ART MUSEUMS

 

Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
Superb spin-off from the Spanish museum that Dali himself set up. There are 50 representative highlights of the mind-boggling collection, as well as a biography and video and audio clips of the surrealist master.

Guggenheim Museums
The Guggenheim museums, most famously in New York and Bilbao, house some of the world's finest modern art. Their magnificent site highlights exhibitions past and present, as well as notable works from its permanent collection.
 
Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York
A magnificent site from one of the world's finest museums. The collection ranges from mediaeval weapons to modern art, and more than 3,500 works can be viewed here, all with explanatory text. An excellent art history timeline puts things in context.

Musee d'Orsay
The Paris museum's collection covers art from 1848-1914 and includes major works by the likes of Van Gogh, Seurat and Monet. A handful of paintings are displayed here and there's a section on the museum building, once a train station.

National Gallery of Canada: CyberMuse
An innovative site that presents thousands of works from the Gallery's collection, available for viewing by artist or theme. The search facilities are brilliant and the CyberMuse favourites offers an ever-changing line-up of the Gallery's most famous pieces.

National Museum: Sweden
This site's stripped-down design may not look too appealing, but there are more than two dozen works displayed here from applied art to Auguste Renoir's paintings and drawings by Edouard Manet. There's also a history of the Stockholm museum's collection.

New York Museum of Modern Art
MoMA's site includes a number of Web-only art projects, as well as archiving pages on previous exhibitions including Joan Miro and Willem de Kooning. There's also a good selection of e-cards and wallpapers.

Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere
Austria's premier art museum explores the nation's artworks from the Middle Ages to the present day. Sections on each epoch contain images and informative text, with a particularly good page on the Vienna Secession and Gustav Klimt.

 

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
The Pushkin Museum in Moscow shows off some of its impressive collection of by such well-known figures as Renoir and Kandinsky. As well as an overview of each room, there are also a couple of video panoramas.

Salvador Dali Museum
Florida's Salvador Dali Museum provides a solid introduction to the surrealist master. Pictures from its collection are reprinted with considerable commentary and cover Dali's entire career. Highlights include 'The Hallucinogenic Toreador'.

State Hermitage Museum
An incredibly rich site that has panoramas of more than 100 rooms, including a reconstruction of Peter I's Winter Palace. Collection highlights are presented chronologically, giving a fascinating insight into Russian history and culture.

The Louvre
This floor-by-floor tour of Paris' landmark museum explores its vast array of collections and exhibits. Extended commentary on the 'Faces of Mona Lisa' is offered, together with QuickTime panoramas of many rooms. Some sections only available in French.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Concentrating on the art of the Low Countries, this attractive site features work by Breugel and Van Dyck. Paintings on display are divided by century from the 15th to the present, and there's also a selection of sculptures and drawings.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
As well as highlighting more than 100 paintings, all with accompanying text, this site also has a very good biography of Van Gogh. Other paintings displayed include works by Gauguin, Lautrec and Seurat.

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)

 

            Camille Pissarro, French Impressionist artist, was born in St. Thomas, in the West Indies in 1830 into the family of a merchant. His father was of French-Jewish origin, his mother was a Creole. First Camille started his career as a businessman, like his father, but his obsession with painting changed the direction of his life. In 1852 he got acquainted with the Danish painter F. Melbye and spent about two years with him in Caracas.
            In 1855, he came to Paris, where he was impressed by the landscapes of Corot. He painted in Paris and in its suburbs; in 1859, he was admitted to the Salon. In 1859-1861, he attended the Académie Suisse and formed friendships with Monet, Guillaumin and Cézanne. Approximately at the same time his liaison with Julie Vellay started; they would marry ten years later, in 1871; they had eight children; their two sons, Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944), and Georges Pissarro (1871-1961) would both become the artists.
            Rejected by the Salon in 1861 and 1863, Pissarro showed at the “Salon des Refusés” in 1863. Though in 1864-68 he exhibited at the Salon, his pictures were not popular with public, nobody bought them, and financial difficulties started.
In 1866-68, Pissarro lived and worked in Pontoise, painted landscapes in which he changed from Barbizon Realism of Corot to Impressionism; in 1869/70 he moved to Louveciennes, where many of his paintings were destroyed by German troops during the occupation of Louveciennes in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. The artist at the time stayed with his family in London.
            Pissarro’s friend, the painter Daubigny, recommended him to the art dealer Durand-Ruel, who did much for promotion of the Impressionists’ works; he would organize Pissarro’s exhibitions in Paris (1883) and New York (1886).
In 1872-78, Pissarro stayed in Pontoise, working with Cézanne, on whom he exercised considerable influence. At this time his independent Impressionist style fully developed. Pissarro was the leader of the original Impressionists, and the only one to exhibit at all eight of the Group exhibitions in Paris from 1874 to 1886.
            In 1885, he met Signac and Seurat and for the next five years adopted their Divisionist/ Pointillist style. Pissarro’s interest in Socialism brought him some trouble: in 1894 he had to flee to Belgium from the French persecution of Anarchists, he had become an Anarchist in 1885. In 1896 and 1898, he painted views of the town and harbor of Rouen, remaining faithful to the early Impressionist style. In 1897-1903, he mainly painted views of Paris, also Dieppe and Le Havre.
He died in Paris in 1903.

 

         The Chat. 1892. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

 

Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (1573-1610)

The Calling of Saint Matthew

1599-1600; Oil on canvas, 10' 7 1/2" X 11' 2"; Contarelli Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

 

The subject traditionally was represented either indoors or out; sometimes Saint Matthew is shown inside a building, with Christ outside (following the Biblical text) summoning him through a window. Both before and after Caravaggio the subject was often used as a pretext for anecdotal genre paintings. Caravaggio may well have been familiar with earlier Netherlandish paintings of money lenders or of gamblers seated around a table like Saint Matthew and his associates.

Caravaggio represented the event as a nearly silent, dramatic narrative. The sequence of actions before and after this moment can be easily and convincingly re-created. The tax-gatherer Levi (Saint Matthew's name before he became the apostle) was seated at a table with his four assistants, counting the day's proceeds, the group lighted from a source at the upper right of the painting. Christ, His eyes veiled, with His halo the only hint of divinity, enters with Saint Peter. A gesture of His right hand, all the more powerful and compelling because of its languor, summons Levi. Surprised by the intrusion and perhaps dazzled by the sudden light from the just-opened door, Levi draws back and gestures toward himself with his left hand as if to say, "Who, me?", his right hand remaining on the coin he had been counting before Christ's entrance.

The two figures on the left, derived from a 1545 Hans Holbein print representing gamblers unaware of the appearance of Death, are so concerned with counting the money that they do not even notice Christ's arrival; symbolically their inattention to Christ deprives them of the opportunity He offers for eternal life, and condemns them to death. The two boys in the center do respond, the younger one drawing back against Levi as if seeking his protection, the swaggering older one, who is armed, leaning forward a little menacingly. Saint Peter gestures firmly with his hand to calm his potential resistance. The dramatic point of the picture is that for this moment, no one does anything. Christ's appearance is so unexpected and His gesture so commanding as to suspend action for a shocked instant, before reaction can take place. In another second, Levi will rise up and follow Christ--in fact, Christ's feet are already turned as if to leave the room. The particular power of the picture is in this cessation of action. It utilizes the fundamentally static medium of painting to convey characteristic human indecision after a challenge or command and before reaction.

The picture is divided into two parts. The standing figures on the right form a vertical rectangle; those gathered around the table on the left a horizontal block. The costumes reinforce the contrast. Levi and his subordinates, who are involved in affairs of this world, are dressed in a contemporary mode, while the barefoot Christ and Saint Peter, who summon Levi to another life and world, appear in timeless cloaks. The two groups are also separated by a void, bridged literally and symbolically by Christ's hand. This hand, like Adam's in Michelangelo's Creation, unifies the two parts formally and psychologically. Underlying the shallow stage-like space of the picture is a grid pattern of verticals and horizontals, which knit it together structurally.

The light has been no less carefully manipulated: the visible window covered with oilskin, very likely to provide diffused light in the painter's studio; the upper light, to illuminate Saint Matthew's face and the seated group; and the light behind Christ and Saint Peter, introduced only with them. It may be that this third source of light is intended as miraculous. Otherwise, why does Saint Peter cast no shadow on the defensive youth facing him ?

Michelangelo Merisi, called later Caravaggio, was born in either Milan, or a town of Caravaggio near Milan, as the son of a ducal architect. His early training started in 1584 under Simone Peterzano, a little known pupil of Titian, and continued till 1588.
            In 1592, Caravaggio went to Rome. His contact with Giuseppe Cesare d’Arpino (1568-1640), the most popular painter and art dealer in Rome at the turn of the century, brought him recognition.  Through the art business Caravaggio met his first patron Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who not only held out the possibility of working independently, but also secured for him his first public commission: side paintings in the Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi. For Cardinal’s  Casino dell’Aurora he painted Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto (c.1599-1600).
            From then on he was flooded by public commissions. Yet because of his violent temper he was constantly in trouble with the law. Since 1600, he is regularly mentioned in police records, is constantly under accusations of assault, libel and other crimes. In 1606, he became involved in murder and had to flee, finding refuge on the estates of Prince Marzio Colonna, where he painted Madonna of the Rosary (c.1606-1607).
            On his wanderings he paused in Naples, painting exclusively religious themes: Seven Works of Mercy (1606-1607), The Flagellation of Christ (1607). Not only these, but almost all of Caravaggio’s religious subjects emphasize sadness, suffering, and death.
            In Malta he was housed by the Knights of St. John and painted several portraits of the Grand Master, Alof de Wignacourt. The artistically fertile Maltese period brought him the title of a Knight of St. John of Malta in 1608, but was shortly interrupted by imprisonment for a passionate quarrel with a noble and a renewed flight.
            Going through Syracuse and Messina, where some major late works came into being, The Raising of Lazarus (c.1608-1609) Caravaggio went on to Palermo and from there again to Naples. Here the news of the Pope’s pardon reached him but, on arriving at Porto Escole by ship, he was again arrested, though later released. By then the ship had sailed, carrying away all his possessions. Struck down by a fever, he died without setting foot in Rome again.

            Few artists in history have exercised as extraordinary an influence as this tempestuous and short-lived painter. Caravaggio was destined to turn a large part of European art away from the ideal viewpoint of the Renaissance to the concept that simple reality was of primary importance. He was one of the first to paint people as ordinary looking.

Impressionism

 

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

 

Impressionism is a light, spontaneous manner of painting which began in France as a reaction against the formalism of the dominant Academic style. Its naturalistic and down-to-earth treatment of its subjects has its roots in the French Realism of Corot and others.
The movement's name came from Monet's early work, Impression: Sunrise, which was singled out for criticism by Louis Leroy on its exhibition.
The hallmark of the style is the attempt to capture the subjective impression of light in a scene.
The core of the earliest Impressionist group was made up of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Others associated with this period were Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Gustave Caillebotte, Frederic Bazille, Edouard Manet, and Mary Cassatt.

The Impressionist style is still widely practiced today. However, a variety of successive movements were influenced by it, grouped under the general term Post-Impressionism.
 Monet, with Pissaro, is recognized as being one of the creators of Impressionism, and he was the most convinced and consistent Impressionist of them all. From his earliest days as an artist, he was encouraged to trust his perceptions and the hardships he suffered never deterred him from that pursuit.

            Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840 but all his impressions as a child and adolescent were linked with Le Havre, the town to which his family moved about 1845. His father had a grocery store there. In his youth he painted caricature portraits and exhibited them in the art supplies store in which Eugène Boudin worked at the time. Eventually Boudin persuaded the young Monet to paint in the open air with him and become a landscape painter. His family was not against his wish to become a painter, but his independent views, criticism towards academic art and refusal to enter a decent school of art led to constant quarrels with his family. After finishing his military service in Algeria (1860-1861) Monet attended the Académie Suisse and there made the acquaintance of Pissarro and Cézanne. Later, in 1862, he entered the Atelier Gleyre, where he met Bazille, Renoir and Sisley. In 1860s, the young artists frequented the Café Guerbois, a place often visited by Emile Zola and Edouard Manet.
            An important turning point in Monet’s artistic career came in 1869, when he and Renoir painted La Grenouillere, a floating restaurant at Bougival. The canvases they produced marked the emergence of a new artistic movement, Impressionism, called so later.
            In 1870, Monet married his model Camille Doncieux (died in 1879), who bore him his son Jean (1868-1914); in 1879 their second son, Michael, was born. Camille sat for many of Monet's pictures, e.g. The Walkers, Women in the Garden (all four are Camille), The Walk. Lady with a Parasol, La Japonaise, and many others. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and a short civil war (Commune) that followed, Monet lived in London and was introduced to Paul Durand-Ruel, a celebrated art dealer, who did much to popularize Impressionist works. In 1874, in an atmosphere of increasing hostility on the part of official artistic circles, Monet and his friends formed a group and exhibited on their own for the first time. One of his works at this exhibition, Impression: Sunrise, gave its name to the Impessionist movement.
            The following years saw a flourishing of Impressionism. Monet took part in the group’s exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879 and 1882. In those years he created such masterpieces as La Gare Saint-Lazare and Rue Saint-Denis, Festivities of 30 June, 1878. However, his canvases found few buyers. Desperately poor, he constantly looked for places where life was cheaper, and lived at Argenteuil from 1873 to 1878, at Vétheuil from 1879 to 1881, at Poissy in 1882, and at Giverny from 1883 until his death.
            In the late 1880s, his painting began to attract the attention of both the public and critics. Fame brought comfort and even wealth. During that period the artist was absorbed in painting landscapes in series: The Rocks of Belle-Ile (1886), Cliffs at Belle-Ile (1886), Poplars on the Bank of the River Epte (1890), Poplars on the Banks of the Epte (1891), Poplars on the Bank of the River Epte (1891). Light is always the ‘principal person’ in Monet’s landscape, and since he was always aiming at seizing an escaping effect, he adopted a habit of painting the same subject under different conditions of light, at different times of day. In this way he painted a series of views, all of the same subject, but all different in color and lightning.
            In 1890, Monet bought the property at Giverny and began work on the series of haystacks, which he pursued for two years. Monet painted the stacks in sunny and gray weather, in fog and covered with snow: Haystack, Snow Effects, Morning (1890), Haystack. End of the Summer. Morning. (1891), Haystack at the Sunset near Giverny (1891). In 1892 he married Alice Hoschedé (died in 1911) his old friend.
            Monet’s renowned series of the cathedral at Rouen seen under different light effects was painted from a second-floor window above a shop opposite the façade. He made eighteen frontal views. Changing canvases with the light, Monet had followed the hours of the day from early morning with the façade in misty blue shadow, to the afternoon, when the sunset, disappearing behind the buildings of the city, weaves the weathered stone work into a strange fabric of burnt orange and blue: The Rouen Cathedral. Portail. The Albaine Tower. 1893-1894, The Rouen Cathedral at Noon (1894), The Rouen Cathedral (1893-1894), The Rouen Cathedral at Twilight (1894), The Rouen Cathedral in the Evening (1894).
            In 1899, Monet first turned to the subject of water lilies: The White Water Lilies (1899), The Japanese Bridge (1899), Water-Lilies (1914), Water-Lilies (c.1917), Water-Lilies (1917), the main theme of his later work. Fourteen large canvases of his Water lilies series, started in 1916, were bequeathed by him to the State. In 1927, shortly after the artist’s death, these canvases were placed in two oval rooms of the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens.

Joseph Mallord William Turner

(1775 - 1851)

           

Turner was only fourteen years old when he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. He started his career by painting watercolours and producing mezzotints under the strong influence of John Robert Cozen's work. Then, in 1796, he launched into oil painting, working in the neoclassical manner of Richard Wilson and Nicolas Poussin, with results that found wide acclaim. He exhibited his first picture Fishermen at Sea (1796) in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1796. He was elected an Associate in 1799 and in 1802 a full member of the Royal Academy. Turner was one of the most prolific painters of his time. He traveled extensively in England, Scotland and Ireland, and also on the Continent (France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy).
            In 1802, he visited Paris for the first time, where he studied the Old Masters in the Louvre, above all Dutch seascapes and Claude Lorrain's compositions, which lastingly influenced him. Turner's first private showing, at his own house, took place in 1804. During this period, thanks to the increasing concentration on the atmospheric effects of light, his original style began to evolve, a process that culminated during trips to Italy between 1819 and 1829.
            Like the works of Constable, Turner's seemingly effortless watercolours and oil sketches were based on impressions of nature. But his perception of the world differed vastly from Constable's. Turner's pictures transcend ordinary appearances, conveying a visionary sense of the forces at work in the universe.
            In his atmospheric depictions of shipwrecks and natural disasters such as The Shipwreck (1805), Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), A Storm (Shipwreck) (1823), Shipwreck off Hastings (c.1825), Fire at Sea (1835), Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842) reality and fantasy merge and colour is used to metaphorically evoke the power of natural phenomena. By abandoning form or merely outlining it, Turner lent colour autonomy and endowed it with a power of its own. This achievement was to be especially influential on XX century art. Turner's other best works are The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory (1806-1808), The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817), Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1823), A Ship Aground (1828), The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken up (1838), Peace - Burial at Sea (1842), The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, From the Steps of the Europa (1842), Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - The Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis (1843), Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844).

 

In formation since 1870, the Metropolitan Museum's collection now contains more than two million works of art from all points of the compass, ancient through modern times. About 6,500 objects—fifty highlights from each of the Museum's curatorial departments as well as the entire Department of European Paintings and the Department of American Paintings and Sculpture—can be searched by artist, period, style, or keyword. You may also explore other works from the Met's collection by taking the director's tour; viewing some of the Museum's recent acquisitions; learning about the Museum's Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation; or by visiting the Timeline of Art History, the Period Rooms: Virtual Reality Tour, or the Provenance Research Project.

There are several large museums in New York but the Metropolitan Museum of Art is truly gigantic. From the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, the Met, with its tall columns and windows, immense stairways and water fountains, looks like it could be an emperor’s palace. The size and diversity of the artwork on display is even more impressive; the museum’s collection contains works from every part of the world, spanning the Stone Age to the twentieth century. The Egyptian Art gallery includes a whole temple that was shipped to America as a gift. Getting at least a little bit lost at the Met is inevitable. Floor plans help, but only so much. Despite their seeming complexity, though, the galleries are arranged to help you navigate through with ease. If you get mixed up, there are always museum personnel nearby who can give you directions If you’re planning on visiting the Met and another museum on Museum Mile in one trip, you’ll have to prioritize; going through the entire Met is a full day (or two) affair. The Met is a must see when visiting New York and is always worth another trip.

       Matisse, Henri (-Émile-Benoît) (b. Dec. 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, Fr.--d. Nov. 3, 1954, Nice)
artist often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. The leader of the Fauvist movement around 1900, Matisse pursued the expressiveness of colour throughout his career. His subjects were largely domestic or figurative, and a distinct Mediterranean verve presides in the treatment.

The art of our century has been dominated by two men: Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They are artists of classical greatness, and their visionary forays into new art have changed our understanding of the world. Matisse was the elder of the two, but he was a slower and more methodical man by temperament and it was Picasso who initially made the greater splash. Matisse, like Raphael, was a born leader and taught and encouraged other painters, while Picasso, like Michelangelo, inhibited them with his power: he was a natural czar.

Matisse's artistic career was long and varied, covering many different styles of painting from Impressionism to near Abstraction. Early on in his career Matisse was viewed as a Fauvist, and his celebration of bright colors reached its peak in 1917 when he began to spend time on the French Riviera at Nice and Vence. Here he concentrated on reflecting the sensual color of his surroundings and completed some of his most exciting paintings. In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed as having duodenal cancer and was permanently confined to a wheelchair. It was in this condition that he completed the magnificent Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.

 

Matisse's art has an astonishing force and lives by innate right in a paradise world into which Matisse draws all his viewers. He gravitated to the beautiful and produced some of the most powerful beauty ever painted. He was a man of anxious temperament, just as Picasso, who saw him as his only rival, was a man of peasant fears, well concealed. Both artists, in their own fashion, dealt with these disturbances through the sublimation of painting: Picasso destroyed his fear of women in his art, while Matisse coaxed his nervous tension into serenity. He spoke of his art as being like "a good armchair"-- a ludicrously inept comparison for such a brilliant man-- but his art was a respite, a reprieve, a comfort to him.

Matisse initially became famous as the King of the Fauves, an inappropriate name for this gentlemanly intellectual: there was no wildness in him, though there was much passion. He is an awesomely controlled artist, and his spirit, his mind, always had the upper hand over the "beast" of Fauvism.

 

Matisse's Fauvist years were superseded by an experimental period, as he abandoned three-dimensional effects in favor of dramatically simplified areas of pure color, flat shape, and strong pattern. The intellectual splendor of this dazzlingly beautiful art appealed to the Russian mentality, and many great Matisses are now in Russia. One is The Conversation (1909; 177 x 217 cm (5 ft 9 3/4 in x 7 ft 1 1/2 in)) in which husband and wife converse. But the conversation is voiceless. They are implacably opposed: the man-- a self portrait-- is dominating and upright, while the woman leans back sulkily in her chair. She is imprisoned in it, shut in on all sides. The chair's arms hem her in, and yet the chair itself is almost indistinguishable from the background: she is stuck in the prison of her whole context. The open window offers escape; she is held back by an iron railing. He towers above, as dynamic as she is passive, every line of his striped pyjamas undeviatingly upright, a wholly directed man. His neck thickens to keep his outline straight and firm, an arrow of concentrated energy. The picture cannot contain him and his head continues beyond it and into the outside world. He is greater that it all, and the sole "word" of this inimical conversation is written in the scroll of the rail: Non. Does he say no to his intensity of life? They deny each other forever.

But denial is essentially antipathetic to Matisse. He was a great celebrator, and to many his most characteristic pictures are the wonderful odalisques he painted in Nice (he loved Nice for the sheer quality of its warm, southern light). Though such a theme was not appreciated at the time, it is impossible for us to look at Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923; 65 x 50 cm (25 1/2 x 19 3/4)) and feel that Matisse is exploiting her. The woman herself is unaware of him, lost in private reverie as she surrenders to the sunlight, and she, together with the splendid opulence of her chair, he diaphanous skirt, and the intricately decorated panels on either side, all unite in a majestic whole that celebrates the glory of creation. It is not her abstract beauty that attracts Matisse, but her concrete reality. He reveals a world of supreme decoration: for example, the small black patches of underarm hair on the odalisque are almost a witty inverted comma mark round the globes of her breasts and the rose pink center of each nipple.

 

Picasso and Matisse were active to the end of their lives, but while Picasso was preoccupied with his ageing sexuality, Matisse moved into a period of selfless invention. In this last phase, too weak to stand at an easel, he created his papercuts, carving in colored paper, scissoring out shapes, and collaging them into sometimes vast pictures. These works, daringly brilliant, are the nearest he ever came to abstraction. Beasts of the Sea (1950; 295.5 x 154 cm (9 ft 8 in x 5 ft 1/2 in)) gives a wonderful underwater feeling of fish, sea cucumbers, sea horses, and water-weeds, the liquid liberty of the submarine world where most of us can never go. Its geometric rightness and chromatic radiance sum up the two great gifts of this artist and it is easy to see why he is the greatest colorist of the 20th century. He understood how elements worked together, how colors and shapes could come to life most startingly when set in context: everything of Matisse's works together superbly.

Olympia 1863; Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 190 cm (51 3/8 x 74 3/4 in) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Meurent, Victorine Louise (1844-1885) was Manet’s favorite model in the 1860s, posing for such important works as The Picnic and Olympia. She went to America in mysterious circumstances in the 1860s and then returned to France, serving again as Manet’s model in the early 1870s, e.g. in The Railway. She became a painter herself, exhibiting a self-portrait at the 1876 Salon when Manet’s submission was rejected, and in the 1879 Salon her entry was in the same room as Manet’s. (The Street Singer). She probably died an alcoholic, in poverty. In this famous painting, Manet showed a different aspect of realism from that envisaged by Courbet, his intention being to translate an Old Master theme, the reclining nude of Giorgione and Titian, into contemporary terms. It is possible also to find a strong reminiscence of the classicism of Ingres in the beautiful precision with which the figure is drawn, though if he taught to placate public and critical opinion by these references to tradition, the storm of anger the work provoked at the Salon of 1865 was sufficient disillusionment. There is a subtlety of modelling in the figure and a delicacy of distinction between the light flesh tones and the white draperies of the couch that his assailants were incapable of seeing. The sharpness of contrast also between model and foreground items and dark background, which added a modern vivacity to the Venetian-type subject, was regarded with obtuse suspicion as an intended parody. The new life of paint and method of treatment in this and the other works by Manet that aroused the fury of his contemporaries had a stimulus to give to the young artists who were eventually to be known as Impressionists. In a more general sense, they rallied to his support as one heroically opposed to ignorant prejudice and their own ideas took shape in the heat of the controversy. Olympia was the gift of a group of art lovers and painters to the Luxembourg in 1890 and was transferred to the Louvre in 1908.

Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973)

 

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 to Don José Ruiz Blasco (1838-1939) and Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez (1855-1939). The family at the time resided in Málaga, Spain, where Don José taught drawing at the local school of Fine Arts and Crafts. The first ten years of Pablo’s life passed in Málaga. The family was far from rich, and when 2 other children were born (Lola (Dolorès) in 1884 and  Concepción (Conchita) in 1887) it was often difficult to make both ends meet. When Don José was offered a better-paid job, he accepted it immediately, and the Picassos moved to the provincial capital of La Coruna, where they lived for the next four years. There, in 1892, Pablo joined the school of Fine Arts, but mostly his father taught him. By 1894 Pablo’s works became so perfect for the boy of his age that his father recognized Pablo’s amazing talent, handed him his brush and palette and declared that he would never paint again.
In 1895 Don José got a professorship at “La Lonja”, the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and the family settled there. Pablo passed his entrance examination on an advanced course in classical art and still life at the same school. He was the best than senior students in their final exam projects.
“Unlike in music, there are no child prodigies in painting. What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood. It gradually disappears as they get older. It is possible for such a child to become a real painter one day, perhaps even a great painter. But he would have to start right from the beginning. So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.” Picasso.

In 1896 Pablo’s first large “academic’ oil painting, “The First Communion”, appeared in an exhibition in Barcelona. His second large oil painting, “Science and Charity” (1897) received honorable mention in the national exhibition of fine art in Madrid and was awarded a gold medal in a competition at Málaga. Pablo’s uncle sent him money for further studying in Madrid, and the youth passed entrance examination for advanced courses at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. But already in the winter he abandoned the classes. His everyday visits to the Prado seemed to him much more important. At first he copied the old masters, trying to imitate their style; later they would be the source of ideas for original paintings of his own, and he would re-arrange them again and again in different variations.
Picasso’s time in Madrid, however, came to a sudden end. In summer 1898, caught with scarlet fever, he came back to Barcelona, then, to regain health, he went to the mountain village of Horta de Ebro and spent long time there to return home only in spring 1899.

In Barcelona he frequented Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), the café, where artists and intellectuals used to meet. He made friends, among others, with the young painter Casagemas, and the poet Sabartés, who would later be his secretary and lifelong friend. In Quatre Gats Picasso met the vivid representatives of Spanish modernism, such as Rusinol and Nonell; he was very enthusiastic about new directions in art, he said farewell to “classicism” and started his enduring search and experiments. The relations with his parents strained, they could not understand and forgive him the betrayal of “classicism”.

In October 1900 Picasso and Casagemas left for Paris, the most significant artistic center at the time, and opened studio at the Montmartre. Art dealer Pedro Manach offered Picasso his first contract: 150 Francs per month in exchange for pictures. His first Paris picture “Le Moulin de la Galette” (Guggenheim Museum, New York).  In December he departed for Barcelona, Málaga, and Madrid where he became co-editor of Arte Joven. But already in May 1901 he returned to Paris. This restless life with constant travels  continued all his life, though  later he would become more or less settled, but never finally settled.
  In 1906 the art dealer Ambroise Vollard  bought most of Picasso’s “rose” pictures, thus started his life free of financial worries. Accompanied by Fernande he again traveled to Barcelona, then to Gosol in the north of Catalonia, where he painted “La Toilette”. Deeply impressed by the Iberian sculptures at the Louvre he began to think over and to experiment with geometrical forms.
In 1918 Olga and Picasso married. Contacts with high society through the ballet and the marriage brought changes in his lifestyle. The young family moved into an apartment, which occupied two floors at 23 Rue La Boétie, acquired servants, then chauffeur, and moved in different social circles, no doubt due to Olga’s influence. The chaotic artists’ get-togethers gradually changed into receptions. Picasso’s image of himself had changed, and this was probably reflected in more conventional language he adopted in his art, the way in which he consciously made use of artistic traditions and was almost never provocative.
After cubism Picasso returned to more traditional patterns, but not exactly the classical ones, this style, a’la classical, was called “classicist style” The Lovers., from time to time he returned to cubism. His collaboration with the Ballet Russe went on: he worked on décor for “Le Tricorne”; drew the dancers; in 1920 began to work on décor for Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella. With the birth of his son Paul (Paolo) (1921) he again and again returned to Mother and Child theme. Mother and Child.
To 1921 belongs his cubistic Three Musicians, in which he for the first time used a group of people as a cubist subject: three figures from the Italian Commedia dell’Arte (Pierrot, Harlequin and a monk) playing trio. Though created in his post-cubist period, the picture came to be regarded as the climax of cubism. “Those who set out to explain a picture usually go wrong. A short time ago Gertrude Stein elatedly informed me that at last she understood what my picture ‘Three Musicians’ represented. It was a still life!” Picasso.

In 1923 Picasso composed The Pipes of Pan, which is regarded as the most important painting of his “classicist period”. Other interesting works: The Seated Harlequin. Women Running on the Beach.
“Of all these things – hunger, misery, being misunderstood by the public – fame is by far the worst. This is how God chastises the artist. It is sad. It is true.” Picasso
God had chastised Picasso, by mid-twenties he became so popular that “had to suffer a public that was gradually suppressing his individuality by blindly applauding every single picture he produced.” Added to this, there were marital problems. His wife Olga, the former ballet dancer, for whom the attention and admiration of the public was necessary, vital, and natural,  could not understand his crisis.
Picasso tried to rescue his independence by taking an interest in the unknown, the unfamiliar, he set up a sculptor’s studio near Paris and began to make numerous artistic experiments. Series of assemblages on Guitar theme, using objects such as a shirt, a floor-cloth, nails and string, sculptures. In 1927 Picasso met seventeen-year old Marie-Thérèse Walter. She became his mistress shortly afterwards.
Much of his work after 1927 is fantastic and visionary in character. His Woman with Flower of 1932 is a portrait of Marie-Thérèse, distorted and deformed in the manner of surrealism, which was so fashionable at the time. even Picasso could not really avoid being influenced by this group of Parisian artists, although, conversely, they regarded him as their artistic stepfather.
“I keep doing my best not to lose sight of nature. I want to aim at similarity, a profound similarity which is more real than reality, thus becoming surrealist.” Picasso

Picasso himself admitted that the worst time of his life began in June 1935. Marie-Thérèse was pregnant with his child, and his divorce from Olga had to be postponed again and again: their common wealth had become a subject for the lawyers. During this time of personal crisis Picasso would supplement his arsenal of artistic weapons in the form of a bull, either dying or snorting furiously and threatening both man and animal alike: being Spanish, Picasso had always been fascinated by bull fights. October 5^th, 1935 his second child, daughter Maria de la Concepcion, called Maya, was born.
In 1936 he met Dora Maar, a Yugoslavian photographer. Later, during the war, she became his constant companion.

The Spanish government had asked Picasso to fulfill a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition. He planned the topic “painter and studio”, but when he heard about events in Guernica, he changed his original plans. After numerous sketches and studies, Picasso gave his own personal comprehensive view of a historical fact. His gigantic mural Guernica has remained part of the collective consciousness of the twentieth century, because “Guernica” has been serving as a forceful reminder of it. In 1981, after forty years of exile in New York, the picture found its way back to Spain. This was because Picasso had decreed that it should not become Spanish property until the end of fascism. In October 1937 Picasso painted the “Weeping Woman” as a kind of postscript to “Guernica”.

In 1940 when Paris was occupied he held an action: handed out photos of Guernica to German officers. When asked “Did you do this?” he replied, “No, you did”. Whether the world-known military brains could not perceive the symbolism of the picture, or the world fame of Picasso stopped the Nazis, he was not arrested. He went on working. During the wartime he met a young woman painter, Françoise Gillot, who would later become his third official wife.
With his Charnel House of 1945 Picasso concluded the series of pictures, which he started with “Guernica”. The relationship between the two paintings becomes immediately obvious when we consider the rigidly limited color scheme and the triangular composition of the center. But the nightmare has now been overtaken by reality itself. The Charnel House was painted under the impact of reports from the concentration camps which had been discovered and liberated. It was not until now that people realized how many monsters had been born while reason slumbered. It was a time when millions of people had been literally pushed to one side – a turn of phase which Picasso expressed rather vividly in the pile of dead bodies in his Charnel House.

After the WWII Françoise gave birth to his two more children born: Claude (1947) and Paloma (1949). Paloma is a Spanish word for “dove”, the girl was named after the peace fighters symbol.
More women come into his life, come and go, like Sylvette David; or stay longer, like Jacqueline Rogue.
Another woman came into his life and settled beside, was she better than the previous ones, or just new? All his life he had to change places of life, women, manner of painting, materials, with which he worked. Some people say that this helps to stay young, maybe…
In summer 1955 Picasso bought “La Californie”, a big villa near Cannes. From his studio he could see his enormous garden, which he filled with his sculptures. The south and the Mediterranean were just right for his mentality, they reminded of Barcelona, of his childhood and youth. He created there: “Studio ‘La Californie’ at Cannes” (1956), Jacqueline in the Studio. (1956). By 1958 however ‘La Californie’ became one more tourist attraction at Cannes. There had been a constantly increasing stream of admirers and of people trying to catch a glimpse, so that it had become necessary to move house. Picasso bought Chateau Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence. Picasso’s move was reflected in his art with an increasing reduction in his range of colors to black, white and green.

Mass media turned Picasso into a celebrity, the public deprived him of privacy and wanted to know his every step, “but his art was given very little attention and was regarded as no more than the hobby of an ageing genius who could do nothing but talk about himself in his pictures.”
Picasso’s late works are an expression of his final refusal to fit into categories. He did everything he wanted in art and there was not a word of criticism.
His adaptation of “Las Meninas” by Velászquez, his experiments with Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, did he really try to discover or to create something, or did he just laugh at our stupidity, at our inability to see the obvious?
A number of elements had become part of constant pattern: Picasso’s use of simplified imagery, the way he let the unpainted canvas shine through, his emphatic use of lines, and the sketchiness of the subject. “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them”, Picasso explained in 1956.
In the last years of his life painting had become an obsession with Picasso, and he would date each picture absolutely precisely, thus creating in his latest works a vast amount of similar paintings, crystallizations of individual moments of timeless happiness, knowing that in the end everything would be in vain.

On April 8, 1973 he died, at last. Picasso was buried in the grounds of his Chateau Vauvenargues.

Paul Cézanne        

(1839-1906)

 

Paul Cézanne was born into a family of Italian origin in Cesana Forinese. His father had established a felt hat business in Aix-en-Provence and later became a banker. In 1859 he bought a country house on the outskirts of Aix, the Jas de Bouffan, which was to be frequently represented in Cézanne’s paintings.
            Between 1852 and 1859 Paul Cézanne studied at the Collège Bourbon and it was there that he formed a friendship with Emile Zola, with whom he shared an interest in literature. In 1856 Cézanne began to attend the evening drawing courses of Joseph-Marc Gibert at the Aix Museum. From 1859 to 1861 he studied law at Aix, entered his father’s bank. By April 1861 his father had finally yielded to Cézanne’s desire to make a career in art and allowed him to go to Paris to study at the Académie Suisse. In Paris Cézanne frequented the Louvre, met Pissarro and Guillaumin and, later on, Monet, Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. In September of the same year he was refused admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and went back to Aix, to the great relief of his father, who offered him a position in his bank. But in November 1862 Paul Cézanne went back to Paris and took up painting again.
            During his so called “dark” or “romantic” period (1862-70) Paul Cézanne often visited Paris; he met with Edouard Manet and the future Impressionists, and tried to be accepted at the Salon. The Franco-Prussian War drove him to L’Estaque near Marseilles. Paul Cézanne’s “Impressionist” period (1873-79) is connected with his staying at Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise in 1872, 1873, 1874, 1877 and 1881; he worked with Pissarro and exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. The canvases produced at L’Estaque (1880-83) and at Gardanne (1885-88) are usually referred to Paul Cézanne’s “constructive” period. In 1886 after his father’s death, Cézanne married Hortense Fiquet, with whom he had a secret liaison since 1870. She is said to look after the finished canvases, which Cézanne never took care to keep and abandoned as soon as he completed the painting. The same year Cézanne quarelled with Zola over the novel “L’Oeuvre”, in which the central figure, an unsuccessful and unbalanced painter, was identified with Cézanne.
            In 1887, after a long break, Cézanne participated in the exhibition of Les XX at Brussels. Towards the beginning of Paul Cézanne’s “synthetic” period (1890-1906) the younger generations of artists started to take an interest in him. His first one-man show was held in the Vollard Gallery in 1895. During these years the artist seldom visited Paris – his longest stays there took place in 1895, 1899 and 1904 – and produced many versions of canvases depicting Mount Sainte-Victoire, smokers, card-players and bathers, and painted still lifes and portraits. By 1901 Cézanne had become recognized. He often met with young artists who admired his work – Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard. In 1901 Denis painted Hommage à Cézanne. The future Fauvist Charles Camoin sought his advice, and in 1904 he was visited by Emile Bernard, an artist of the Pont-Aven school, with whom Cézanne corresponded extensively, expounding his views on art.
            In 1904 his paintings were shown for the first time at the Autumn Salon in Paris; and a year after his death, in 1907, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held there.
 

 

Salvador Dalì

 

Salvador Dalì was born on May 11, 1904, in the Catalan town of Figueras, near Barcelona. He was given the same name of his brother, who died at the age of 21 months from a case of meningitis, possibly brought on by his father’s blows to the infant’s head. The second Salvador Dalì became a world-renowned Surrealist painter and avatar of the bizarre, with a combination of technical accomplishment, haunting imagery, and thirst for publicity that made him one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century.

Dalì was the son of a rich, atheistic notary and a devoutly Catholic, adoring mother. The artist forged a very close relationship to his younger sister, Ana Maria, who remained his only model until 1929 (rumors exist that the relationship crossed the line into incest). Bored in school, Dalì was expelled at the age of fifteen. This expulsion, though, afforded Dalì more time for private art lessons and for mastering the finer points of classical technique that would become crucial to his "lucid dream" style. In 1921, Dalì won acceptance to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. There he became the youngest member of an avant-garde circle of students that included the surrealist filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, and the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca. Dalì later collaborated with Buñuel on two notorious Surrealist films, Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or. Garcia Lorca soon became a very close friend of Dalì’s (and according to some, possibly Dalì’s lover), spending many holidays at Dalì’s family house in the Spanish beach town of Cadaques. In 1930, however, Lorca and Dalì quarreled violently, and the two reconciled only a year before Lorca’s death in 1936 as a dissident in the Spanish Civil War.

During his years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Dalì spent his mornings painting and drawing. Afternoons were spent dressed as a dandy, drinking in cafés and discussing current avant-garde movements like Dadaism, Futurism, and the newly forming Surrealism. Eventually, Dalì’s eccentricities and political beliefs became too much for the Madrid academy. In 1923, he was expelled from school and even jailed for a month for disturbance of the peace and political agitation. He subsequently returned home to work on his paintings in Figueres and at the family beach house in Cadaques. During these student years, Dalì discovered what would become one of the most important influences on his painting style, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Dalì’s personal take on Freud’s theory of the subconscious became the basis of his so-called "paranoiac-critical method" of painting, by which Dalì discovered or hallucinated images of his own subconscious desires and libidinal urges and painted the results. Dalì called the paintings of this period "hand-painted dream photographs."

As a result of his "paranoiac critical-method, " Dalì achieved his first significant recognition as an artist and soon became identified with the Surrealist movement. In 1925, Dalì had his first one-man show in Barcelona. In 1928, three of his paintings, including Basket of Bread, were shown in Pittsburgh. 1928 also marked his first trip to Paris, where Spanish painter Joan Miró introduced Dalì to the Surrealists, an artistic movement led by the poet André Breton and dedicated, in Breton’s words, to "reuniting the realms of conscious and unconscious experience". Dalì soon became the best-known member of the group, though other members, including Breton, resented the newcomer’s flair for publicity and ultimately tried to expel the Figueras native.

The end of the 1920s marked a crucial point in Dalì’s life. In 1929, he met Gala (née Helena Deluvina Diakinoff), a Russian immigrant eleven years older who was then married to the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard. During a summer visit to Cadaques, Gala began a relationship with Dalì that would last over fifty years. The two married in 1934, and Gala became Dalì’s only model and managed all of the artist’s financial affairs, earning herself a reputation as a harpy. At least initially, Gala deserved credit for maintaining order in Dalì’s personal life so that he could concentrate on his art. In 1931, Dalì painted his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, with its melting clocks becoming a Surrealist icon. Throughout the 1930s, Dalì’s paintings were including in Surrealist group shows in the U.S. and Europe. These paintings featured wild juxtapositions of animals, objects and biomorphic shapes, usually placed in the harshly lit landscapes of his native Catalan. One buyer astutely commented that Dalì’s titles, like The Lugubrious Game (1929) or Atmospheric Skull Sodomising a Grand Piano (1934), were worth as much as the paintings.

During World War II, Dalì and Gala took refuge in the U.S., returning to Spain only in 1955. As Dalì’s international fame continued to grow, the artist thirstily sought publicity, stating "My motto has always been, ‘Let them speak of Dalì, even if they speak well of him.’" Unfortunately, Gala’s constant demands for money caused Dalì to take on too many commissions, triggering deterioration in the quality and creativity of his work. During his return to Catholicism during the fifties and sixties, Dalì produced a series of large, classically influenced, religious and historical canvases. While these pieces sold well, art critics received the works less enthusiastically than Dalì’s surrealist works. In addition to painting, Dalì also began his kaleidoscopic output of drawings, poetry, a novel (Hidden Faces), an invention-filled autobiography (The Secret Life of Savador Dalì), book illustrations, and designs for jewelry, textiles, clothing, costumes, shop windows, and stage sets.

Beyond artistic endeavors, Dalì and his wife captured the public imagination through their increasingly decadent (and well-publicized) social life in New York, Paris, and several Spanish cities. They hosted surrealist balls that resembled performance art happenings, with food served in shoes, live animals as decorations, and bartenders with ties made of hair. Surrounded by a collection of hippies and freaks called the "Court of Miracles," Dalì and Gala also hosted "sexual cabarets" in European castles, populated by transvestites, young girls, and dwarfs. Gala, pushing seventy, topped off this excess by having an extended affair with a man who played Jesus Christ Superstar off-Broadway. Ultimately, Dalì and Gala’s need for more and more money to support their outrageous lifestyle led to "The Dalì Scandal" of the 70s. During these years, Dalì signed several contracts for the reproduction of paintings created many years prior. In addition, he put his name on many other articles besides paintings and prints, the most extreme example being a set of Tarot cards for which he signed over 17,500 copies. These actions ultimately prompted a revaluation during the 1980s of the many Dalì prints on the market.

In 1974, Dalì opened the Teatro Museo Dalì in Figueres. Retrospectives in Paris and London followed at the end of the seventies, paying tribute to Dalì’s life accomplishments as a painter. After Gala's death from heart failure in 1982, Dalì's slipped in and out of sanity and almost completely stopped eating. During the last years of his life, the artist lived in seclusion, receiving almost no visitors (exceptions were the King and Queen of Spain) and receiving medical help from private nurses. On January 23, 1989, Salvador Dalì died in a hospital in Figueres from heart failure and respiratory complications.

Madonna and Child (Madonna Conestabile)

 

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 1483-1520

 

Tempera on canvas (transferred from panel); 17.5 x 18 cm

 

In this early work, the Madonna Conestabile, named after a previous owner, Raphael represents the harmony and unity of Man and Nature with profound lyricism. Peace and contemplation - and hint of sadness - are reflected in the face of the young woman, and are perfectly in tune with the mood engendered by the transparent spring landscape. The flowing lines of the figures, echoing the round format of the painting, and the gentle painting style intensify the tender and delicate image of the young woman and the beauty of the world around.

Titian (1488/90 - 1576)

           

 Titian or Tiziano Vecellio was born in a small alpine village of Pieve di Cadore, now not far from the Austrian border, where his family lived for many years. His parents, Lucia and Gregorio di Conte dei Vecelli, were respectable people of modest means. In about 1498, at the age of nine or ten, Titian and his elder brother Francesco were sent to Venice to start their training as painters in the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato. Though soon Titian left his workshop  and began studying painting in the workshops of Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini. It is believed, that his earliest surviving work Pope Alexander VI Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to Saint Peter (1502-1512) was influenced by Giovanni Bellini. In 1507, Titian joined the workshop of Giorgione as his assistant and three years (until Giorgione's death in 1510), which he spent with this outstanding master, were a lasting influence on the young Titian to such a degree, that some works which are now thought to have been painted by Titian used to be attributed to Giorgione, and vice versa. One of them is Concert Champetre (c.1510-1511), which is still in some sources considered to be painted by Giorgione. Other works by Titian, which bear the Giorgione's influence are The Birth of Adonis (1505-1510), The Legend of Polydorus (1505-1510), St. Mark Enthroned with Saints (c.1510), The Concert (c.1510), Noli me tangere (1511-1512), Gypsy Madonna (c.1512) and even his masterpiece Sacred and Profane Love (1514).
            In 1510 Titian received his first important commission to produce some frescoes in the Scuola del Santo in Padua dedicated the life of St. Anthony of Padua. Since that time Titian began to win independent commissions and to establish himself as a painter in Venice. In 1513 he opened his own workshop, in which he employed two assistants, one of whom had worked for Giovanni Bellini. In 1516 Titian was commissioned to paint a new work for the high altar in the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, the Assumption of the Virgin (Assunta) (1516-1518), which was destined to become the milestone in the history of Venetian High Renaissance. This altarpiece made Titian the most celebrated painter in Venice. At the same time, it drew him to the attention of Bellini's old patrons in the northern Italian ruling houses. He was commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara Alfonso d'Este to produce three large mythological paintings The Worship of Venus (1518), Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1522) and Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-1525).
            In the following years Titian painted another monumental altarpieces Pesaro Altarpiece (1519-1526) and Madonna in Glory with the Christ Child and Saints Francis and Alvise with the Donor Alvise Gozzi (1520), which set a standard for the future. His another masterpiece of the time the Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr has been lost. In 1523 Titian first met Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, who became one of his clients. On Duke's commissions he painted Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga (1523-1529) and also some religious paintings, such as Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit (1530). Federico II Gonzaga also introduced Titian to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
            The 1520s - 1540s were the years when Titian created his best portraits. The best, which survived, are A Knight of Malta (c.1510-1515), Young Man with Cap and Gloves (c.1512-1515), Man with a Glove (c.1520-1522), Portrait of Tomaso or Vincenzo Mosti (c.1526), Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici (1533), La Bella (1536), Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (c.1536-1538), The Young Englishman (c.1540-1545), Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo (c.1540), Portrait of a Musician (c.1515 or c.1544-1546), Portrait of a Girl (Lavinia) (c.1545).
            In 1533 Titian was called to the court of Charles V, where he was appointed a court painter and made a Count Palatine and Knight of the Golden Spur. Titian painted several portraits of Charles V, such as  Portrait of Charles V (1533), Portrait of Emperor Charles V at Muhlberg (1548), Portrait of Emperor Charles V Seated (1548) and members of his family: Portrait of Isabella of Portugal (1548), Charles V's late wife, and his son Philip, the future Emperor,  Portrait of Philip II in Armor (c.1550-1551), Portrait of Philip II (c.1554).
            In 1538 Titian created another masterpiece Venus of Urbino (1538), one of the numerous paintings of a female nude depicting Titian's ideal of female beauty. Other famous Titian's women are Flora (c.1515-1520), Salome (c.1515), Venus Anadyomene (c.1520), Venus and Cupid with an Organist (c.1548), Danae with Nursemaid (1553-1554), Venus and Adonis (1553-1554),  Pardo Venus (Jupiter and Antiope) (1535-1540) and even St. Mary Magdalene (c.1530-1535).
            Titian created several commissions for the Pope Paul III from the Farnese family, among which Pope Paul III and His Grandsons Ottavio and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1545-1546), the picture was considered too revealing and was not finished.
            By the end of the 1550s, Titian had come to value the exploration of the color above all other aspects of art. His style and technique were evolving from the more precise contours, modeling and finish of the early portraits to a much bolder, freer style with more highly charged brushwork; he handled the paint increasingly broadly, creating an effect almost like  mosaic, with patches of color. It was noted of his late work (as it was later of the Impressionists) that while the painting did not cohere if seen close up, when seen from the "proper" distance it became brilliantly clear. For splendor of color, the climax was reached in some of Titian's late mythologies painted for Philip II: Diana and Callisto (1556-1559), Diana and Actaeon (1556-1559), The Rape of Europe (1562), Venus Blindfolding Cupid (c.1565). Among of his other late works the most notable are Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence (c.1565), Penitent St. Mary Magdalene (1565), Religion Succored by Spain (1572-1575), St. Sebastian (1575). Titian died on 27 August 1576, in his house in Biri Grande in Venice. He was buried in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari for which he created several of his best works.
        In very different ways, his art influenced painters such as Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Diego Velazquez, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, Eugene Delacroix, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, to name but a few.

Danae  1546/53, Oil on canvas; 120 x 187 cm

Danae – the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. The oracle warned Acrisius that he would be slain by his grandson. The king ordered Danae to be locked in her bedroom. Zeus found out about Danae and came to her as a golden rain. As a result of this love affair Perseus was born. Acrisius ordered his daughter and grandson be thrown into the sea in a wooden chest.

This fine painting is one of five by the artist on this subject from Greek mythology. According to myth, Danae was the daughter of the King of Argos, Acrisius. The Oracle predicted that Acrisius would be killed by his daughter's son, so he shut Danae up in a bronze tower, but Zeus, charmed by her beauty, entered the tower in the form of a golden shower and seduced her. Titian endowed the mythological heroine with the features of contemporary Venetian ladies. Her graceful nude body, vividly depicted, contrasts with that of the aged serving woman. Combining warm brown, golden, and pink colours with cool gray and blue tones, Titian manages to create an atmosphere of intimate warmth, sexuality, and joie de vivre.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez

 

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in 1599 in Seville, the first child of Juan Rodriguez de Silva and Jeronima Velázquez, members of the lesser nobility. Almost nothing is known about Diego’s siblings – five brothers and a sister. Velázquez seems to have started his apprenticeship with Francisco de Herrera the Elder (c.1590-1654), but a short while later (in 1611) his father put him with Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644), who was an artist of modest talent, but a tolerant teacher and a man of society. Francisco Pacheco had good contacts in the royal court and besides, intellectuals of the city, poets, scholars, and artists, liked to meet at his workshop to discuss the subjects of classical antiquity, Raphael, Michelangelo and above all Titian, as well as the theory of art. At this time, Velazquez became familiar with the school of Caravaggio.
            In 1617, Velázquez was accepted into the painters’ guild of St. Luke in Seville. Membership in this guild was necessary before he could start his own workshop, employ assistants, and receive commissions from churches and public institutions. The same year Velázquez married Juana, daughter of his teacher Pacheco. Within less than three years they had two daughters, of whom only one, Francisca, survived. The paintings executed by Velázquez in Seville before 1622 include bodegones (very popular genre of kitchen or tavern scenes, in which food and drink plays the main part) and his first portraits and religious compositions: Old Woman Frying Eggs, Three Men at Table, The Waterseller in Seville, Mother Jerónima de la Fuente, The Adoration of the Magi. In The Adoration of the Magi the main characters are thought to be portraits: the young king is a self-portrait of the artist, the kneeling king behind him – Pacheco, and Baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary – Pacheco’s daughter and Velázquez’ wife, Juana.
            In 1622, Velázquez visited Madrid for the first time to see its art treasures, and to make useful contacts; then he went to Toledo to see works by El Greco and other painters of that city, including Pedro de Orrente (1580-1645) and Juan Sanchez Cotan (1561-1627). In the spring of 1623, Velázquez was summoned to court by the powerful Prime Minister, Count-Duke of Olivares, and received his first commission for a portrait of Philip IV. The success of this picture brought the artist an appointment as court painter and the privilege of becoming the only artist permitted to paint the king in the future. In 1628, Peter Paul Rubens came to the court in Madrid on diplomatic business. Velázquez often visited him at work. Actually he was the only Spanish painter to be honored with these personal conversations. It was Rubens who persuaded Velázquez to go to Italy.
            During his first journey to Italy in 1629-30, Velázquez visited Genoa, Venice (where he saw the work of Titian, who effected him more strongly than any other artist), Florence, and Rome, where he stayed for almost a year. He copied old masters, but also painted large compositions of his own including The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob.
            In 1834-35, Velázquez was working on the decoration of the new palace of Buen Retino. One of his major works intended for this setting, together with several equestrian portraits, is The Surrender of Breda, part of a cycle of twelve battle pictures by different painters. The besieged fortress town of Breda in North Brabant surrendered to the Spanish general Spinola after a staunch resistance of 12 months. The victorious general had granted honorable terms to the captured garrison. The ceremony of the delivery of the keys is the subject of Velasquez’s painting.

   The work was soon popularly renamed The Lances, because of the verticals which seemed to express the peaceful halt of the army at the moment of surrender. It has been considered the best historical work in West European painting.
            In 1636, the king appointed his court painter “Assistant to the Wardrobe” (without the corresponding salary); in 1643 the king promoted Velázquez to the post of Chamberlain of his private chambers (although still without a regular salary), later he was made assistant to the superintendent of special building projects. In the next few years Velázquez’ art approached its peak in such pictures as Venus at her Mirror and The Fable of Arachne.
            During his second visit to Rome (1649-1651) Velázquez, among other pictures, painted the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X, which the pope himself declared to be ‘too truthful’. On his return to Madrid he was appointed Supreme court marshal, his obligations not connected with painting increased, but he was able now to enlarge his workshop, employing many assistants and pupils (none of whom, however, were of very great artistic merit).
            Velasquez’s career ended with his most significant work Las Meninas. The painting is a multiple portrait of the royal family and court. The principal figure with all the power of her mischievous charm, is the little Infanta Margarita, who has burst into Velasquez’s studio, followed by her ladies, dwarfs and dogs, in a flurry of skirts, cloaks and ribbons, while he was intent on painting the king and queen, whose only images are visible, reflected in the mirror hanging on the wall in the background, where two large mythological paintings, one by Rubens, the other by Jordaens, are also hanging.
            The great master died in the palace in Madrid on August 6, 1660.

Edgar Degas
(1834-1917)

 

     Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas was a French painter and sculptor whose innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of modern art in the late 19th century.

 

     Degas is usually classed with the impressionists, and he exhibited with them in seven of the eight impressionist exhibitions. However, his training in classical drafting and his dislike of painting directly from nature produced a style that represented a related alternative to impressionism.

Degas was born into a well-to-do banking family on July 19, 1834, in Paris. He studied at the Йcole des Beaux-Arts under a disciple of the famous French classicist J. A. D. Ingres, where Degas developed the great drawing ability that was to be a salient characteristic of his art. After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them. He was attracted by theatrical subjects, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafйs, music halls, or boudoirs. Degas was a keen observer of humanity—particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied—and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.

 

     His study of Japanese prints led him to experiment with unusual visual angles and asymmetrical compositions. His subjects often appear cropped at the edges, as in Ballet Rehearsal (1876, Glasgow Art Galleries and Museum). In Woman with Chrysanthemums (1865, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), the female subject of the picture is pushed into a corner of the canvas by the large central bouquet of flowers.

 

     In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in two new media that did not require intense visual acuity: sculpture and pastel. In his sculpture, as in his paintings, he attempted to catch the action of the moment, and his ballet dancers and female nudes are depicted in poses that make no attempt to conceal their subjects' physical exertions. His pastels are usually simple compositions containing only a few figures. He was obliged to depend on vibrant colors and meaningful gestures rather than on precise lines and careful detailing, but, in spite of such limitations, these works are eloquent and expressive and have a simple grandeur unsurpassed by any of his other works.

Degas was not well known to the public, and his true artistic stature did not become evident until after his death. He died in Paris on September 27, 1917.

 

Édouard Manet
(1832-1883)

 

Edouard Manet was a French painter whose work inspired the impressionist style, but who refused to so label his own work. His far-reaching influence on French painting and the general development of modern art was due to his portrayal of everyday subject matter; his use of broad, simple color areas; and a vivid, summary brush technique.

 

Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832, the son of a high government official. To avoid studying law, as his father wished, he went to sea. He then studied in Paris under the academic French painter Thomas Couture and visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands to study the paintings of the old masters. The Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Diego Velбzquez, and Francisco Jose de Goya were the principal influences on his art.

 

Manet began to paint genre (everyday) subjects, such as old beggars, street urchins, cafй characters, and Spanish bullfight scenes. He adopted a direct, bold brush technique in his treatment of realistic subject matter. In 1863 his famous Le dйjeuner sur l'herbe (Musйe d'Orsay, Paris) was shown at the Salon des Refusйs, a new exhibition place opened by Napoleon III following the protests of artists rejected at the official Salon. Manet's canvas, portraying a woodland picnic that included a seated female nude attended by two fully dressed young men, attracted immediate and wide attention, but was bitterly attacked by the critics. Hailed by young painters as their leader, Manet became the central figure in the dispute between the academic and rebellious art factions of his time. In 1864 the official Salon accepted two of his paintings, and in 1865 he exhibited his Olympia (1863, Musйe d'Orsay), a nude based on a Venus by Titian, which aroused storms of protest in academic circles because of its unorthodox realism.

 

In 1866 the French novelist Emile Zola, who championed the art of Manet in the newspaper Figaro, became a close friend of the painter. He was soon joined by the young group of French impressionist painters, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne, who were influenced by Manet's art and who, in turn, influenced him, particularly in the use of lighter colors and an emphasis on the effects of light. Manet served as an officer in the French army from 1870 to 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War. He did not gain recognition until late in life, when his portraits became much sought after. In 1882 one of his finest pictures, The Bar at the Folies-Bergиre (Courtauld Institute and Galleries, London), was exhibited at the Salon, and an old friend, who was then minister of fine arts, obtained the Legion of Honor for the artist. Manet died in Paris on April 30, 1883. He left, besides many watercolors and pastels, 420 oil paintings.

J. A. D. Ingres
(1780-1867)

 

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a French painter who was a leading figure in the neoclassical movement.

 

Ingres was born in Montauban on August 29, 1780, the son of an unsuccessful sculptor and painter. He entered the studio of the neoclassical painter Jacques Louis David in Paris in 1797 and won the Prix de Rome in 1801 for his painting The Ambassadors of Agamemnon (Йcole des Beaux-Arts, Paris). From 1806 to 1820 he painted in Rome, where he developed his extraordinary gifts for drawing and design. He was greatly influenced by the work of the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and his style has been described as doubly inspired by Raphael and David. While in Italy, Ingres made many pencil portraits that are distinguished for purity and economy of style. In 1820 he left Rome and went to Florence for four years.

 

On his return to Paris, Ingres won great acclaim with The Vow of Louis XIII (1820), commissioned for the Cathedral of Montauban and exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1824. He became the recognized leader of the neoclassical school that opposed the new romantic movement led by Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault. During this period Ingres painted The Apotheosis of Homer (1827) for a ceiling in the Louvre in Paris. Angered by the poor reception given his Martyrdom of Saint Symphonrian (1834, Autun Cathedral), he left Paris to accept the directorship of the French Academy at Rome in 1834. At the end of his seven-year term as director he returned again to Paris and was welcomed as one of the most celebrated painters in France. His position both as a painter and as the official academic spokesman against the romanticists was established, and he was given the rank of commander of the Legion of Honor in 1845. In the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1855 both he and Delacroix, his chief rival in art, were awarded gold medals. Ingres died in Paris on January 14, 1867.

 

Ingres's strengths—superb draftsmanship, keen sensitivity for personality, and precise neoclassical linear style—were perfectly suited to portraiture. Mme. Moitessier (1851, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and La Comtesse d'Haussonville (1845, Frick Collection, New York City) are outstanding examples, and M. Bertin (1832, Musée du Louvre) is considered one of the finest portraits of the 19th century. Ingres continued to paint vigorously in his old age, producing in his 82nd year his famous Turkish Women at the Bath (1863, Musée du Louvre), the culmination of his superb depictions of female nudes. Ingres's influence on art to the present day has been immense; among important later painters who acknowledged deriving inspiration from his style are Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

 

The Top Ten Most Expensive Paintings of all Time

 

   How much does it cost to get the materials to make an oil painting? What, a couple hundred dollars at most? You've got canvas, a stretcher-frame, brushes, lots of blobs of paint from little tubes, a few quarts of whiskey, and let's say six packs of smokes. But somehow, over time (and one can't help thinking of the "The Emperor's New Clothes" here), these seemingly low cost items, taken together, grow and grow and grow in value, until people are eventually barking out million dollar figures at Sotheby's for the privilege of hanging these materials on their walls. And these people are fully aware of the existence of both liquor and art supply stores. So there must be something there that these people are seeing. Something that makes a painting more than just its composite materials. Is it the age-old wonder of catching lightning in a bottle, that frozen instant where genius casts its light in an ephemeral medium and is captured there for all to see? No, we didn't think you'd go for that. But whether it's a case of a bunch of rich people trying to out-do each other, or truth and beauty captured in colored oils, people have paid unbelievable amounts of money for these things, as you'll see in our list of . . . The Top Ten Most Expensive Paintings of all Time! By the way, these are all accurate as of February 28, 2000.

 

Self-Portrait: Yo Picasso

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Price tag: $43,500,000
Purchased: Sotheby's, New York (May 9th, 1989)

Yup, that's Picasso as in Pablo. You might have heard of him - bald little guy, lot's of mistresses? Anyway, remember the name, you'll be seeing a lot more of it before we're through.

This self-portrait was painted in 1901, around the same time as his good friend Casagemas' suicide, which led to his famous blue period, in which he had his handlers give him only the blue Smarties, and discard all the other colors. No, wait, that was the lead guitarist for Motley Crüe.

Pablo, on the other hand, just got kinda sad for awhile and used the color blue a lot, and 88 years later, someone at Sotheby's moved their pinky finger at the wrong time, and BAM! $43+ million out of pocket.

By the way, the title of this painting is not the artist doing his Rocky Balboa impression; "Yo" means "I" in Spanish, so the title in English is "I Picasso." Personally, however, we here at SoYouWanna.com have never picassoed, at least not in public.

 

Nude in a Black Armchair

 

Artist: Picasso
Price tag: $45,102,500
Purchased: Christie's, New York (November 9th, 1999)

Nude in a Black Armchair (Nu au fauteil noir) is from a series of portraits Picasso painted of one of his many mistresses (busy guy), Marie-Therese Walter. Looking at the painting, though, her own mother wouldn't recognize her, so he probably just told his wife that it was a tree. Supposedly, the woman is seated with her arms folded over her head in a suggestive pose, but as Pablo's art therapist may have said at the time, this guy is a few sandwiches short of a full picnic basket. And that's why his paintings are worth so much money today.

In another instance of crazy rich people rushing about trying to spend the most money, the day after this one sold, number 7 on our list was purchased for even more ridiculous amounts of cash. Always back to back, like lemmings. Rich monkey see, rich monkey do.

 

Le rêve

Artist: Picasso
Price tag:$48,402,500
Purchased: Christie's, New York (November 10th, 1997)

There were two versions of "The Dream," which showed a bunch of curvy lines and semi-recognizable shapes making up a woman whose head is lolling to one side as she dreams a lovely dream. This one was painted in 1932, and there are rumors and unconfirmed reports floating around that maybe, possibly, by a small stretch of the imagination, it might have been one of his mistresses. Just maybe.

   Cubism was one of those great jokes on the world, a way for artists to mess around with different shapes and have fun, and then see what people say about the whole thing. Don't you just love the formality of his anti-form? The way it breaks down any structural imposition or classicism? Isn't it wonderfully unrecognizable as any freakin' thing seen by human eyes? There are 48,402,500 good reasons to paint in the Cubist style, but unfortunately, we only thought of them after the artist had died.

 

Irises

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh
Price tag: $49,000,000
Purchased: Sotheby's, New York (November 11th, 1987)

Get used to seeing this guy's name, too. Not to reveal too much prematurely, but Van Gogh has got three of the top ten most expensive paintings on our list. And he couldn't give his work away when he was alive. Don't you just love irony?

Irises is one of a series of paintings of the same subject, with which he was mildly obsessed. But this was par for the course for Vincent, who did nothing but obsess.

 

Woman Seated in a Garden

 

Artist: Picasso
Price tag: $49,500,000
Purchased: Sotheby's, New York (November 10th, 1999)

The woman seated in the garden was actually the artist's mistress from the pre-war period, Dora Maar. The painting's subject is, as usual, barely recognizable as a woman, let alone a garden, and was it apparently painted entirely in one day. Which might explain a few things. Maybe the paintings are so rough and child-like because Pablo was always in such a rush. With his many mistresses, it's a wonder he had any time to paint at all.

Not that the price for his paintings suffered as a result. Think of the hourly rate! Let's say 16 hours tops to paint the thing, and a selling price of $49.5 mill . . . that's over $3,000,000 an hour! And there wasn't even an artist's union at the time. But it was actually the fine people at Sotheby's who raked in a good-sized chunk of the dough on this one, and they never so much as painted a wall.

 

Les Noces de Pierrette

 

Artist: Picasso
Price tag: $51,671,920
Purchased - Binoche et Godeau, Paris (November 30th, 1989)

OK, OK, we're getting a little tired of seeing this name on the list, too. Yes, five of the top ten paintings were painted by Pablo. At least Picasso was able to make a little money off his fame when he was still alive, unlike Van Gogh, who instead enjoyed the fruits of insanity, poverty, and tinitis. The most expensive of the Picassos, "The Marriage of Pierrette" was painted in 1905. This is one of his early works from a period of impoverishment in his life. Paintings from this period generally sell for more than the later works, which are more difficult, more cubist, and more downright unrecognizable. This painting was bought by a Japanese businessman, back when Japan still had an economy. We assume that he did not threaten to set it ablaze upon his death, as one of his compatriots may have done with an even pricier slab of canvas.

 

Still Life with Curtain, Pitcher, and Bowl of Fruit

 

Artist: Paul Cezanne
Price tag: $60,500,000
Purchased: Sotheby's, New York (May 10th, 1999)

As you might expect from the title, this is a painting of a spatula and a shaved goat. Just kidding. Could this guy be any more prosaic? Cezanne, often called the father of modern painting, was a French artist working in the Impressionist period, but he is known as a "Post-Impressionist" for his unconventional and influential style. Anyway, the bunch of fruit and stuff he happened to have lying around is the most recent purchase of the top ten most overpriced paintings in the world. It was purchased anonymously, which is no surprise. We'd be embarrassed, too.

 

Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe

 

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh
Price tag: $71,500,000

Purchased: Christie's, New York (November 19th, 1998)

As the title says, this is literally a picture of Vinnie without a beard. Van Gogh painted it for his mother the year before he died, and it was one of his last paintings (as well as his last self-portrait). Vincent decided to clean himself up a bit, not look so scruffy, and have both ears intact for this self-portrait for Mom.  That same year Vincent wrote to his brother in a little-known letter: "Dear Theo, please send more money. There just aren't enough Japanese real-estate tycoons in Europe right now, so nobody is buying my paintings. Also, Gaugin is being a pig about the rent, and I'm hearing this ringing sound all the time. Do you hear it?"  So it was clearly the beginning of the end for Vincent, and his paintings of this time are consequently considered to be his best. (You know the old adage: the crazier the artist, the better the work.)

 

Au Moulin de la Galette

 

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Price tag: $78,100,000
Purchased: Sotheby's, New York (May 17th, 1990)

This painting was purchased by Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito, who two days earlier had paid the highest price ever for a painting (we can't tell you what it is just yet - you'll have to wait).
An ambitious showpiece of a painting, Au Moulin de la Galette exhibits an air of courtship, fun, and frivolity. Portraying two girls dancing, and painted in a style typical of Renoir's early period of Impressionism, the work was exhibited in the third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877. Despite the dappled light and diffused look of the Impressionistic style, there is a classical stability in the composition. This aspect of Renoir's work would come out more and more as he abandoned impressionism in his later paintings. One last cool thing: most of the people in the painting are Renoir's friends. Although the artist himself thought that Au Moulin de la Galette wasn't among his best work, the modern day (crazed and filthy rich) art consumer apparently feels otherwise.

 

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

 

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh
Price tag: $82,500,000
Purchased: Christie's, New York (May 15th, 1990)

As you've probably gathered, old Vince was, like many great artists, just a tad loony. During one of his frequent stays in the nuthouse, he painted this touching picture of his doctor looking completely exhausted, presumably from chasing Vinnie around with a syringe.

Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito (who paid a mere $78.1 million for a Renoir two days later) claims the title for shelling out the most insane amount of money ever for a work of art. Mr. Saito himself could probably have benefited from some time under the care of the good Dr. Gachet. Right after purchasing this painting, he threatened to have it burned when he died, to prevent his heirs from having to pay a huge inheritance tax. He died six years later, and no one has seen Portrait of Dr. Gachet since.

So the question remains: did 80-plus million bucks worth of canvas and oil, slapped together by a lunatic, go up in smoke at the hands of another lunatic? Or was the painting simply sold to an "anonymous party?" We may never know.