TAJCH

Alexander, who lived in Paris during the 1890s, achieved international success with his studies of female figures gracefully posed in elegant interiors. In this example, the provocative facial expression and supple curves reflect the contemporary French taste for sensual images of women as well as the undulating linear rhythms of Art Nouveau. With its model decoratively attired in a sweep of white fabric, "Repose" was lampooned in a French magazine as a portrayal of Loïe Fuller (1862–1928), the American dancer famous for manipulating swirling folds of silk in her performances at the Folies Bergère in Paris.

Look real close at this one to see how wonderful it is 

As Georges Seurat’s most ardent follower, Paul Signac steadfastly promoted the principles of Neo- Impressionism all his life. Adopting Seurat’s system of color harmony, Signac argued for the meticulous application of precise hues in separate strokes of paint across the canvas, a technique he said evoked “brilliantly colored lights.” This painting is one of five related images of fishing boats near the French town of Concarneau, in Brittany. Signac endowed his Concarneau paintings with musical sub-titles, suggesting a symphonic arrangement.

Madrazo was famous during his lifetime and painted portraits for wealthy French, American, British, and Argentine patrons. He was also known for his skillful and often flirtatious genre scenes, such as this painting in the Lehman Collection. In this scene, a couple dressed in extravagant costumes share drinks in a quiet conservatory after a ball. The male leans across the table, gazing at the coquettish blonde female whose face is hidden behind a black mask. She drapes her fingers across her chest, one of many gestures and details in the painting that Madrazo uses to evoke a playfully suggestive subject. The artist further entices the viewer with his beautiful painterly effects seen in the way that he conveys extraordinary material—satin, fur, porcelain, glass, feather, and velvet, all bathed in light. William Henry Vanderbilt bought this painting in 1878, the same year that Madrazo won the first-class medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and was elected to the French Academy. This painting probably showed at the exposition in this year.

Granet conceived this subject during Napoleon's occupation of Rome, at which time the Capuchin order had been banished from its seventeenth-century church near piazza Barberini. Despite French policy, the painting was purchased by the Emperor's sister Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, for their brother Louis Bonaparte. He had seen it in Granet’s studio, where it created a sensation at the end of 1814, prompting Pope Pius VII to grant the artist an audience. This is the first version of a composition that Granet painted, by his own count, at least fifteen times.

They failed to mention that Degas was a pedophile who preyed on the prepubescent girls that were usually orphans and taken in by dance schools to become ballerinas or performers. They had little to no guidance and Degas took advantage of these vulnerable young girls. 

This light-filled conservatory belonged to the prosperous Berlin wool merchant Christian Carl Westphal, a passionate horticulturist. The stark glass structure here serves as a Biedermeier day-room for his family. Gaertner was the preeminent painter of Berlin’s grand new boulevards, but this is one of only four interior scenes he is known to have painted; it may have been owned by Westfal, who was his landlord.

The indolent, cloistered lives of prostitutes were the subject of some of Lautrec’s most powerful works. He made about fifty paintings depicting them, as well as numerous drawings and prints, including a suite of color lithographs, Elles, which was completed the year before this painting. Lautrec does not flatter the woman’s naked figure, nor does he divulge the expression she sees in her mirror: she appears simply to be taking a stark appraisal of herself.

The theme of a child’s first steps was a popular subject of genre paintings in the uncertain years following the French Revolution, owing largely to its reassuring message of continuity. Catel, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, would also have been familiar with the related allegory of the Ages of Man, the subject of a major Salon painting by François Gérard (1808; Musée Condé, Chantilly). The present work shares the Italian setting of Gérard’s but updates its antique dress by depicting a contemporary peasant family.

During summer and fall 1891 Monet painted a series of views of poplars along the Epte River, at Giverny. Completion of the series was temporarily threatened when the village of Limetz, across the Epte from Giverny, decided to sell the trees at auction. Monet paid a local lumber merchant to ensure that the trees remained standing until he finished his work. He painted some of the pictures from the riverbank, and others, such as this one, from a boat specially outfitted with grooves to hold multiple canvases. Like the Haystacks, the Poplars were first exhibited as a series. Fifteen were shown in Paris in 1892.

Diday focused his attention on transitions of light and shadow in this arched passage, which was depicted by a number of artists in the early nineteenth century. The painter is said to have exhibited many studies executed in Italy following his sojourn of 1824–25. The present example may have been included in an exhibition held at Galerie Lebrun, Paris, in 1826, the year after it was painted.

Accession Number: 52.118

The important buildings in the palace complex of Amenhotep III at Malqata were embellished with floor, wall, and ceiling paintings. This partially restored section of a ceiling painting was discovered lying face up in a room adjacent to the king's bedchamber. The motif consists of a repeating pattern of rosette-filled running spirals alternating with bucrania (ox skulls). Similar ceiling patterns, both painted and modeled in plaster, have been excavated at Aegean sites of a slightly earlier period.

I would personally like to add that Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter when she was 17 and he was 45. They had a sexual relationship, and had children together. He was a pedophile and an abuser. This painting should not be looked at as a “painting with a sense of tender intimacy” but rather a metaphor for Picasso’s twisted desires.