebermann had bought in 1898, has not been seen since it was in the Liebermann apartment. It is suspected that the Nazis sold the work after its confiscation.

https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/wwii-most-wanted/monet/manet-painting

Manet painting in Monet's Garden in Argenteuil.
1874
Oil on canvas
41 x 68 cm
Private collection

 Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

Claude Monet Painting in his Studio or Monet in his Boat is an 1874 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet. It shows his friend Claude Monet painting in his 'studio-boat' with his wife. This was an old boat Monet had bought around 1871 or 1872, from which he observed the light on the Seine – Daubigny also had a studio-boat called the Bottin. With The Monet Family in their Garden and Argenteuil, it was one of a number of paintings produced during a summer Manet spent with Monet. 
It is also one of Manet's first works in which he clearly uses impressionist techniques, painted in Argenteuil, 'en plein air'.
The work is now in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.

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

Claude Monet painting in his studio boat
1874
Oil on canvas
80 x 98 cm
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/jWLpljKLKY

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

In 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, Claude Monet painted the Argenteuil Bridge seven times, and the railway bridge which spans the Seine upstream from the village, four times. This shows how attached the artist was to the motif, using the flowing river as a counterpoint for the geometrical mass of the bridge and its piles reflected in the water.
Here the foreground is filled with sailboats at their mooring. The effects of light on the masts and on the roofs of the houses on the bank in the background are an opportunity for the play of complementary colours (orange and blue) which accentuate the glittering light. The Argenteuil Bridge exhibits great variety in treatment: the still firm outlines of the solid or structured elements, such as the sailboats and the bridge, a smooth, even texture for the water in the foreground, and choppy brushstrokes capturing the reflections in the middle ground.

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-pont-dargenteuil-1297

Le Pont d'Argenteuil (The Argenteuil Bridge)
1874
Oil on canvas
60 x 80 cm 
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-pont-dargenteuil-1297

<b>Édouard Manet</b>
(1832 - 1883)

<i>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 city. These elegant men and coquettish young women are attending a masked ball held each year during Lent. "Imagine," ran a description in the newspaper Figaro, "the opera house packed to the rafters, the boxes furnished out with all the pretty showgirls of Paris. . . . " There is little doubt about the risqué nature of the evening, where masked young women, likely respectable ladies concealing their identities, scantily clad members of the Parisian demimonde, and well–dressed young men all mingle together. 
</i>

https://www.nga.gov/artworks/61246-masked-ball-opera 

<i>Manet made his preparatory sketches for it from life at an opera house at 12 rue Le Peletier in the 9th arrondissement of Paris - this building was reduced to rubble by a fire later that year. He then produced the painting in his studio on rue d'Amsterdam, to which he had moved shortly before. Its subject is reminiscent of the same artist's Music in the Tuileries (1863) - several of his friends posed for both works in his studio, notably the art collector Hecht and the composer Emmanuel Chabrier for Ball. </i>

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

Masked Ball at the Opera House
1873
Oil on canvas
59 x 72.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
https://www.nga.gov/artworks/61246-masked-ball-opera 

Claude Monet 
(1840 - 1926)
 

The Luncheon (Le déjeuner), originally titled Panneau decoratif (Decorative Panel), is an impressionistic depiction of an uncleared luncheon table and several figures in the painter's flower garden. The painting has been in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris since 1886, on loan from the Louvre.

The actual theme of Le Déjeuner, despite its title, is the floral splendor of Monet's garden, rendered in dominant contrasts and bright tones, predominantly red and green. With dots and short strokes, he suggests the large bushes of fuchsias, geraniums, and roses, playfully varying them with the patches of sunlight that illuminate the garden in the early afternoon. Through the trees, the light falls in dappled shades on the dresses of the strolling ladies, on the path, the coffee pot, and the tablecloth, on some of the bars of the wooden garden bench, on the hat in the tree, and on Jean's outfit. The painting perfectly demonstrates Monet's mastery of creating an almost perfectly harmonious whole from seemingly random strokes and dots, capturing the atmosphere of "an equally perfect moment in the afternoon."

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Déjeuner_(Monet)

The Luncheon
1873
Oil on canvas
160 x 201 cm 
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/le-dejeuner-panneau-decoratif-10898

Édouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)
 

The Railway, widely known as Gare Saint-Lazare, is an 1873 painting by Édouard Manet. It is the last painting by Manet of his favourite model, the fellow painter Victorine Meurent, who was also the model for Olympia and the Luncheon on the Grass, among other paintings by Manet. It was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874 and donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1956. 

Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opted for the iron grating which "stretches across the canvas." The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. Modern apartment buildings can be seen in the background – including the house on the Rue de Saint-Pétersbourg [fr], near the Place de l'Europe [fr], where Manet had rented a studio since July 1872 — and also a signal box and the Pont de l'Europe. 

Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manet's picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today".

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

The Railway
1873
Oil on canvas
93,3 x 111.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
https://www.nga.gov/artworks/43624-railway

Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)
 

Impression, Sunrise (French: Impression, soleil levant) is an 1872 painting by Claude Monet first shown at what would become known as the "Exhibition of the Impressionists" in Paris in April, 1874. The painting is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement. 
Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet's hometown. It is usually displayed at the Musée Marmottan Monet but was on loan at the Musée d'Orsay from 26 March until 14 July 2024, and was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from 8 September 2024 until 19 January 2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression%2C_Sunrise

Impression, Sunrise
1872
Oil on canvas
48 x 63 cm 
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
https://www.marmottan.fr/notice/4014/