French nude paintings, early 20th century. A Brief History of French Art

These are more than pretty pictures, they are a reflection of reality. In the works of great artists you can see how the world and the consciousness of people changed.

Art is also an attempt to create an alternative reality where you can hide from the horrors of your time, or a desire to change the world. The art of the 20th century rightfully occupies a special place in history. The people who lived and worked in those times experienced social upheavals, wars, and unprecedented developments in science; and all this found its mark on their canvases. 20th century artists took part in creating the modern vision of the world.

Some names are still pronounced with aspiration, while others are unfairly forgotten. Someone had such a controversial creative path that we still cannot give him an unambiguous assessment. This review is dedicated to the 20 greatest artists of the 20th century. Camille Pizarro- French painter. An outstanding representative of impressionism. The artist’s work was influenced by John Constable, Camille Corot, Jean Francois Millet.
Born July 10, 1830 in St. Thomas, died November 13, 1903 in Paris.

Hermitage at Pontoise, 1868

Opera passage in Paris, 1898

Sunset at Varengeville, 1899

Absinthe, 1876

Star, 1877

Woman combing her hair, 1885

Gamblers, 1893

Modern Olympia, 1873

Still life with skulls, 1900

Welk Cliff at Pourville, 1882

After Lunch, 1873-1876

Etretat, sunset, 1883

"Volga", 1890-1895

"North", 1879

"View of the Kremlin from Zamoskvorechye", 1882

Pont des Arts in Paris, 1867

Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, 1876

Jeanne Samary, 1877

Breton landscape, 1894

Breton village in snow, 1888

Are you jealous? 1892

Saints' Day, 1894

Couple riding on horseback, 1918

A colorful life, 1907

Moscow 1, 1916

In grey, 1919

Square in Saint-Tropez, 1904

Outline of Notre Dame at night, 1902

Woman with a Hat, 1905

Dance, 1909

Italian, 1919

Portrait of Delectorskaya, 1934

Overseas guests, 1901

The Great Spirit of the Himalayas, 1923

Message from Shambhala, 1933

“1918 in Petrograd”, 1920

"Boys at Play", 1911

Bathing the Red Horse, 1912

Portrait of Anna Akhmatova

Rest (Society in Top Hat), 1908

"Peasant women with buckets", 1912-1913

Black Suprematist Square, 1915

Suprematist painting, 1916

On the boulevard, 1903

Girl on a ball, 1905

Portrait of Ambroise Vallors, 1910

Three Graces

Portrait of Olga

Dance, 1919

Woman with a flower, 1930

Cellist, 1909

The couple, 1917

Joan Hebuterne, 1918

Mediterranean landscape, 1918

Notre Dame de Paris in the rain, 1909

Woman at the Well, 1913

Union of Peasants and Workers, 1924

Detroit Industry, 1932

Anyuta (Portrait of a Sister), 1910

Bride with a Fan, 1911

Me and the Village, 1911

Adam and Eve, 1912

Untitled

Number 7 or 11

Orange and yellow

Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1946

Last Supper, 1955

Woman with a Head of Roses, 1935

My wife Gala, naked, looking at her body, 1945

Embrace of Universal Love, Earth, Me, Diego and Coatl, 1949

Moses (Core of Creation), 1945

Two Fridas, 1939

Great foreign artists

Foreign artists

Lorenzetti’s paintings harmoniously combined the traditions of Siena painting with its lyricism and the generality of forms and promising spatial construction characteristic of Giotto’s art. Although the artist uses religious and allegorical subjects, the features of contemporary life clearly appear in his paintings. The conventional landscape, characteristic of the paintings of the masters of the 14th century, is replaced by Lorenzetti with recognizable Tuscan landscapes. He paints very realistically vineyards, fields, lakes, sea harbors surrounded by inaccessible cliffs.

Eyck Van
Country: Netherlands

The city of Maaseik is considered the homeland of the Van Eyck brothers. Little information has been preserved about his older brother Hubert. It is known that it was he who began work on the famous Ghent Altar in the Church of St. Bavo in Ghent. Probably, the compositional design of the altar belonged to him. Judging by the surviving archaic parts of the altar - "Worship of the Lamb", figures of God the Father, Mary and John the Baptist, - Hubert can be called a master of the transition period. His works had many similarities with the traditions of late Gothic (abstract and mystical interpretation of the theme, conventionality in the transfer of space, little expressed interest in the image of man).

Foreign artists

Albrecht Durer, the great German artist, the largest representative of Renaissance culture in Germany. Born in Nuremberg in the family of a goldsmith, a native of Hungary. Initially he studied with his father, then with the Nuremberg painter M. Wolgemut (1486-89). During his years of study and during his wanderings in Southern Germany (1490-94), during a trip to Venice (1494-95), he absorbed the heritage of the 15th century, but nature became his main teacher.

Bosch Hieronymus
(1450-1516)
Country: Germany

Bosch Hieronymus, the great Dutch painter. Born in Herzogenbosch. His grandfather, grandfather's brother and all five uncles were artists. In 1478, Bosch married a wealthy patrician Aleid van Merwerme, whose family belonged to the highest aristocracy. There were no children from this marriage, and it was not particularly happy. Nevertheless, he brought material prosperity to the artist, and, not yet becoming quite famous, Bosch could afford to paint the way he wanted.

Botticelli Sandro
(1445-1510)
Country: Italy

Real name - Alessandro da Mariano di Vanni di Amedeo Filipepi, great Italian painter of the Renaissance. Born in Florence into a tanner's family. Initially, he was apprenticed to a certain Botticelli, a goldsmith, from whom Alessandro Filipepi received his surname. But the desire for painting forced him in 1459-65 to study with the famous Florentine artist Fra Philippe Lippi. Early works Botticelli ( "Adoration of the Magi", "Judith and Holofernes" and especially the Madonna - "Madonna Corsini", "Madonna with a Rose", "Madonna with Two Angels") were written under the influence of the latter.

Verrocchio Andrea
(1435-1488)
Country: Italy

Real name - Andrea di Michele di Francesco Cioni, an outstanding Italian sculptor. Born in Florence. He was a famous sculptor, painter, draftsman, architect, jeweler, and musician. In each genre he established himself as a master innovator, not repeating what his predecessors did.

Carpaccio Vittore
(c. 1455 / 1465 - c. 1526)
Country: Italy

Carpaccio Vittore (c. 1455 / 1465 - c. 1526) - Italian painter. Born in Venice. Studied with Gentile Bellini, experienced strong impact Giovanni Bellini and partly Giorgione. Watching events closely modern life, this artist knew how to imbue his religious compositions with a lively narrative and many genre details. In fact, he created an encyclopedia of the life and customs of Venice in the 15th century. They say about Carpaccio that this master is “still at home in Venice.” And even the very idea of ​​Venice is inseparably linked with the memory of the greenish paintings of the brilliant draftsman and colorist, as if visible through sea water.

Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 - 1519)
Country: Italy

One of the greatest Italian Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci was also an outstanding scientist, thinker and engineer. All his life he observed and studied nature - the heavenly bodies and the laws of their movement, mountains and the secrets of their origin, water and winds, the light of the sun and the life of plants. Leonardo also considered man as part of nature, whose body is subject to physical laws and at the same time serves as a “mirror of the soul.” He showed his inquisitive, active, restless love for nature in everything. It was she who helped him discover the laws of nature, to put its forces at the service of man, it was she who made Leonardo the greatest artist, who with equal attention captured a blossoming flower, an expressive gesture of a person and a foggy haze covering distant mountains.

Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1475 - 1564)
Country: Italy

“No man has yet been born who, like me, would be so inclined to love people,” the great Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo wrote about himself. He created brilliant, titanic works and dreamed of creating even more significant ones. Once, when the artist was at the marble mining in Carrara, he decided to carve a statue from an entire mountain.

Rafael Santi
(1483 - 1520)
Country: Italy

Raphael Santi, the great Italian High Renaissance painter and architect. Born in Urbino in the family of G. Santi, the court artist and poet of the Duke of Urbino. He received his first painting lessons from his father. When he died, Raphael moved to T. Viti's studio. In 1500 he moved to Perugio and entered Perugino's workshop, first as an apprentice and then as an assistant. Here he learned the best features of the style of the Umbrian school of Painting: the desire for an expressive interpretation of the subject and the nobility of forms. Soon he brought his skill to the point where it became impossible to distinguish a copy from the original.

Titian Vecellio
(1488- 1576)
Country: Italy

Born in Pieve di Cadoro, a small town on the border of the Venetian possessions in the Alps. He came from the Vecelli family, very influential in the town. During the war between Venice and Emperor Maximilian, the artist’s father rendered great services to the Republic of St. Mark.

Foreign artists

Rubens Peter Paul, the great Flemish painter. “The King of Painters and the Painter of Kings” was called by the contemporaries of the Fleming Rubens. In one of the most beautiful corners Antwerp still houses "Rubens-Hughes" - the artist's house, built according to his own design, and workshop. About three thousand paintings and many wonderful drawings came from here.

Goyen Jan van
(1596-1656)
Country: Holland

Goyen Jan van is a Dutch painter. His passion for painting manifested itself very early. At the age of ten, Goyen began to study drawing with the Leiden artists I. Swanenburg and K. Schilperort. The father wanted his son to become a glass painter, but Goyen himself dreamed of being a landscape painter, and he was assigned to study with the mediocre landscape artist Willem Gerrits in the city of Goorn.

Segers Hercules
(1589/1590 - ca. 1638)
Country: Holland

Seghers Hercules - Dutch artist-landscape painter, graphic artist. He studied in Amsterdam with G. van Koninksloo. From 1612 to 1629 he lived in Amsterdam, where he was accepted into the guild of artists. Visited Flanders (c. 1629-1630). From 1631 he lived and worked in Utrecht, and from 1633 - in The Hague.

Frans Hals
(c. 1580-1666)
Country: Holland

The decisive role in the formation of national art at the early stage of development of the Dutch art school was played by the work of Frans Hals, its first great master. He was almost exclusively a portrait painter, but his art meant a lot not only to Dutch portraiture, but also to the formation of other genres. In Hals’s work, three types of portrait compositions can be distinguished: a group portrait, a commissioned individual portrait, and a special type of portrait images, similar in nature to genre painting, which he cultivated mainly in the 20s and early 30s.

Velazquez Diego de Silva
(1559-1660)
Country: Spain

Born in Seville, one of the largest artistic centers in Spain at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. The artist's father came from a Portuguese family that moved to Andalusia. He wanted his son to become a lawyer or a writer, but did not stop Velazquez from painting. His first teacher was Fr. Herrera Sr., and then F. Pacheco. Pacheco's daughter became Velazquez's wife. In Pacheco's workshop, Velazquez was busy painting heads from life. At the age of seventeen, Velazquez received the title of master. The career of the young painter was successful.

Country: Spain

El Greco
(1541-1614)
Country: Spain

El Greco, real name - Domenico Theotokopouli, great Spanish painter. Born into a poor but enlightened family in Candia on Crete. Crete at that time was the possession of Venice. He studied, in all likelihood, with local icon painters who still preserved the traditions of medieval Byzantine art. Around 1566 he moved to Venice, where he entered Titian's workshop.

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi
(1573-1610)
Country: Italy

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi, an outstanding Italian painter. The emergence and flourishing of the realistic movement in Italian painting of the late 16th and early 17th centuries is associated with the name of Caravaggio. The work of this remarkable master played a huge role in the artistic life of not only Italy, but also other European countries. The art of Caravaggio attracts us greatly artistic expression, deep truthfulness and humanism.

Carracci
Country: Italy

Carracci, a family of Italian painters from Bologna at the beginning of the 17th century, the founders of academicism in European painting. At the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries in Italy, as a reaction to mannerism, an academic movement in painting took shape. Its basic principles were laid down by the Carracci brothers - Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609).

Bruegel Pieter the Elder
(between 1525 and 1530-1569)
Country: Netherlands

Anyone who has read Charles de Coster’s wonderful novel “The Legend of Till Eulenspiegel” knows that the entire people took part in the Dutch revolution, in the struggle against the Spaniards for their independence, a cruel and merciless struggle. Just like Eulenspiegel, the largest Dutch artist, draftsman and engraver, one of the founders of realistic Dutch and Flemish art, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was a witness and participant in these events.

Van Dyck Anthonys
(1599- 1641)
Country: Netherlands

Van Dyck Antonis, an outstanding Flemish painter. Born in Antwerp into the family of a wealthy businessman. Initially he studied with the Antwerp painter Hendrik van Balen. In 1618 he entered Rubens' workshop. I started my work by copying his paintings. And soon he became Rubens’s main assistant in carrying out large orders. Received the title of master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp (1618).

Poussin Nicolas
(1594-1665)
Country: France

Poussin Nicolas (1594-1665), an outstanding French painter, a leading representative of classicism. Born in the village of Andely in Normandy in the family of a small landowner. Initially he studied in his homeland with the little-known, but quite talented and competent wandering artist K. Varen. In 1612, Poussin went to Paris, and there J. Aallemant became his teacher. In Paris he became friends with the Italian poet Marine.

XVII (17th century)

Foreign artists

Cape Albert Gerrits is a Dutch painter and etcher.

He studied with his father, the artist J. Cuyp. His artistic style was formed under the influence of the paintings of J. van Goyen and S. van Ruisdael. Worked in Dordrecht. Cuyp's early works, close to the paintings of J. van Goyen, are monochrome. He paints hilly landscapes, country roads running into the distance, poor peasant huts. The paintings are most often made in a single yellowish tonality.

Ruisdael Jacob van
(1628/1629-1682)
Country: Holland

Ruisdael Jacob van (1628/1629-1682) - Dutch landscape painter, draftsman, etcher. He probably studied with his uncle, the artist Salomon van Ruisdael. Visited Germany (1640-1650s). He lived and worked in Haarlem, and in 1648 he became a member of the guild of painters. From 1656 he lived in Amsterdam, in 1676 he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the Treasury and was included in the list of Amsterdam doctors.

Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn
(1606-1669)
Country: Holland

Born in Leiden into a miller's family. The father's affairs went well during this period, and he was able to give his son a better education than other children. Rembrandt entered the Latin School. I studied poorly and wanted to take up painting. Nevertheless, he finished school and entered Leiden University. A year later I started taking painting lessons. His first teacher was J. van Swanenburg. After staying in his workshop for more than three years, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam to visit the historical painter P. Lastman. He provided strong influence on Rembrandt and taught him the art of engraving. Six months later (1623) Rembrandt returned to Leiden and opened his own workshop.

Terborch Gerard
(1617-1681)
Country: Holland

Terborch Gerard (1617-1681), famous Dutch painter. Born in Zwolle into a wealthy burgher family. His father, brother and sister were artists. Terborch's first teachers were his father and Hendrik Averkamp. His father forced him to copy a lot. He created his first work at the age of nine. At the age of fifteen, Terborch went to Amsterdam, then to Haarlem, where he came under the strong influence of Fr. Khalsa. Already at this time he was known as a master of the everyday genre, most willingly painting scenes from the life of military men - the so-called “guardhouses”.

Canalletto (Canale) Giovanni Antonio
(1697-1768)
Country: Italy

Canaletto's first teacher was his father, theater decorator B. Canale, whom he helped design performances in the theaters of Venice. He worked in Rome (1717-1720, early 1740s), Venice (from 1723), London (1746-1750, 1751-1756), where he performed works that formed the basis of his work. He painted vedotas - city landscapes, depicted streets, buildings, canals, boats gliding on the sea waves.

Magnasco Alessandro
(1667-1749)
Country: Italy

Magnasco Alessandro (1667-1749) - Italian painter, genre painter and landscape painter. He studied with his father, the artist S. Magnasco, then with the Milanese painter F. Abbiati. His style was formed under the influence of the masters of the Genoese school of painting, S. Rosa and J. Callot. Lived and worked in Milan, Florence, Genoa.

Watteau Antoine
(1684-1721)
Country: France

Watteau Antoine, an outstanding French painter, with whose work one of the significant stages in the development of household painting in France is associated. Watteau's fate is unusual. During the years when he wrote his best works, neither in France nor in neighboring countries was there a single artist who could compete with him. The titans of the 17th century did not live to see Watteau's era; those who followed him in glorifying the 18th century became known to the world only after his death. In fact, Fragonard, Quentin de La Tour, Perronneau, Chardin, David in France, Tiepolo and Longhi in Italy, Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough in England, Goya in Spain - all this is the middle, or even the end of the 18th century.

Lorraine Claude
(1600-1682)
Country: France

Lorrain Claude (1600-1682) - French painter. At an early age he worked in Rome as a servant for A. Tassi, then became his student. The artist began receiving large orders in the 1630s; his clients were Pope Urban VIII and Cardinal Bentivoglio. From that time on, Lorrain became popular in Roman and French circles of art connoisseurs.

XVIII (18th century)

Foreign artists

Gainsborough Thomas, an outstanding English painter, creator of the national type of portrait. Born in Sudbury, Suffolk, into the family of a cloth merchant. The picturesque surroundings of the town, located on the River Stour, attracted Gainsborough from childhood, who endlessly depicted them in his childhood sketches. The boy's passion for drawing was so great that his father, without hesitation for long, sent his thirteen-year-old son to study in London, which at that time had already become the center of artistic life.

Turner Joseph Mallord William
(1775-1851)
Country: England

Turner Joseph Mallord William was an English landscape artist, painter, draftsman and engraver. He took painting lessons from T. Moulton (c. 1789), in 1789-1793. studied at the Royal Academy in London. In 1802 Turner became an academician, and in 1809 he became a professor in academic classes. The artist traveled extensively throughout England and Wales, visited France and Switzerland (1802), Holland, Belgium and Germany (1817), Italy (1819, 1828). His artistic style was formed under the influence of C. Lorrain, R. Wilson and Dutch marine painters.

Johannes Vermeer of Delft
(1632-1675)
Country: Holland

Jan Vermeer of Delft is a great Dutch artist. Almost no information about the artist has survived. Born in Delft into the family of a burgher who owned a hotel. He also produced silk and sold paintings. Perhaps that is why the boy became interested in painting early. Master Karel Fabritius became his mentor. Vermeer soon married Katherine Bolney, the daughter of a wealthy burgher, and already in 1653 he was accepted into the Guild of St. Luke.

Goya y Lucientes Francisco Josse
(1746-1828)
Country: Spain

One day, little Francisco, the son of a poor altar gilder from a village near the Spanish city of Zaragoza, painted a pig on the wall of his house. A stranger passing by saw genuine talent in the child's drawing and advised the boy to study. This legend about Goya is similar to those told about other Renaissance masters when the true facts of their biography are unknown.

Guardi Francesco Lazzaro
(1712-1793)
Country: Italy

Guardi Francesco Lazzaro is an Italian painter and draftsman, a representative of the Venetian school of painting. He studied with his older brother, the artist Giovanni Antonio, in whose workshop he worked with younger brother Niccolo. He painted landscapes, paintings of religious and mythological themes, and historical compositions. He worked on the creation of decorative decorations for the interiors of the Manin and Fenice theaters in Venice (1780-1790).

Vernet Claude Joseph
(1714-1789)
Country: France

Vernet Claude Joseph - French artist. He studied first with his father A. Vernet, then with L. R. Viali in Aix and with B. Fergioni, from 1731 in Avignon with F. Sovan, and later in Italy with Manglars, Pannini and Locatelli. In 1734-1753 worked in Rome. During the Roman period, he devoted a lot of time to working from life in Tivoli, Naples, and on the banks of the Tiber. He painted landscapes and sea views (“The seashore near Anzio”, 1743; “View of the bridge and the castle of St. Angel”, “Ponte Rotto in Rome”, 1745 - both in the Louvre, Paris; “Waterfall at Tivoli”, 1747; “Morning in Castellamare", 1747, Hermitage, St. Petersburg; "Villa Pamphili", 1749, Pushkin Museum, Moscow; "Italian Harbour", "Sea Shore with Rocks", 1751; "Rocks by the Sea Shore", 1753 - all in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg). These works amaze with their virtuosity in conveying the light-air environment and lighting, authenticity and subtle observation.

Vernet Horace
(1789-1863)
Country: France

Verne Horace is a French painter and graphic artist. He studied with his father, Karl Vernet. Writing during the heyday of the art of romanticism, the artist uses in his works the means inherent in the romantics. He is interested in people at the mercy of natural elements, in extreme situations. Vernet depicts warriors fiercely fighting in battles, hurricanes and shipwrecks (“Battle at Sea”, 1825, Hermitage, St. Petersburg).

Delacroix Eugene
(1798 - 186)
Country: France

Born in Charenton in the family of a prefect. Received an excellent education. He studied painting first at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, then in the workshop of P. Guerin (1816-22), whose cold skill had less influence on him than the passionate art of the romantic T. Géricault, with whom he became close at the School. A decisive role in the formation of Delacroix’s painting style was played by copying the works of old masters, especially Rubens, Veronese and D. Velazquez. In 1822 he made his debut at Talon with a painting "Dante's Rook"(“Dante and Virgil”) based on the plot from the first song of “Hell” (“The Divine Comedy”).

Gericault Theodore
(1791-1824)
Country: France

Born in Rouen into a wealthy family. He studied in Paris at the Imperial Lyceum (1806-1808). His teachers were K.J. Berne and P.N. Guerin. But they had no influence on the formation of it artistic style- in the painting of Gericault, the tendencies of the art of A. J. Gros and J. L. David can be traced. The artist visited the Louvre, where he made copies of works by old masters; he was especially admired by the paintings of Rubens.

Artvedia Art Gallery - biography of contemporary artists. Buy and sell contemporary paintings by artists from various countries.

Hiroshige Ando
(1797-1858)
Country: Japan

Born in Edo (now Tokyo) in the family of a minor samurai, Ando Genemon. His father held the position of foreman of city firefighters, and the family’s life was quite prosperous. Thanks to early training, he quickly learned to understand the properties of paper, brushes and ink. The general level of education at that time was quite high. Theaters, prints, and ikeba-fas were part of everyday life.

Hokusai Katsushika
(1760-1849)
Country: Japan

Hokusai Katsushika is a Japanese painter and draftsman, master of color woodcuts, writer and poet. He studied with the engraver Nakayama Tetsuson. He was influenced by the artist Shunsho, in whose workshop he worked. He painted landscapes in which the life of nature and its beauty are closely connected with the life and activities of man. In search of new experiences, Hokusai traveled a lot around the country, making sketches of everything he saw. The artist sought to reflect in his work the problem of the relationship between man and the nature around him. His art is permeated with the pathos of the beauty of the world and the awareness of the spiritual beginning that man brings to everything with which he comes into contact.

Foreign artists

Bonington Richard Parkes is an English painter and graphic artist. From 1817 he lived in France. He studied painting in Calais with L. Francia, and from 1820 he attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris, where his teacher was A. J. Gros. In 1822 he began exhibiting his paintings in the Paris Salons, and from 1827 he took part in exhibitions of the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Ensor James
(1860-1949)
Country: Belgium

Ensor James (1860-1949) - Belgian painter and graphic artist. The artist was born and raised in the port city of Ostend, where he spent almost his entire life. The image of this seaside town with narrow streets inhabited by fishermen and sailors, with annual Maslenitsa carnivals and the unique atmosphere of the sea often appears in many of his paintings.

Van Gogh Vincent
(1853- 1890)
Country: Holland

Van Gogh Vincent, the great Dutch painter, representative of post-impressionism. Born in the Brabant Village of Groot Zundert in the family of a pastor. From the age of sixteen he worked at a company selling paintings, and then as an assistant teacher at a private school in England. In 1878 he got a job as a preacher in a mining district in southern Belgium.

Anker Mikael
(1849-1927)
Country: Denmark

Anker Mikael is a Danish artist. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Copenhagen (1871-1875), as well as in the workshop of the Danish artist P. Kreyer. Later in Paris he studied in the workshop of Puvis de Chavannes, but this period was not reflected in his work. Together with his wife Anna he worked in Skagen, in small fishing villages. In his works, the sea is inextricably linked with images of Jutland fishermen. The artist depicts people in moments of their difficult and dangerous work.

Modigliani Amedeo
(1884-1920)
Country: Italy

How subtly and elegantly Anna Akhmatova spoke about Amedeo Modigliani! Of course, she was a poet! Amedeo was lucky: they met in 1911, in Paris, fell in love, and these feelings became the property of the art world, expressed in his drawings and her poems.

Eakins Thomas
(1844-1916)
Country: USA

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1866-1869). The formation of his artistic style was greatly influenced by the work of the old Spanish masters, which he studied in Madrid. Since 1870, the painter lived in his homeland, in Philadelphia, where he was engaged in teaching activities. Already in his first independent works, Eakins showed himself to be a realist (“Max Schmit in a Boat,” 1871, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; “On a Sailboat,” 1874; “Sailing Boats on the Delaware,” 1874).

Kent Rockwell
(1882-1971)
Country: USA

Kent Rockwell is an American landscape painter, draftsman, graphic artist, and writer. He studied with a representative of the plein air school of artist William Merritt Chace in Shinnecock on Long Island, then with Robert Henry at the School of Art in New York, where he also attended classes with Kenneth Miller.

Homer Winslow
(1836-1910)
Country: USA

Homer Winslow is an American painter and draftsman. He did not receive a systematic education, having only mastered the craft of lithographer in his youth. In 1859-1861 attended evening drawing school at the National Academy of Arts in New York. From 1857 he made drawings for magazines, in civil war(1861-1865) contributed to the illustrated weekly publication Harpers Weekly, for which he wrote realistic drawings with battle scenes, characterized by expressive and strict forms. In 1865 he became a member of the National Academy of Arts.

Bonnard Pierre
(1867-1947)
Country: France

Bonnard Pierre - French painter, draftsman, lithographer. Born in the vicinity of Paris. In his youth he studied law, while also studying drawing and painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. He was interested in Japanese prints. Together with the artists E. Vuillard, M. Denis, P. Sérusier, they formed the core of a group that called itself “Nabi” - from the Hebrew word for “prophet”. The members of the group were supporters of a symbolism that was less complex and literary than the symbolism of Gauguin and his followers.

Marriage Georges
(1882-1963)
Country: France

Braque Georges - French painter, engraver, sculptor. In 1897-1899 studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre, then at the Ambert Academy and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1902-1903). His early work was marked by the influence of the Fauves, especially A. Derain and A. Matisse. It was during this period that the artist most often turned to the landscape genre: he painted harbors, sea bays with boats, and coastal buildings.

Gauguin Paul
(1848-1903)
Country: France

Gauguin Paul (1848-1903), outstanding French artist. Representative of impressionism. Born in Paris. His father was an employee of the moderate-republican newspaper Nacional. A change in political course forced him to leave his homeland in 1849. On a ship heading to South America, he died suddenly. Gauguin spent the first four years of his life in Lima (Peru) with his mother's relatives. At the age of 17-23 he served as a sailor, fireman, helmsman in the merchant and navy, sailed to Rio de Janeiro and other distant cities.

Degas Edgar
(1834-1917)
Country: France

Edgar Degas was a contradictory and strange person at first glance. Born into a banker's family in Paris. The scion of an aristocratic family (his real name was de Ha), he refused the noble prefix from a young age. He showed interest in drawing as a child. Received a good education. In 1853 he passed the exams for a bachelor's degree and began to study law. But already at that time he studied with the painter Barrias, then with Louis Lamothe. Like Edouard Manet, he was groomed for a brilliant career, but he dropped out of law school for the École des Beaux-Arts.

Derain Andre
(1880-1954)
Country: France

Derain Andre - French painter, book illustrator, engraver, sculptor, one of the founders of Fauvism. He began painting in Shatou in 1895, his teacher was a local artist. In 1898-1900 studied in Paris at the Career Academy, where he met A. Matisse, J. Puy and A. Marquet. Very soon Deren left the academy and began studying on his own.

Daubigny Charles Francois
(1817-1878)
Country: France

Daubigny Charles Francois - French landscape painter, graphic artist, representative of the Barbizon school. He studied with his father, the artist E. F. Daubigny, then with P. Delaroche. Was influenced by Rembrandt. In the Louvre he copied the paintings of Dutch masters; he was especially attracted to the works of J. Ruisdael and Hobbema. In 1835-1836 Daubigny visited Italy, and in 1866 he went to Holland, Great Britain and Spain. But these trips were practically not reflected in the artist’s work; almost all of his works are devoted to French landscapes.

Dufy Raoul
(1877-1953)
Country: France

Dufy Raoul - French painter and graphic artist. He studied in Le Havre, in evening classes at the Municipal Art School, where Luyer taught (1892-1897). Here Dufy met O. J. Braque and O. Fries. During this period, he painted portraits of his family members, as well as landscapes similar to the paintings of E. Boudin.

Isabey Louis Gabriel Jean
(1803-1886)
Country: France

Isabey Louis Gabriel Jean (1803-1886) - French painter of the romantic movement, watercolorist, lithographer. He studied with his father, the miniaturist J.-B. Izabe. He was influenced by the painting of English marine painters and the small Dutch of the 17th century. Worked in Paris. In search of new impressions, Isabey visited Normandy, Auvergne, Brittany, Southern France, Holland, England, and as an artist accompanied an expedition to Algeria.

Courbet Gustave
(1819-1877)
Country: France

Gustave Courbet is an outstanding French painter, a wonderful master of realistic portraiture. “...never belonged to any school, to any church... to any regime, other than the regime of freedom.”

Manet Edouard
(1832-1883)
Country: France

Edouard MANET (1832-1883), an outstanding French artist who rethought the traditions of narrative realistic painting. “Brevity in art is both necessity and elegance. A person who expresses himself concisely makes one think; a verbose person is boring.”

Marche Albert
(1875-1947)
Country: France

Marche Albert (1875-1947) - French painter and graphic artist. In 1890-1895 studied in Paris at the School decorative arts, and from 1895 to 1898 - at the School of Fine Arts in the workshop of G. Moreau. He painted portraits, interiors, still lifes, landscapes, including views of the sea, images of harbors and ports. In the landscapes created by the artist from the late 1890s to the early 1900s. the strong influence of the Impressionists is noticeable, in particular A. Sisley (“Trees at Billancourt”, ca. 1898, Museum of Art, Bordeaux).

Monet Claude
(1840-1926)
Country: France

Claude Monet, French painter, founder of impressionism. “What I write is a moment.” Born in Paris in the family of a grocer. He spent his childhood in Le Havre. In Le Havre he began making caricatures, selling them in a stationery shop. E. Boudin drew attention to them and gave Monet his first lessons in plein air painting. In 1859, Monet entered the Paris School of Fine Arts, and then the Gleyer atelier. After a two-year stay in Algeria for military service (1860-61), he returned to Le Havre and met Ionkind. Ionkind's landscapes, full of light and air, made a deep impression on him.

Pierre Auguste Renoir
(1841-1919)
Country: France

Pierre Auguste Renoir was born into the family of a poor tailor with many children, and from early childhood he learned to “live happily” even when there was no piece of bread in the house. At the age of thirteen, he already mastered the craft - he painted cups and saucers at a porcelain factory. He was wearing his work blouse, stained with paint, when he arrived at the School of Fine Arts. In Gleyre's atelier, he picked up empty paint tubes thrown by other students. Squeezing them to the last drop, he hummed something carefree and cheerful under his breath.

Redon Odilon
(1840-1916)
Country: France

Redon Odilon is a French painter, draftsman and decorator. He studied architecture in Paris, but did not complete the course. For some time he attended the School of Sculpture in Bordeaux, then studied in Paris in the studio of Jerome. As a painter, he was formed under the influence of the art of Leonardo da Vinci, J. F. Corot, E. Delacroix and F. Goya. The botanist Armand Clavo played a big role in his life. Having a rich library, he introduced the young artist to the works of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe, as well as Indian poetry and German philosophy. Together with Clavo, Redon studied the world of plants and microorganisms, which was later reflected in his engravings.

Cezanne Paul
(1839-1906)
Country: France

Until now, one of the participants in the first exhibition on the Boulevard des Capucines, the most silent of the visitors to the Guerbois cafe, remained in the shadows - Paul Cézanne. It's time to get closer to his paintings. Let's start with self-portraits. Let's take a closer look at the face of this high-cheeked, bearded man, who looks either like a peasant (when he is wearing a cap) or like a scribe-sage (when his steep, powerful forehead is visible). Cézanne was both at the same time, combining the hard work of a peasant with the searching mind of a scientific researcher.

Toulouse Lautrec Henri Marie Raymond de
(1864-1901)
Country: France

Toulouse Lautrec Henri Marie Raymond de, an outstanding French artist. Born in Albi in the south of France into a family that belonged to the largest aristocratic family, which once led the Crusades. Since childhood, his talent as an artist has manifested itself. However, he took up painting after a fall from a horse (at the age of fourteen), as a result of which he became disabled. Soon after his father introduced him to Princeto, Henri began to regularly come to the workshop on the rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré. For hours he could watch the artist draw or write.

Foreign artists

Dali Salvador, the great Spanish artist, the largest representative of surrealism. Born in Figueres (Catalonia) in the family of a famous lawyer. At the age of sixteen, Dali was sent to a Catholic college in Figueres. The development of his personality was greatly influenced by the Pichot family. All family members owned musical instruments and organized concerts. Ramon Pichot is a painter who worked in Paris and knew P. Picasso closely. In the Pichots' house, Dali was engaged in drawing. In 1918, his first exhibition took place in Fegeras, which was favorably noted by critics.

Kalnins Eduardas
(1904-1988)
Country: Latvia

Kalnins Eduardas is a Latvian marine painter. Born in Riga into the family of a simple artisan, he began to draw early. Kalnins' first teacher was the artist Evgeniy Moshkevich, who opened a studio for aspiring painters in Tomsk, where the boy's family moved at the beginning of the First World War. After 1920, Kalnins returned to Riga with his parents and in 1922 entered the Latvian Academy of Arts. His teacher was Vilhelme Purvitis, a student of A.I. Kuindzhi.

Impressionism.

Edouard Manet (French: Édouard Manet, January 23, 1832, Paris - April 30, 1883, Paris) - French artist, one of the founders of impressionism.

His fascination with old painting led to Manet's numerous travels. He repeatedly visited Dutch museums, where he admired the paintings of Frans Hals. In 1853, he made the traditional trip to Italy for French artists, where he visited Venice and Florence. It was then that the influence on the young artist of paintings by masters of the Early and High Renaissance began to emerge. One of the artists who had the greatest influence on Manet was Velazquez. Perhaps it was him late works, especially the famous Bodegons, had a huge influence on the formation of the impressionist movement. The journey back to France was long - Manet traveled a lot around Central Europe, visiting museums in Dresden, Prague, Vienna and Munich.

In 1863 and 1864, Manet exhibited both at the Salon des Refugees and at the official salon, where his new paintings, especially Luncheon on the Grass, aroused sharp indignation from critics. The peak of rejection occurred in 1865, when Manet exhibited his (now famous) “Olympia” at the salon - a painting that his contemporaries found extremely obscene and vulgar, and provoked a huge scandal at that time.

During the siege of Paris in 1870, Manet, as a staunch republican, remained in the capital. After the French-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, the artist became even closer to the young impressionists. This is evidenced, for example, by numerous paintings painted en plein air, side by side with Claude Monet in Argenteuil in 1874. However, Manet did not want to participate in exhibitions of impressionist groups. He preferred to achieve recognition by the jury of official Salons at any cost. Another hype around his name arose in 1874. “Railroad” again aroused intense antipathy from the jury. And only in 1879 the Salon appreciated the artist’s tenacity: Manet’s canvases “In the Greenhouse” and “In the Boat” were received very warmly.

"The Absinthe Drinker", 1858-1859, New Glyptotek Carlsberg

"Music in the Tuileries", 1862, National Gallery, London

"Olympia", 1863, Orsay Museum, Paris

Spanish musician (Gitarrero). 1860 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. 1867, Kunsthalle, Mannheim.

Edgar-Germain-Hilaire de Gas, or Edgar Degas (French Edgar Degas) (July 19, 1834, Paris - September 27, 1917) - French painter, one of the most prominent and original representatives of the impressionist movement.

At the age of 20 (1854), Degas entered an apprenticeship in the workshop of the once famous artist Lamothe, who in turn was a student of the great Ingres. Degas happened to see Ingres in a family he knew, and he retained his appearance in his memory for a long time, and throughout his life he retained his love for Ingres’ melodious line and clear form. Degas also loved other great draftsmen - Nicolas Poussin, Hans Holbein - and copied their works in the Louvre with such diligence and skill that it was difficult to distinguish the copy from the original.

The works of Degas with their strictly verified and at the same time dynamic, often asymmetrical composition, precise flexible drawing, unexpected angles, the active interaction of figure and space combines the apparent impartiality and randomness of the motive and architectonics of the picture with careful thought and calculation. “There was no art less immediate than mine,” - this is how the artist himself evaluates own creativity. Each of his works is the result of long-term observations and persistent, painstaking work to transform them into an artistic image. There is nothing impromptu in the master’s work. The completeness and thoughtfulness of his compositions sometimes makes one recall the paintings of Poussin. But as a result, images appear on the canvas that it would not be an exaggeration to call the personification of the instantaneous and random. In French art of the late 19th century, the works of Degas in this regard are the diametric opposite of the work of Cézanne. Cezanne's painting carries within itself all the immutability of the world order and looks like a completely completed microcosm. In Degas, it contains only part of the powerful flow of life cut off by the frame. Degas's images are full of dynamism; they embody the accelerated rhythms of the artist's contemporary era. It was precisely the passion for conveying movement - this, according to him, determined Degas’s favorite subjects: images of galloping horses, ballerinas at rehearsal, laundresses and ironers at work, women dressing or combing their hair.

Edgar Degas. Racehorses in front of the stands. 1869-1872 Louvre, Paris.

Blue dancers. Museum named after Pushkin, Moscow.

Cotton trading office in New Orleans. 1873

The washing up. 1886 Hill Stand Museum, Farmington, Connecticut, USA.

Absinthe, 1876, Orsay Museum, Paris

Before the start, 1862-1880, Orsay Museum, Paris

Ballet Performance - View of the Stage from a Box, 1885, Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Ballet school.

Miss Lala at Fernando's Circus.

Laundresses with linen.

At the milliner's.

Ironers

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French Pierre-Auguste Renoir; February 25, 1841, Limoges - December 2, 1919, Cagnes-sur-Mer) - French painter, graphic artist and sculptor, one of the main representatives of impressionism. Renoir is known primarily as a master of secular portraiture, not devoid of sentimentality; he was the first of the impressionists to gain success among wealthy Parisians. In the mid-1880s. actually broke with impressionism, returning to the linearity of classicism, to Engrism. Father of the famous director.

"Spring Bouquet" (1866). Harvard University Museum

"Ball at Le Moulin de la Galette" (1876). Orsay Museum

"Big Bathers" (1887). Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

"Girls at the Piano" (1892). Orsay Museum.

"Gabriel in a Red Blouse" (1910). Collection of M. Wertham, New York.

Oscar Claude Monet (French: Oscar-Claude Monet, 1840-1926) - French painter, one of the founders of impressionism.

When the boy was five years old, the family moved to Normandy, to Le Havre. On the sea coast of Normandy, Monet met Eugene Boudin, a famous landscape painter and one of the forerunners of impressionism. Boudin showed to the young artist some techniques for painting from life

On the Banks of the Seine (Bennecourt, 1868), is an early example of plein air impressionism, in which the skillful and evocative use of oils was presented as a finished work of art.

Disillusioned with the traditional art that was taught in art schools, in 1862 Monet entered the University of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. They shared with each other new approaches to art, the art of depicting the effects of light in a plein air style with disrupted colors and quick brushstrokes, what later became known as impressionism. Monet's portrait of Camille, or La femme a la robe verte, painted in 1866, brought him recognition and was one of many works depicting him. future wife, Camille Doncieux; a year later, she posed for the paintings Women in the Garden and On the Banks of the Seine (Bennecourt, 1868).

Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870), Monet took refuge in England in September 1870, where he studied the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner, whose landscape paintings would inspire Monet's innovations in the study of color.

"Impression. Rising Sun", 1872, Marmottan-Monet Museum, Paris

"Boulevard of the Capuchins", 1873

"Harbor"

"Lily Pond", 1899, National Gallery, London

“Regatta at Arzateil”, 1872, Orsay Museum, Paris

“Splash Pool”, 1869, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

"Women in the Garden", 1866-1867, Orsay Museum, Paris, France

"Beach at Pourville", 1882 National Museum Poland, Poznan, Poland

"Water Lilies", 1915

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro (French: Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro, July 10, 1830, St. Thomas - November 12, 1903, Paris) - French painter, one of the first and most consistent representatives of impressionism.

Pizarro began as a student of Camille Corot. This choice of teacher already reflected the artist’s innate love for landscape painting. But no less attention at the beginning creative path Camille Pizarro also devotes his time to drawing. Already in his early works, the artist paid special attention to the depiction of illuminated objects in the air. Light and air have since become the leading theme in Pizarro's work.

Gradually, Pizarro began to free himself from the influence of Corot, and his own style matured. Since 1866, the artist’s palette has become lighter, space permeated with sunlight and light air becomes the dominant feature of his subject, and the neutral tones characteristic of Corot disappear.

The works that made Pizarro famous were a combination of traditional landscape subjects and unusual techniques in depicting light and illuminated objects. The paintings of the mature Pizarro are painted with dense strokes and filled with that physical sensation of light that he sought to express.

Pissarro had a strong influence on the Impressionists, independently developing many of the principles that formed the basis of their painting style. He was friends with artists such as Degas, Cezanne and Gauguin. Pizarro is the only participant in all eight Impressionist exhibitions.

"Boulevard Montmartre. Afternoon, sunny.” 1897

Self-portrait, 1873

Neo-Impressionism.

Paul Signac (French Paul Signac, November 11, 1863, Paris - August 15, 1935, Paris) - French post-impressionist artist, representative of the pointillism movement.

In 1882, in Paris and Brittany, he began painting under the influence of the Impressionists, mainly Monet. In 1884 he participated in the creation of the Society of Independent Artists, where he met Georges Seurat, with whom in 1889 he developed the painting technique of pointillism, although already at the last exhibition of the Impressionists his paintings reflected the aesthetics of divisionism.

Already during his lifetime the artist was a recognized classic. In 1911 he was awarded the Legion of Honor.

Les Andelys (1886)

Femme lisant (1887), Orsay Museum, Paris. Oil, wood

Château de Comblat (1887), Liege Museum, Belgium

La bouée rouge (1895) Orsay Museum

L'orage, (1895) Musée de l"Annonciade,

Le phare d'Antibes, (1909)

Post-Impressionism.

Paul Cézanne (French Paul Cézanne) is a French artist, a prominent representative of post-impressionism.

Paul Cezanne was born in France on January 19, 1839 in the city of Aix-en-Provence in the family of a wealthy bourgeois. At Bourbon College, where he studied, Paul became friends with the future famous writer Emile Zola. Paul studied law at the University of Aix, but did not complete the course, deciding to devote himself entirely to painting.

After a short study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne went to Paris, where he met Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. Together with them, he participated in the first exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874 at Nadar's photographic studio in Paris.

Cezanne's works bear the imprint of the artist's inner life. They are filled with internal energy of attraction and repulsion. Contradictions were initially inherent in both the artist’s mental world and his artistic aspirations. In Cezanne's everyday life, the southern temperament was combined with seclusion and asceticism, piety - with attempts to free himself from religious traditions that constrained his temperament. Confident in his genius, Cézanne was nevertheless eternally obsessed with the fear that he would not find the exact means of expressing what he saw and wanted to express in a painting through the means of painting. He always talked about his inability to “realize” his own vision, he always doubted that he could do it, and every new picture became both a refutation and confirmation of this.

Girl at the Piano (Overture to Tannhäuser). OK. 1868. Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Bouquet of flowers in a blue vase. 1873-1875. Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Bridge over the Marne at Creteil (Banks of the Marne). 1888-1894. Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin, Moscow

Smoker. 1890-1892. Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Mount St. Victoria. 1897-1898. Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: Vincent Willem van Gogh, March 30, 1853, Grot-Zundert, near Breda, the Netherlands - July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) is a world-famous Dutch post-impressionist artist.

In the 1880s, Van Gogh turned to art, attended the Academy of Arts in Brussels (1880-1881) and Antwerp (1885-1886), took the advice of the painter A. Mauwe in The Hague, and enthusiastically painted miners, peasants, and artisans. In a series of paintings and sketches from the mid-1880s. (“Peasant Woman”, 1885, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; “The Potato Eaters”, 1885, Vincent Van Gogh State Museum, Amsterdam), painted in a dark painterly palette, marked by a painfully acute perception of human suffering and feelings of depression, the artist recreated the oppressive atmosphere of psychological tension.

In 1886-1888, Van Gogh lived in Paris, visited the prestigious private art studio of the famous teacher P. Cormon throughout Europe, studied impressionist painting, Japanese engraving, and synthetic works by Paul Gauguin. During this period, Van Gogh’s palette became light, the earthy shade of paint disappeared, pure blue, golden-yellow, red tones appeared, his characteristic dynamic, flowing brush stroke (“Bridge over the Seine”, 1887, Vincent Van Gogh State Museum, Amsterdam ; “Père Tanguy”, 1887, Rodin Museum, Paris).

In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles, where the originality of his creative style was finally determined. Fiery artistic temperament, a painful impulse towards harmony, beauty and happiness and, at the same time, fear of forces hostile to man, are embodied in landscapes shining with sunny colors of the south (“Harvest. La Croe Valley”, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh State Museum, Amsterdam ), then in ominous, reminiscent nightmare images (“Night Cafe”, 1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo); the dynamics of color and brushstroke fills not only nature and the people inhabiting it with spiritual life and movement (“Red Vineyards in Arles”, 1888, State Museum fine arts named after A. S. Pushkin, Moscow), but also inanimate objects (“Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles”, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh State Museum, Amsterdam). IN last week of his life, Van Gogh writes his last and famous painting: Field of grains with crows. It was evidence of the artist's tragic death.

Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 - May 8, 1903) was a French painter, ceramic sculptor and graphic artist.

Along with Cezanne and Van Gogh, he was the largest representative of post-impressionism.

In the early 1870s he began painting as an amateur. The early period of creativity (under the influence of Pissarro) is associated with impressionism. Since 1880 he participated in impressionist exhibitions. Since 1883, professional artist.

Having experienced a craving for exotic places since childhood, spent in Peru (in his mother’s homeland), and considering civilization a “disease,” Gauguin, eager to “merge with nature,” left for Tahiti in 1891, where he lived in Papeete and where he wrote in 1892 as many as 80 paintings. After a short (1893-1895) return to France, due to illness and lack of funds, he left for Oceania forever - first to Tahiti, and from 1901 to the island of Hiva Oa (Marquesas Islands), where he took a young Tahitian woman as his wife and works in full force: writes landscapes, stories, works as a journalist. On this island he dies. Despite illness, poverty and depression, which led him to attempt suicide, Gauguin wrote his best works there. Observations of the real life and way of life of the peoples of Oceania are intertwined with local myths.

Sewing Woman (1880)

Yellow Christ (1889)

Woman with a Flower (1891)

The spirit of the dead does not sleep (1892)

Are you jealous? (1892)

Fun evil spirit (1894)

Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? (1897-1898)

Never Again (1897)

François Auguste René Rodin (François-Auguste-René Rodin) (November 12, 1840 - November 17, 1917) - famous French sculptor, one of the founders of impressionism in sculpture.

Auguste Rodin was born in Paris. He studied at the Paris School of Drawing and Mathematics, entering there against his father's wishes, and with Antoine Bari at the Natural History Museum.

In 1864, Rodin's first work, The Man with a Broken Nose, was rejected at the Paris Salon because it challenged the academic canons of beauty. Rodin was also not accepted into the School of Fine Arts, and from 1864 to 1870 he worked in the workshop of A. Carrier-Belleuse at the Sèvres Manufactory, making money by creating decorative sculpture.

sculpture "The Thinker"

"Citizens of Calais". Rodin Museum in Philadelphia

Statue of Honore de Balzac. Rodin Museum in Philadelphia

"The Gates of Hell" Rodin Museum in Philadelphia

A man with a broken nose. Rodin Museum in Philadelphia

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (French: Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen; November 10, 1859, Lausanne - December 14, 1923, Paris) was a French and Swiss artist, graphic artist and illustrator who worked in both realistic and art nouveau styles.

T.-A. Steinlen became famous for his Parisian posters created around 1900, his scenes of Montmartre nightlife and, of course, his “cat” paintings and graphics that made his name. Other facets of the artist’s talent are less known: his painting, sculpture and graphics are dedicated to the events of the First World War, especially the events in Serbia and Belgium. Steinlen was self-taught, and yet, heir to the rich artistic traditions. His works are influenced by the works of Delacroix, Daumier, Doré and Manet. The distribution and popularity that Steinlen's works had in Paris during the Belle Epoque made the artist central figure in European art of the early 20th century; they became a source of inspiration for numerous avant-garde masters, including Picasso

Aristide Bruant: À la Villette

Anatole France

Suzanne Valadon

Georges Courtelain: Une canaille

Save Serbia!

Drink boiled milk!

Cover of Eugenie Buffet's book "My Life, My Love, My Adventures" by Steinlen

Illustration by Steinlen for the newspaper Le Gil Blas

Art and design

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24.09.15 01:41

“So small, she’s clearly overrated!” grunt some tourists who specially came to the Louvre to see the local shrine, the Mona Lisa... The Louvre is the Louvre, but we shouldn’t forget that many famous painters were born in France itself. Let's take a short excursion into the past of this country and remember the best French artists.

The best French artists

Great classicist

Born at the end of the 16th century, Nicolas Poussin enthusiastically adopted the techniques of the masters of the High Renaissance, including the author of La Gioconda da Vinci and Raphael. His paintings often feature biblical characters and mythological subjects (even a cycle of landscapes dedicated to the seasons, which is inspired by the Bible). The Norman Poussin stood at the origins of classicism; his contribution to French art cannot be overestimated. His painting “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” is kept in our Hermitage.

Singer of the gallant era

Antoine Watteau, who was born almost two decades after the death of Poussin, firmly reigned on the “Olympus” of French artists. In his time there was not a single painter in Europe who could compete with him in skill. He lived only 36 years, but managed to leave many masterpieces. Watteau's everyday scenes, landscapes, and portraits are charming and elegant; he is called the forerunner of the Rococo style. To enter the Academy of Arts, the young man painted two versions of the painting “Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera” (one is kept in Berlin, the other in the Louvre in Paris). The Hermitage acquired several works by the French artist, including the painting “Actors of the French Comedy”.

Gifted landscape painter

A first-class marine and landscape painter, Claude Joseph Vernet, worked in Italy for a long time. The coast of Naples and the mighty Tiber left their mark on his work. The Louvre collection includes “View of the Bridge and Castel Sant’Angelo” and “View of Naples with Vesuvius”, and the Hermitage exhibits “Rocks by the Seashore”, “Morning in Castellamare” and some other masterpieces of the master.

Romantic colleagues

A representative of the romantic movement in art, Eugene Delacroix was born at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries and received a good education. He loved to copy the masterpieces of old masters - and honed his art on them. Eugene was friends with Alexandre Dumas and admired the works of Géricault. Some of Delacroix’s most famous paintings (he often chose historical subjects) are “Freedom on the Barricades” and “The Death of Sardanapalus”.

Another romantic, Theodore Gericault, was only a few years older than Delacroix, but was a great authority for his colleague. Alas, fate gave him a very short life - at the age of 32, the painter fell from his horse and was killed. Theodore preferred large-scale battle scenes, copied Rubens, being a passionate admirer of the Fleming. Even if you haven’t heard the name of this French artist, you’ve probably seen reproductions of Géricault’s masterpiece “The Raft of the Medusa” (this work is the pride of the Louvre).

Eternal Wanderer

Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin is better known among us. The post-impressionist saw the onset of the 20th century, but died quite early: he died at 54 in 1903 in French Polynesia. They say that the genius was destroyed by illnesses (the worst of them was incurable leprosy). In his youth, he traveled a lot: Paul served as a simple sailor on a warship, and was a fireman on ships of the merchant fleet. Those impressions, of course, were reflected in the painter’s works. He almost devoted his life to brokerage, but stopped in time and devoted himself to creativity. Even uninitiated people are familiar with the vivid images created by Gauguin, for example, “Woman Holding a Fruit.”

Flying silhouettes

Any of you have heard the expression “Degas Ballerinas”. This French artist, indeed, drew inspiration from ballet schools and rehearsals. His light pastel strokes managed to capture graceful light tilts of the head, pirouettes, bows, jumps - we see this in the impressionist paintings “Dancing Lesson” or “Blue Dancers”. His everyday scenes are also widely known: “Absinthe”, “Ironers”.

Father of Impressionism

Another classic of European painting, Edouard Manet (one of the “fathers” of impressionism), like Degas, loved to depict the life of city dwellers: their walks in the garden or picnics in nature. His portraits are distinguished by their simplicity and artlessness, and at the end of his life he suddenly became interested in still lifes. “Olympia”, “Railway”, “Breakfast on the Grass” are considered world-class masterpieces.

Sentimental and pearlescent

Pierre Auguste Renoir's favorite genre was portraiture. Socialite primps, young innocent maidens, couples in love come to life under the confident brush strokes of the master. Having started as an impressionist, Pierre gradually became disillusioned with him and joined the classicists. His art is sentimental and pearlescent. Look at “Girls at the Piano” or “Spring Bouquet”, the canvases seem to glow from within.

Either a peasant or a thinker...

Paul Cézanne, with his silhouettes in portraits seemingly carved from stone and slightly “smeared” landscapes, is a prominent representative of post-impressionism. Both in his work and in life, he was stingy with emotions, laconic and not very emotional - there was something in him from a peasant, something from a scientist-thinker. It is interesting that his masterpiece “Card Players” is one of the most expensive paintings in the world (in 2012 it was purchased for the collection of the Emir of Qatar for $250 million).

The evil fate of an aristocrat

Last on our list of the very best French artists is poor fellow Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse Lautrec. Why poor guy? Yes, he belonged to an ancient count family, but at the age of 13 and 14 the young man managed to break first the femur of one leg, then the other, because of this they stopped growing. Henri remained a disabled semi-dwarf. Impossibility to do military career shocked the whole family, and pushed Henri himself to take up painting. He studied with the masters (he was very fond of the work of Degas and Cezanne), and when he arrived in Paris, he became a regular at cabarets and pubs, became an alcoholic, became infected with syphilis, and died at the age of 37. His graphic works and paintings received recognition after his death. Portraits of the Moulin Rouge artists and prostitutes, to whose services Toulouse Lautrec was forced to resort, are now considered masterpieces.

M. Prokofieva, Yu. Kolpinsky

In the 1880s. In the fine arts of France, especially in painting, a departure from impressionism began. As mentioned earlier (see Volume V), already in the work of a number of impressionists there were trends towards abandoning the realistic plein air of the 1870s, and a more decorative manner of execution appeared. This process made itself felt with particular force by the 1890s. in the work of such a typical master of impressionism as C. Monet.

However, what was more important were not the changes in late creativity the Impressionists themselves, but the promotion of new names to the forefront of the artistic life of the group. The masters of this new artistic generation are by no means united; they accept their artistic task in different ways and solve it in different ways. In some cases, artists sought to further modify impressionism, in others, trying to overcome the limited sides of impressionism or what seemed to them its limited sides, they contrasted it with their understanding of the nature of painting and the role of art.

Therefore, the work of the founders of divisionism, Seurat and Signac, the decorative and symbolic painting of Gauguin, the intense creative work of Cezanne, a contemporary of impressionism, closely connected, however, with the new problems of the 1880-1890s, the passionate quest of Van Gogh, the nervously acute art of Toulouse - Lautrec can only conditionally be united by the concept of “post-impressionism” that has taken root in literature (from the Latin post - after).

Of course, the very development of the social reality of France posed a number of common tasks for art, but they were recognized and solved by these artists in different ways. Basically, French art of those years faced the enormous task of finding new forms of realism capable of aesthetically mastering and artistically truthfully expressing new aspects of the life of capitalist society, those changes in social consciousness, in the alignment of class forces that were associated with the beginning of its transition to a qualitatively new , imperialist stage of development.

The need to reflect, on the one hand, the acute dissonances of big city life, the growing dehumanization of the social and personal conditions of man and, on the other hand, the revival after the defeat of the Paris Commune became increasingly urgent. political activity working class of France.

At the same time, the strengthening of the reactionary nature of the dominant bourgeois ideology and the absolutization of the formal-professional aspect of every type of social activity, including artistic creativity, characteristic of bourgeois society, could not but have a limiting influence on the quest of artists of the 1880-1890s. From here stemmed the complex inconsistency and duality of the results of intense innovative quests, so characteristic of French art since the end of the 19th century.

An increased interest in purely optical impressions and a tendency towards decorative solutions, which distinguish the late period of creativity of the most consistent representative of impressionism - Claude Monet - continue to develop and exhaust themselves in the second half of the 1880s. in the art of Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1863-1935). The art of these masters is in many ways close to impressionism: they are also characterized by a fascination with the landscape genre and scenes of modern life, and a tendency to develop their own pictorial problems. The latter, however, in contrast to the immediate freshness of visual perception in best works impressionists, was consciously and methodically based on the formal and rational application to art of modern scientific discoveries in the field of optics (works of E. Chevreuil, G. Helmholtz, D. Maxwell, O. N. Rud).

According to Seurat's views, the artist must be guided by the law of spectral analysis, with the help of which it is possible to decompose color and its components and establish precise boundaries for the interaction of tones. Hence one of the names of this trend is divisionism (from the French division - division). The mixing of colors on the palette, allowed in practice by the impressionists, was categorically excluded, giving way only to the optical effect of pure colors on the retina of the eye. The desired effect could only be achieved as a result of a painterly stroke of a certain shape. This uniform ((dotted) manner gave the name to the new school - pointelism (from the French point - point).

Such strict regulation, naturally, had to somewhat neutralize the creativity of quite a number of artists grouped around Seurat and Signac (Albert Dubois-Pillet, Theo van Ryselberghe, Henri ~)monde Cross, etc.). However, the largest of them - such as Seurat, Signac, Camille Pissarro (who temporarily joined this trend) - had sufficiently characteristic and striking features of their creative manner and their talent to literally follow their own doctrine.

One of the most typical works for Seurat is “Sunday Walk on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886; Chicago, Institute of Arts). Depicting groups of people against the backdrop of a green river bank, the master first of all sought to solve the problem of the interaction of human figures in a light-air environment. The painting is divided into two clear zones: illuminated, where the artist, following his theory, works with warm, pure color, and shaded, where cool, pure tones predominate. Despite the subtlety of the colorful combinations and the successful transmission of sunlight, the dots of the strokes, reminiscent of mosaic beads scattered across the canvas, create the impression of some dryness and unnaturalness. The penchant for sharply local decorativism becomes even more obvious in such works by Seurat of the late 1880s and early 1890s as Parade (New York, Clark Collection), Models, ((Sunday in Port-en- Bessen" (Otterlo, Kroller-Müllsr Museum), "Circus" (Louvre). At the same time, in these works, in particular in "Circus", Seurat tries to revive the principles of a complete decorative-monumental composition, trying to overcome some fragmentation, as if instantaneous the randomness of the composition of the Impressionists. This tendency was characteristic not only of Seurat, but also of a number of artists of the generation following the Impressionists. However, the general formal and decorative nature of Seurat's quest, in essence, did not contribute to a truly fruitful solution to this important problem.

The art of Paul Signac was somewhat different from the cold intellectualism of Seurat, who in his landscape works achieved relatively great emotionality in conveying colorful combinations (for example, “Sandy Seashore”, 1890; Moscow, Pushkin Museum), “Papal Castle in Avignon” (1900; Paris, Museum contemporary art). The increased interest in the expressiveness of the color sound of the picture forces Signac to give a series of seascapes 1880s names of musical tempos - “Larghetto”, “Adagio”, “Scherzo”, etc.

The problem of reviving the plastic materiality of painting, returning on a new basis to a stable compositional structure of the picture was posed by a major representative French painting late 19th century Paul Cézanne (1839 - 1906). The same age as Monet, Renoir and Sisley, Cézanne works chronologically in parallel with these masters. But his art, in its uniqueness, took shape precisely in the 1880s. and already belongs to post-impressionism.

Cézanne's early works, written in the 1860s. in Paris, marked by the influence of Daumier and Courbet (“Portrait of a Monk”, 1865-1867, New York, Frick Collection; “Pastoral”, 1870, Paris, Pellerin Collection; “Murder”, 1867-1870, New York, Wildenstein Gallery ).

At Daumier's early Cezanne perceived those romantic moments, that pointed expressiveness of forms and the dynamics of compositional construction, which, however, are somewhat different in some of his painting works recent years. At the same time, Cezanne strove for maximum materiality in the depiction of objects. It is no coincidence that he, like Courbet, often preferred a spatula to brushes. But, unlike Courbet, the tangible density of painting is achieved by Cézanne not so much through light and shadow modeling as through color contrasts. This tendency to convey the materiality of the world through purely pictorial means will soon become the leading one in the artist’s work.

The advice of Pissarro, whom Cézanne met at the Suisse Academy, helped the artist overcome the deliberate heaviness of his manner: the strokes become lighter and more transparent; the palette is lightened (for example, “House of the Hanged Man, Auvers-sur-Oise”, 1873; Louvre).

However, close acquaintance with the Impressionist method soon provokes a creative protest from the master. Without denying the coloristic achievements of C. Monet's school, Cezanne objects to the very desire to record the world in its endless variability. In contrast, he puts forward certain general, unchanging ideas about reality, which, according to the artist, are based on identifying the internal geometric structure of natural forms.

Cezanne's art is characterized by contemplation. This gives rise to that feeling of epic peace, inner concentration, intellectual reflection on the universe that characterizes the works of the artist of his mature period. Hence the constant dissatisfaction with what was created, the desire to repeatedly redo the painted picture, and the artist’s extraordinary tenacity. It is not for nothing that Cézanne’s friend and biographer Ambroise Vollard called the process of his work “meditation with a brush in hand.” The painter dreamed of “returning to classicism through nature.” Cezanne carefully and carefully studies nature, “Writing does not mean slavishly copying an object,” the artist said, “it means capturing the harmony between numerous relationships, it means translating them into your own range...”.

To convey the objective world, in which the most valuable qualities for Cezanne were plasticity and structure, he used a method based on purely pictorial means. He built the volumetric modeling and space of an easel painting not with the help of chiaroscuro and linear graphic means, but with color. But, unlike the Impressionists, color for Cezanne was not an element dependent on lighting. The painter used color relationships in order to, by dissolving values ​​in them and without resorting to modeling, sculpt volumes by “modulation) of the color itself. “There are no lines, no chiaroscuro, there are only contrasts of colors. The modeling of objects follows from the correct balance of tones,” said the artist.

Such principles could be implemented with greatest effect where inanimate, motionless objects predominated. Therefore, Cezanne preferred to work primarily in the genre of landscape and still life, which allowed him to extremely concentrate his attention on the transfer of plastically visible forms. On the other hand, such a formally contemplative true essence the method immediately limited his creative possibilities. The peculiar tragedy of Cezanne’s work lies in the fact that, fighting for the rehabilitation of the integral and synthesizing view of the world, lost by the impressionists, he excluded from sight all the actual inconsistency of reality, all the wealth of human actions, emotions and experiences that constitute the true content of life.

And even the infinite variety of life forms was often rethought by the master in terms of reducing them to some clearly organized constructive schemes. This does not mean, of course, that the artist once and for all sought to reduce all natural forms to a certain number of simple stereometric elements. But this tendency sometimes constrained creative imagination the artist, and, most importantly, as a result of it, that static characteristic of Cezanne’s art appeared, which can be seen in the depiction of almost any motif. This is especially striking when the painter turns to the image of a person. However, in the best paintings dedicated to the image of man, where Cézanne does not strive to apply his artistic doctrine too clearly, he achieves great artistic persuasiveness. The portrait of the artist’s wife from the Kressler collection in New York (1372-1877) is poetic and very lifelike. In “The Smoker” (between 1895 and 1900; Hermitage) he conveys a feeling of calm, restrained thoughtfulness and inner concentration. However, Cezanne also creates a number of colder works, in which a peculiar contemplative-alienated, so to speak, “still life” approach to man begins to be felt.

It is no coincidence that it is in the field of landscape and especially still life that Cezanne’s achievements, if not the most significant, are, in any case, the most unconditional. “Park Landscape” (1888-1890; Munich, Ribs collection) can serve as a characteristic example of a landscape by Cézanne of his mature period. The clear horizontality of the bridge, which is framed by vertical clumps of trees bent over the water, and the thoughtful parallelism of the plans are close to the balance of the classical backstage composition. The motionless surface of the river reflects the outlines of heavy foliage, a house on the shore, and a sky with rare sunlit clouds. In contrast to the color and atmospheric vibration of the impressionistic landscape, Cézanne thickens color, trying to convey the materiality of land and water. Thick strokes are applied to the canvas with blue, emerald and yellow paints, which are perceived as very complex in transitions and gradations, but color masses reduced to a single tone. Heavy branches and the water surface are interpreted in a three-dimensional and generalized manner.

Landscapes by Cezanne from the late 1870s to the 1890s. always monumental: each of them is imbued with epic grandeur, a sense of stability, expedient orderliness, the eternity of nature (“Banks of the Marne”, 1888, Pushkin Museum; “Turn of the Road”, 1879-1882, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; “Little Bridge”, 1879, Louvre; "View of the Bay of Marseilles from Estac", 1883-1885, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Cézanne conveys the expressiveness of the plasticity of objects in his numerous still lifes of the mature period (“Still life with a basket of fruit”, 1888-1890, Louvre; “Blue Vase”, 1885-1887, Louvre; “Pot of geraniums and fruit”, 1890-1894, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Here he strives for a contrasting comparison of shapes and color combinations, which overall creates the impression of thoughtful harmony of the composition.

In the painting “Peaches and Pears” (1888-1890; Pushkin Museum), the selection of objects is strictly thought out: the horizontal of the table emphasizes the crumpled tablecloth, on which bright fruits are placed, and next to it there is a faceted patterned jug and a round sugar bowl. Dark red peaches, pink-golden-greenish pears contrast with the cold colors in which the tablecloth is white with blue-blue transitions. The red border, broken by folds of material and surrounded by its cold reflexes, echoes the muted color echo of the richness of warm tones.

In order to emphasize the volume of objects, the artist simplifies their structure and reveals their main facets. Thus, habitually everyday forms become monumental: round peaches lie heavily on a plate, starched folds of fabric become sculptural, the volumes of pears seem compacted. By consciously monumentalizing nature, the artist wants to convey its weight and plasticity to a greater extent than the characteristic, unique properties of a given object. The tendency to simplify forms, inherent in Cezanne’s art, will be further developed by his followers, the so-called Cézannenists, who use it deliberately one-sidedly and turn it into a self-sufficient formalistic scheme, abstracted from the variety of qualities of concrete life.

The artist's portrait works are united by general mood restrained thoughtfulness and internal concentration: they, as a rule, are not characterized by emphasized psychological acuity of states. The epic peace that attracts Cezanne in nature also characterizes the image of man, who in his canvases is always full of majestic dignity. In such portraits as “Portrait of Choquet” (1876-1877; Cambridge, W. Rothschild collection), “Mme Cezanne in a yellow chair” (1890-1894; Saint-Germain-sur-Oise, private collection), “Boy in a red vest" (1890-1895, variants in different collections), the painter achieves not only the richness and completeness of his painting, but also greater subtlety of the psychological characteristics of the images compared to his other works.

The artist’s multi-figure subject compositions are also marked by sculptural clarity of forms and plastic expressiveness. In numerous versions of The Card Players, Cézanne assembles groups of two, four or five characters. The most expressive work is located in the Louvre (1890-1892), where the agitation of the impulsive state of one of those sitting at the table emphasizes the leisurely reflection of his methodical partner.

The painting “Pierrot and Harlequin” (1888, Pushkin Museum; the second title of the painting is “Mardi-grass, i.e. “The Last Day of Carnival”) can serve as an example of the artist’s pictorial skill.

Dressed in a clumsy robe, the hunched Pierrot, moving baggy with a slow gait, clearly fits into the closed pyramidal composition. This almost frozen inert mass is perceived as even more contrasting in comparison with the slenderness of the walking Harlequin. The clearly perceptible weight of the volumes and the rhythmic relationships between them are emphasized by the pattern and shape of the drapery; the piece of curtain on the right is similar in its heaviness to the figure of Pierrot, the gesture right hand which is rhythmically repeated in a curved line of fabric; the matter falling in large folds on the left seems to echo the movement of Harlequin. The sloping line of the floor, parallel to the outline of the drapery in the upper right corner, emphasizes the slowness of the steps of the depicted characters. The general color scheme of the picture is also based on the alternation of contrasting combinations. Harlequin's tight-fitting black and red leotard is suddenly cut by a white cane, which serves as a natural transition to Pierrot's free-falling clothes, painted in white with lead-blue shadows. Some gloominess of the overall color sound of the picture is created due to the dullness of the bluish background and green-yellow curtains.

In this work, Cezanne achieves amazing pictorial completeness. But the integrity of the perception of living human characters and their relationships is replaced by the mastery of the construction of the picture. Harlequin's fixed gaze and Pierrot's unseeing eyes almost turn the faces of these people into frozen masks.

Among Cézanne's last works, noteworthy are a number of landscapes depicting Mount St. Victoria, on which he worked for many years (variants in the Pushkin Museum, the Hermitage and other collections).

During the same period, the artist again turned to the theme of “Bathers” and “Bathers,” which he developed at the very beginning of his creative career. The balance of forms in space, the harmony and rhythm of both the compositional and very beautifully found coloristic construction of “Great Bathers” (1898-1905; Philadelphia, Museum of Art) testify to Cezanne’s interesting searches in the field of monumental painting. However, Cezanne’s interest in monumental painting could not find its application under the conditions of that time.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) experienced a well-known influence of the Impressionists, who soon took a sharply negative position towards them. The artist rebels against the passive fidelity to visual illusionistic impressions characteristic of impressionism. In return, he puts forward a demand to follow the “mysterious depths of thought,” aligning himself in this with the program of the Symbolist writers. However, unlike Germany and England, the movement of symbolism did not gain a dominant position in Gauguin’s homeland and the very content of Gauguin’s work cannot be reduced to symbolism or modernity.

A man of a stormy and complex biography, a former sailor and stockbroker, Gauguin became an artist in adulthood. At thirty-eight years old, he goes to Brittany, the picturesque village of Pont-Aven, beloved by several landscape artists. Some of these artists following the path of post-impressionism, including Gauguin, united in the Pont-Aven school. A staunch opponent of the “barracks European civilization,” he dreams of finding a source of inspiration in the monuments of the national Middle Ages.

The subject of the painting “Yellow Christ. Pont-Aven-Le Pouldu" (1889; Buffalo, Albright Gallery) was inspired by an ancient wooden statue the artist saw in one of the local chapels. The huge Romanesque crucifix and the peasant women sitting next to it in piously concentrated poses recreate the atmosphere of submissive superstition of the Breton inhabitants, which so fascinated the master at that time.

The landscape that serves as the background is designed by the artist in an emphatically decorative manner: trees glowing with crimson are scattered across the golden-yellow fields, and behind the hills there is a blue stripe of distant forest. The decorative effect is enhanced by white starched scarves, dark blue and black dresses of the women depicted in the foreground, and the bright orange apron of one of them. The intensity of the color is emphasized by a dark outline framing the colorful spots. This is reminiscent of the cloisonne enamel technique, only the role of metal partitions here is played by the lines of the design, between which spots of pure color are distributed. The term “clousonism” (from the French cloison - partition) is quite often used to characterize Gauguin’s work of this period. The search for linear expressiveness also occupies an important place in the artist’s work. And this, as a rule, leads him to a deliberate flatness of the image. The artificiality of the content of the painting “Yellow Christ,” which testifies to Gauguin’s religious and mystical sentiments, is combined with the somewhat modernist mannerism of its artistic solution.

The search for linear expressiveness, conscious simplification of forms and designs, contrasts of color spots also characterize the paintings “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” (1888; Edinburgh, National Gallery), “Beautiful Angela” (1889; Louvre), “Breton Crucifixion” (1889; Brussels, Museum), etc.

Already during this period, Gauguin’s desire to overcome the petty anecdotism of salon painting, the peculiar mixture in it of flat naturalism and vulgar beauty, was carried out by him along the paths of conscious archaization and conventional stylization of forms. This determines both the strengths of his decorative-conventional skill and the peculiar limitations of his creativity. Gauguin's departure from the prosaic nature of the dominant way of life in “prosperous” bourgeois France did not lead him to the desire to reveal truly dramatic, aesthetically significant aspects and problems of contemporary life in society. That is why his colorful and abstractly contemplative creativity, far from both a direct reflection of social life and the complex and rich spiritual world of the people of his time, after the inertia of resistance from the established tastes of society, was accepted and, so to speak, aesthetically mastered by the so-called “ the enlightened" elite of the same bourgeois society, whose aesthetic rejection served as one of the initial impetuses that predetermined the direction of Gauguin's creative quest.

In 1891, Gauguin decided to part with the prosaic, huckstering, hypocritically deceitful bourgeois society, which, as Gauguin was deeply convinced, was hostile to the nature of true creativity. The artist leaves for the island of Tahiti. Far from his homeland, he hopes to find the pristine peace and serene existence inherent in the “golden age” of humanity’s childhood, which he thought was preserved among the aborigines of distant islands. Gauguin, until the last day of his life, preserved the naive illusions of this dream in his art, although the true colonial reality grossly contradicted it.

In 1893, Gauguin painted the painting “Woman Holding a Fruit” (Hermitage). The forms of the human figures are majestic and static, just like the lazy, motionless tropical landscape against which they are depicted. The artist perceives people in inextricable connection with the world around them. For him, man is a perfect creation of nature, like flowers, fruits or trees. When working on an easel painting, Gauguin always sought to solve it decoratively: smooth contours, fabric patterns, and intricate patterns of branches and plants create the feeling of a solemn decoration. The real nature of Tahiti is transformed into a bright colorful pattern.

Gauguin understands color in a generally decorative way: seeing warm shadows on sandy soil, he paints it pink; increasing the intensity of reflexes, turns them into local shadows. He does not use light and shadow modeling, but, applying color in even bright planes, contrasts them, thereby increasing the strength of the color sound of the picture (“Bouquet of Flowers. Flowers of France”, 1891; “Are you jealous?”, 1892, ill. 17; both - Pushkin Museum). Some of the matte fading of the color of Gauguin's works is explained by the shortcomings of the primer, which subsequently had a detrimental effect on them.

The people inhabiting this amazing region seem to Gauguin to be as exotic as the nature of Tahiti. Their life, covered in the memories of ancient legends and traditions, seems to him full of special significant meaning. The fascination with the images of folklore and the mysterious mysteries of the ancient gods finds a kind of refraction in a number of later works masters (“Her name is Vairaumati”, 1892; Pushkin Museum; “The King’s Wife”, 1896, Pushkin Museum, ill. 16; “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?”, 1897, Boston, Museum, etc.)" In recent years, the seriously ill artist fought for the preservation of native culture, tried to protect the local population from the oppression of the French administration.Lonely and despairing, he died in his home, which he once called the “House of Joy.”

The creative quest of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) developed in a significantly different direction than that of Cezanne and Gauguin. If Cézanne strove to reveal the most general laws of the material world, if Gauguin was characterized, regardless of his personal moods, by abstraction from the specific contradictions of the life of contemporary France, then Van Gogh’s art is characterized by the desire to embody the complex inconsistency and confusion of the spiritual world of contemporary man .

Van Gogh's art is acutely psychological and deep, sometimes frantically dramatic. He thought of overcoming the limitations of impressionism as a return of art to the acute problems of human moral and spiritual life. In the art of Van Gogh, the crisis of humanism of the late 19th century, the painful and hopeless search for the true path by its most honest representatives, found its first open expression. This determined the deep humanity and sincerity of Van Gogh’s work and, at the same time, the traits of painful nervousness and subjective expression that often manifest themselves in his art.

If a one-sided interpretation, and essentially a falsification of Cezanne’s legacy, became the basis for the creation of coldly rationalistic, abstract and formal movements in bourgeois art of the 20th century, then a one-sided distorted interpretation of certain trends in Van Gogh’s work is characteristic of expressionistic and generally subjective-pessimistic movements Western European bourgeois art of the 20th century. For us, what is decisive is not the features in Van Gogh’s work captured by formalism, but all of his art - the art of an honest and sincere artist who embodied the tragedy of humanism in the era of the emerging crisis of bourgeois culture.

Van Gogh was born in Holland into a poor family of a provincial pastor. Very early on, a gap emerged between young Vincent, painfully searching for the meaning of life, and the petty-bourgeois, self-satisfied atmosphere of his family environment.

Van Gogh leaves for Belgium, looking for solutions to the issues that concern him through missionary work. In 1878-1879 he preaches the Gospel in the coal mines of Borinage. However, soon the church authorities refuse the services of a man who lacks the necessary oratorical qualities and, moreover, is too passionately concerned about the “worldly” adversities of his poor flock.

Depressed by failure, Van Gogh for the first time at the age of twenty-seven turned to the language of art, believing in its great effective power. So he hopes to become useful to people. From the autumn of 1880 until the spring of 1881, the future painter visited the Brussels Academy of Arts. Soon he interrupts his art education and returns to his homeland. Subsequently, Van Gogh rushes between his stepfather's house, The Hague and other cities in Holland and Belgium. He grasps, equally unsuccessfully, at a variety of things, while simultaneously working hard as an artist.

The first five years of Van Gogh's creative activity (1880-1885) are usually defined as the Dutch period, although it would be more accurate to call it Dutch-Belgian. During these years, he strove in his art to reflect the difficult life of the “humiliated and insulted”, with deep feeling he conveyed poverty and hard work of miners, artisans, peasants. It is deeply noteworthy that the aspiring artist turns to the example of Millet, copying his “Angelus”, and in 1881 to his “The Sower” (Van Gogh will return to this image in the future).

It is no less natural that Van Gogh, who lived for more than a year in the country of mines, with all his deep sincere democracy, turned out to be alien to the creative experience of Meunier, an artist who was not so compassionate for the poor as he was affirming the harsh beauty and greatness of a man of industrial labor. The famous “Potato Eaters” (1885; Laren, Van Gogh collection) are painted in gloomy dark colors and are imbued with a spirit of gloomy depression, almost animal submission to one’s fate. At the same time, in the works of the early period, the artist’s ability to convey with particular intensity and persuasiveness both the emotional intensity of his worldview and the confusion of the inner world of the people he depicts is gradually revealed.

Van Gogh begins to overcome professional shortcomings (approximateness in rendering angles and proportions, poor command of anatomy, etc.), which appear in such drawings as “The Street Sweeper” (1880-1881; Otterlo, Kroller-Müller Museum). He is increasingly mastering the skill of conveying the characteristic and expressive. Thus, in the lithograph “Despair” (1882), he conveys with merciless truthfulness the ugliness of the body of a withered woman and at the same time, with deep sympathy, reveals the deep and bitter hopelessness that engulfs this ugly, pitiful, suffering person.

Van Gogh also conveys dramatic emotion, a painful, almost painful sensitivity to suffering in works dedicated to the natural world and inanimate objects (drawing “Tree”, 1882, Otterlo, Kroller-Muller Museum, and “Winter Garden”, 1884, Laren, collection Van Gogh). In them, Van Gogh managed to fulfill his desire to “put into the landscape the same feeling as into the human figure... This is the special ability of a plant to cling convulsively and passionately to the ground; and yet it turns out to be torn out of her by a storm” (from a letter to his brother). Such “humanization,” a sharp dramatization of the world of things and nature, is one of the most characteristic features of Van Gogh’s work.

By 1886, the general direction of Van Gogh's creative quest was fully revealed. The artist's move to France finally defines him artistic development. Acquaintance with the Impressionists, the radiance of the light of the sunny south (Van Gogh moved from Paris to Arles in 1888) help him free himself from the remnants of black color and reveal that keen sense of color contrasts, that emotional flexible expressiveness of the brushstroke, which were already formed in Van’s creative manner -Gog.

During the last four years of his life, the obsessively working Van Gogh created a huge series of paintings that determined his place in the history of modern European art. True, attacks of mental illness and sometimes feverish haste in his work are reflected in the disparity of his works. But the most significant of them, along with Cezanne’s painting, had a tremendous impact on the entire further development of Western European painting.

The French period in the artist’s work is characterized by an unconditional use of the experience of the impressionists, a fundamentally different understanding of the tasks of art compared to them. Thus, in his painting “Road in Auvers after the Rain” (1890; Pushkin Museum), one is struck not only by the subtle, accurate rendering of nature washed with freshness, illuminated by the sun and still sparkling with moisture from the rain that has just passed, but also by a keen sense of its rhythmic life: rows of garden ridges, curling trees, curling clouds of smoke from a running train, the sun shining and playing on the wet grass - all this merges into a holistic, life-filled picture of a joyful summer world.

The search for new realistic expressiveness is clearly manifested in his “Boats in Sainte-Marie” (1888; private collection). The sonorous intensity of color aesthetically emphasizes and laconically generalizes the character of nature and lighting of the Mediterranean south. The sharp rhythm of masts and yards crossing each other, the rapidly curved silhouettes of boats pulled ashore seem to retain the feeling of lightly running on the waves.

At the same time, Van Gogh also creates works in which the beginning of subjective expression, the principle of self-expression of one’s state, receive primacy over the task of reflecting and evaluating the world. Such a departure is felt to a certain extent in his “Red Vineyards in Arles” (1888; Pushkin Museum). The painting, expressively beautiful in its color scheme, contains a contradiction between the idyllic motif (sunset in a cloudless sky, leisurely and calm harvest in a vineyard already engulfed in withering) and the dramatic mood of the image. Thus, restless brushstrokes turn the vineyard into a dull burning stream of flame, the blue branches of the trees are permeated with a restless impulse, the chord of sickly orange tones of the sky and the heavy, bluish-white disk of the sun create a feeling of vague anxiety and confusion.

A visionary character is also inherent in such landscapes as “Starry Night. Saint-Rémy" (1889; New York, Museum of Modern Art). The black-blue flame of the top of the cypress tree in the foreground is contrasted with the spire of a distant bell tower, hidden in the blue darkness of the village. Golden and silver-blue flickering spirals of light swirl across the sky. All this turns the picture into a peaceful one summer night into an almost apocalyptic vision.

Of course, the feeling of the formidable hostility of the world alienated from man, its gloomy dangerous beauty aesthetically expressed the situation in which the lonely, suffering “little man” is located, not connected with the class that has learned the laws of the development of history. Therefore, such works by Van Gogh are deeply sincere, and their appearance was historically inevitable. But at the same time, they were an artistic expression of the spiritual world of those social strata that, suffering from the deformities of their contemporary reality, did not see real ways to overcome these deformities and absolutized their subjective state, their sense of tragic despair. It is this side of Van Gogh’s work that will be picked up by expressionism and similar artistic movements in the art of the 20th century.

It would be wrong, however, to see only this side in the work of Van Gogh, a great and honest artist. His “Road in Auvers after the Rain”, “The Artist’s Bedroom in Arles” (1888; Laren, Van Gogh Collection), “Chair and Pipe” (1888-1889; London, Tate Gallery) and many other works, striking in its psychological portrait truth excite with the realistic power of the image, the truthfulness of feelings. In some works of this kind, one is struck not only by the truthfulness of his emotionally expressive artistic language, but also by that feeling of somewhat excited cheerfulness, a major perception of the life of nature, which shows that Van Gogh was sensitive to the beauty and harmony of life. The drama, the nervous breakdown, so characteristic of many of Van Gogh’s works, is not the result of his painfully biased craving for the ugly and disgusting, for their perverted relish (as was characteristic of some decadent cultural masters of that time), but the fruit of his heightened sensitivity to those ugliness and dissonances that social reality carried (Prisoners' Walk, 1890; Pushkin Museum).

Sensitivity to the principle hostile to man, always lurking in the life of the society where Van Gogh lived, and hidden under the shell of everyday life, found its expression in his “Night Cafe in Arles” (1888; New York, Clark Collection). The melancholy and hopelessness of the loneliness of the human soul gripped by aching despair are conveyed in the dimly bright, deathly lighting of a half-empty cafe; they are conveyed in the sad figures of rare visitors, as if stunned by wine and their alienation from the world. This state of mind is expressed in the sharp dissonances of colors - the green cloth of the billiard table, the pink and yellow floor, the red walls, the yellow circles of light around the burning lamps - and especially in the lonely, helplessly sad, phantos-like figure of the waiter standing frozen with his arms down.

"I have tried.. . in this atmosphere of a hellish furnace and pale burning brimstone, embody all the power of darkness and the atmosphere of wars. And yet I wanted to reveal all this under the appearance of Japanese lightness and Tartarin’s complacency” (from a letter to his brother).

This same enormous internal tension of experience is revealed in his portraits and self-portraits. Thus, his “Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin” (1888; Cambridge, Harvard University Art Museums) is characterized by that feeling of stern and slightly mournful concentration and hidden obsession, which gives us the opportunity to recognize in this portrait the artist Van Gogh with his unique artistic vision peace. Such is his “Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear” (1889; Chicago, Block Collection), full of nervous energy and alert tension.

In the painting “Woman in the Tambourine Café” (1887; Laren, Van Gogh collection), in the mournful and tired face of a woman sitting at a table in an empty cafe, in the nervous and restless texture of the strokes, the theme of devastated melancholy and loneliness, which for the first time sounded so bright and definite in Degas' Absinthe. But here this motive is expressed with less restraint than in Degas, with more passionate bitterness.

In recent years, Van Gogh was subject to bouts of severe mental illness. Some researchers have been tempted to attribute the character of Van Gogh's art to his mental illness. But that's not true. If Van Gogh's art was a symptom of a disease, then it was a deadly disease of society itself - the beginning of an incurable crisis of bourgeois humanism.

A contemporary of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). His work is also classified as post-impressionism.

The work of Toulouse-Lautrec as a whole is characterized by a peculiar development and modification of the traditions of art by Degas and partly E. Manet towards an increasing emphasis on the moments of expression of the image, reaching almost to the grotesque of the nervous dynamics of the form. In the artist’s works, unknown midinettes and famous singers of night cafes swiftly pass before the viewer in a motley succession; brilliant representatives of the artistic and literary bohemia of Paris and degenerate denizens of brothels; They pass by, either possessed by feverishly convulsive joy, or overwhelmed by the melancholy of loneliness.

The unusual, sometimes tragic events of his biography, the originality of the environment in which the artist’s life passed, played a certain role in the formation of Toulouse-Lautrec’s creative inclinations. He was one of those French artists of the late 19th century in whose work the theme of social and mental disorder, albeit in a very traditional and narrow thematic sphere, found direct expression.

Toulouse-Lautrec came from an ancient hereditary family of viscounts of Southern France. As a child, he broke both legs and remained crippled forever. His physical deformity made him a pariah in the eyes of the respectable aristocracy.

The models for the artist’s first paintings are most often his close ones and relatives. The portraits “Countess Toulouse-Lautrec at breakfast in Malrome” (1883), “Countess Adele de Toulouse-Lautrec” (1887; both Albi, Toulouse-Lautrec Museum) are marked by the influence of impressionistic technique, but the desire for maximum individualization of characteristics is, at times, special the merciless, sometimes intimately sad vigilance of observation speaks of a fundamentally different understanding of the image of a person. These are “Young Woman Sitting at a Table” (1889; Laren, Van Gogh Collection), “The Laundress” (1889; Paris, Dortu Collection) and other works.

The further evolution of Toulouse-Lautrec's art is marked by the continuation of the search for psychological expressiveness, developing in parallel with the interest in conveying the concrete, unique appearance of the characters depicted. The canvas “In the Cafe” (1891; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) is close in content to the famous work of Degas, already mentioned above, “Absinthe”. But in Toulouse-Lautrec’s interpretation, the image of two degraded drunkards, stupidly frozen at a dirty table, takes on an even more dramatic coloring.

Toulouse-Lautrec's position is the ironic position of a satirist who constantly uses the method of grotesque exaggeration. A similar feature was clearly evident in such paintings as “La Goulue Entering the Moulin Rouge” (1892; Paris, Bernheim de Viller collection), “Dance at the Moulin Rouge” (1890; Philadelphia, private collection). The desire to convey a vivid originality of movements, gestures, and poses is especially clearly visible in the image of a bunk dancing in the depths of the hall. The grotesque silhouette of a man performing unusual entrechat movements with his flexible legs, and the sharp movements of his red-haired partner in red stockings create a sharp and laconic image, which has features that bring it closer to the expressiveness of the poster.

The role of drawing in the art of a master is extremely great. The sharpness, expressiveness, richness and variety of Toulouse-Lautrec's graphic style make him an outstanding draftsman of the 19th century. Graphics make up a significant part of his creative heritage (numerous prints, pastels, lithographs, drawings). Famous posters occupy a special place. It was during these years that the specificity of the poster as a special form of art developed. The poster in the modern sense of the word originated in the art of Toulouse-Lautrec and partly Steinlen.

His color lithograph “Divan japonais” (1892), advertising a small cafe-concert, is rightfully considered one of the best posters in history. The unexpectedly sharp silhouette of a lady in a fashionable tight dress and a fancy hat, brought to the fore, and a nervously sinuous line outlining the contour of a man sitting behind, form the compositional core of the sheet. Figure main character, singing on stage, is deliberately set back in such a way that only her dress and her hands clad in long dark gloves are visible, and her head is cut off by the frame of the sheet. As a result, those who look at the poster seem to find themselves in the atmosphere of the auditorium, on the stage of which singer Yvette Gilbert is performing.

Guilbert Lautrec turned to the image of Yvette many times. In 1894, he made an entire album of lithographs, where he captured characteristic movements and the subtlest shades of mood, facial expressions of the Montmartre star. One of preparatory options A portrait of Yvette Guilbert, executed in the same year with multi-color oil essence, is kept in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

In some portraits of the 1890s. Along with a penchant for an acutely grotesque, caricatured rendering of a person’s image, other tendencies can be traced. In the portrait of Dr. Gabriel Tapier de Saleirand (1894; Albi, Toulouse-Lautrec Museum), the figure of a slowly walking elegant man, behind whom strange people with faces reminiscent of nightmarish masks swarm, becomes almost a symbol of hopeless despair and loneliness. The same theme can be seen in the painting “Jeanne Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge” (1892; Hertford, Wadsworth Athenaeum). A note of sad lyricism sounds in the lonely tired figure of a woman, in her extinct sad face.

The work of Toulouse-Lautrec played a big role in the development of French graphics at the end of the last century. Felix Vallotton (1865-1925) continues his further search for the expressiveness of graphic technology, understood in a somewhat more self-sufficiently formal way. Swiss by birth, Vallotton spent most of his life in Paris and is generally regarded as a representative of the French school. Vallotton also worked a lot as a painter. His interest in abstract, cold volume in the interpretation of human figures makes him one of the first representatives of the neoclassical version of modernism in painting. However, the most significant contribution to the history of art was Vallotton's graphics. It was this artist who had priority in developing new possibilities for woodcut printing, which was little practiced at that time.

Illustrating “The Book of Masks” (1895) by Remy de Gourmont, Vallotton creates a number of portraits of famous writers of the time. Without abandoning the individualization of portrait images, he achieves significant generalization in the characteristics of his models. Particularly interesting is the portrait of F. M. Dostoevsky (wood engraving), the tragic complexity of whose nature was guessed by the author. The white spot of the face with the intensely inquisitive gaze of attentive eyes stands out clearly against a smooth black background. Sharply scratched lines simplistically indicate the shape of the nose, eyebrows, hair outlines and wrinkles.

The woodcut “Demonstration” (1893) is interesting for its dynamics. Vallotton shows the scene of the dispersal of the demonstration in a sharp top-down perspective, as if seen from an upper floor window. The restless flickering of the black figures is perceived by the master as if from the position of an artistically accurate outside observer.

A special place in the development of French graphics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. occupies the work of Theophile Steinlen (1859-1923). Steinlen continues in the new conditions the traditions of democratic combat magazine graphics in France. The artist is no stranger to the discoveries of such masters of the 1860-1870s as E. Manet, E. Degas, who created a complete expressive dynamics a language that acutely and accurately conveys characteristic moments in the ever-moving life of a big city. However, Steinlen is distinguished not so much by the brilliance of artistry in solving this or that motive, but by the socio-ethical focus of the figurative solution.

Like an accurate and keen observer social life Paris, he stands closer to the tradition of Degas than E. Manet or C. Monet, without, however, achieving the artistic prominence and laconic precision of his older contemporary. The strong side of Steinlen's work is the desire for the social effectiveness of art, direct democracy, connection with life not generally on the “Parisian street”. and with the world of feelings, thoughts, aspirations of the working people of the great city. In this sense, he is rather the heir of Charlet and Daumier, a representative of the democratic, socially focused line in French realistic culture.

Turning not only to the depiction of workers, the working class, but trying to express its feelings and ideals, Steinlen is close to the transition from bourgeois-democratic realism to realism associated with the ideals of socialist democracy. True, these ideals for Steinlen still appear in a vaguely indefinite form, and in this respect the artist shares the strength and weakness of the spontaneously socialist orientation of the views and feelings of the working masses of France of those years.

Many, especially early works Steinlen (1880-1890s) are illustrations for popular songs of the Parisian suburbs, published in separate collections or on the pages of democratic magazines. These are full movements, sometimes crafty, sometimes sad, and sometimes sentimentally sensitive in the spirit of “cruel romance”, as if they were spied on the street scenes: “Winter” (1890s; drawing for a poem by R. Ponchon for the magazine “Gilles Bdaz” illustre"), "Young Working Women" - perky mockingbirds going on a date after work; “The Old Tramp” is a somewhat sentimental composition depicting a lonely old man sharing his meager meal with his only friend - a shaggy, thin dog.

A special place in the master’s work is occupied by his illustrations for “Crenkebil” by A. France, full of humanism and sad humor, made in 1901, so highly appreciated by the author of the story himself.

The social, anti-imperialist orientation is especially clear in Steinlen’s illustration for the song, which tells about the plight of a soldier sent to serve in the colonial troops. Anti-militarism and anti-colonialism - characteristic works by Steinlen, a journalist, a regular contributor to such left-wing newspapers as “Assiet au Ber”, “Chambar Sosialist”, etc. Such, for example, are the drawings castigating the “civilizing” activities of the French and Belgian colonialists in the Congo.

Of great importance are Steinlen's lithographs dedicated to the struggle of the working class of France. His “strike” (1898), without external pathos, expressively conveys the formidable calm of the strikers gathered at the factory gates guarded by soldiers. The gallery of characters of these workers, tall inhabitants of the north of France with their faces full of stern intelligence and stubborn, folk energy, is sharply and sparingly outlined. Precisely contrasted with them is the typical appearance of squat “dark” peasant boys dressed in soldier’s uniforms, driven from the rural south of France here, to a foreign country of mines and factories with unfamiliar and incomprehensible people.

His color lithograph “Crime in Pas-de-Calais” (1893) foreshadows future revolutionary posters of the 20th century with its laconic social force and drama. The pathos of “Crimes in Pas-de-Calais” is the pathos of bitterness and anger. This magazine illustration poster is dedicated to real fact: Eight hundred families of striking miners were kicked out into the cold by gendarmes from company-owned huts. The image of a mournful and angry powerful miner with a child on his shoulder, walking at the head of a family overwhelmed by grief and menacingly clutching a miner’s pick with his hand, grows into a symbol of unbending will, the irreconcilable revolutionary anger of the working class of France.

Steinlen's art developed during the second half of the 1880s and into the 1890s. and is closely connected with the awakening of the working class and, in general, the democratic forces of France after the period of dominance of reaction that followed the suppression of the Paris Commune of 1871. Steinlen continued to work in his own manner on the usual range of topics in the 20th century. And although he responded to the events of the First World War with an interesting series “Refugees” (1916), opposing with its humanism the chauvinistic propaganda of those years, he remains in the history of French culture as a master associated primarily with democratic and socialist trends in French art of the 1880s - early 1900s

In general, during these years in France, in the work of its greatest masters, the problems of the transition to new forms of realism, to overcoming the dispersed form and the elusive instantaneity of impressionist perception were posed. However, in the conditions of the growing first signs of the general crisis of the culture of capitalism, which had entered the final phase of its development, it was impossible to solve the problem of the transition of art to a higher level while remaining within the confines of the worldview and aesthetic ideas of the old society. Hence the duality and inconsistency of the quests of such great masters as Cezanne and Van Gogh. This inconsistency made possible a one-sided interpretation of their heritage by formalist art of the 20th century.