Academic paintings and traditional representations of the nude in 19th century France put woman on display for the pleasure of a spectator presumed to be male. The European artistic tradition was subject to conventions calculated to flatter the male viewer and to stimulate his fantasy of sexual domination. Nudes were depicted in allegorical form as mythological figures who flaunted an unnatural lack of pubic hair or any element that identified them as individual women and erased any potentially threatening signs of woman's desiring subjectivity.
T.J Clark’s analysis of acadmeic paintings of the nude by painters such as Alexandre Cabanel, William bouguereau, Felix-Henry Giacomotti, and Paul Baudry shows that the genre, as it is defined in the above terms, was in disarray. Although presented in allegorical form and lacking those elements which define them as sexual beings, the women in these paintings seem to collaboarte a little too eagerly with the male gaze, as if “they were actively soliciting it and desireing its sexual consequence.” (Bernhemimer, Figures of Ill Repute, 104) The critic J.A Castagnary wondered saracastically about the woman lolling on some rocks in Baudry’s The Pearl and the Wave (1863) if she might not be “a Parisian modiste.. lying in wait for a millionaire gone atray in this wild spot.” (Clark, PML, 295)
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR: "Le déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the boating party)", 1880-81 - oil on canvas, 129.5 × 172.7 cm - Washington, Phillips Collection
The light is the main protagonist of this famous painting, in wich Renoir has depicted a group of his friends relaxing on a balcony along the Seine river (among them, another famous Impressionist painter, Gustave Caillebotte, who can be seen in the lower right of the canvas).
This masterwork has been described as “the most beautiful painting of the 19th century”. The painting depicts one of the numerous dances that took place in the Moulin de la Galette, one of the most frequented clubs in 19th century Montmartre, a paradise for bohemians and artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh or Renoir himself. One of the supreme masterworks from early Impressionism.
CLAUDE MONET – “Le gare Saint Lazare (Saint Lazare Station)”, 1877 – oil on canvas, 75-100 cm. - Paris, Musée d'Orsay
"It's a pictorical symphony", observed the magazineL'homme libre when this painting was exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877, one of the few positive critics to a painting in that show. "Monet likes this station, and he has already depicted it with less success. This time it is really wonderful. He has painted not only the movement, the colour and the activity, but also the noise. It's unforgettable".
CLAUDE MONET – "Impression, sunrise" (1873) - Paris, Musée Marmottan
“Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape", said of this canvas Louis Leroy, an Art critic, when the painted was exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1877. And this is just an example of how most of the critics of the time reacted to this painting, and, by extension, to the whole Impressionist movement (a movement that in fact owes its name to this painting) It is not surprising, then, that nobody offered 1,000 francs, the asking price for this painting.
EDGAR DEGAS: “L'absinthe (absinthe drinkers)", 1876 - oil on canvas, 92-68 cm. - Musée d’Orsay, Paris
"What a slut!", George Moore commented about the woman in this painting, adding that "the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson", and also that "no one has said so much in so little space, and no one has expressed in such a simple way (...) thanks to the science of the drawing, invisible but omnipresent, almost impersonal". The sad and melancholic "Absinthe drinkers" appears to have influenced works of later artists, such as Picasso's interiors from the Blue Period, or Edward Hopper's urban scenes.
This is the smallest of the three versions of this subject painted by Paul Cézanne, but it is quite probable that it was also the last of them, and the most elaborated. While the composition is really simple (two players facing each other, with a black bottle silently dividing the composition in two parts) the fabulous psychological intensity in the faces of the players make this painting a masterpiece of post-impressionist art.
GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE: "Paris Street, rainy day"1877 - oil on canvas, 212.2 - 276.2 cm. - Paris, Musée d'Orsay
This is Caillebotte's most famous and ambitious painting, exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition at the Rue Le Peletier, where it was not well accepted by the critic. L'Évenement wrote about this painting: "the drawing is of good quality, but Caillebotte has forgotten to include the rain". Regardless, this is considered one of the best representations of 19th century Paris ever painted.
GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE: "Les raboteurs (The floor scrapers)", 1876 - oil on canvas, 102 - 146.5 cm. - Paris, Musée d'Orsay
The vertiginous perspective and the almost photographic focus are characteristic of Caillebotte's first works. This work exemplifies as no other the stupor that Caillebotte could cause between the assistants to the first impressionist exhibitions. Zola, who really appreciated Caillebotte, described it like "an antiartistic, clean painting, frost and bourgeois, by force of exactitude."
