Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

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Inspired by: Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

This painting depicts the aftermath of Baron Haussmann’s controversial plan to renovate Paris. His wide boulevards replaced many of the beloved buildings of the city. Caillebotte was in the camp of those who hated his plan, and what it would do to the Parisians. The scene is a grey rainy day, the colors almost monochromatic, which instills a glum feeling in his figures. The canvas is monumental, almost eight feet across, which allows you to study the individual characters. and some are quite whimsical. Two legs of a man appear under an umbrella, there is a man carrying a ladder through the streets, and a woman who is opening an umbrella which seems to be shoved it into the head of the main character. Caillebotte was very wealthy. His father made a fortune supplying Napoleon's army with uniforms, and Gustave inherited that fortune at age 26. He was a close friend of many of the Impressionists, and funded and curated their exhibitions. He loaned them money (in fact, he paid the rent on Monet's studio for a while.) Most importantly, he bought their paintings for top dollar, amassing a collection of more than seventy works of Impressionist friends. His death at the young age of forty-five brought an abrupt end to an evolving career. He donated his Impressionist paintings as well as many of his own to the French State. The bequest specified that all the works should be displayed in the Louvre Museum. This was somewhat problematic, as his art was still not accepted widely by the mainstream artistic establishment.

To see original: https://bit.ly/4bw3KlE

Inspired by: Edgar Degas - The Absinthe Drinker

Absinthe (also known as La Fée Verte or ‘the green fairy’) was a green colored, highly alcoholic spirit. Poured over ice and served with water and a cube of sugar to soften the bitter taste. It was highly addictive and known to cause hallucinations. Its growing popularity and its negative social effects led to absinthe being banned in much of Europe and America.This cafe has been identified. It is "La Nouvelle Athènes", in Place Pigalle near Sacre-Coeur, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. At the time it was a meeting place for modern artists and a hotbed of intellectual bohemians. Degas asked people he knew to pose for the figures. Ellen André was an actress, and an artist's model, who posed for a number of other impressionists. Marcellin Desboutin was an engraver and artist. When criticism of the painting cast a slur on their reputations, Degas had to state publicly that they were not alcoholics. 'L'Absinthe' sparked controversy more than once. The painting was first shown, along with 25 of his paintings, in the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877. The critics found it ugly and disgusting. It was then put into storage. It was shown again 16 years later, in England. The English critics viewed it as a warning lesson against absintheand the French in general. In May 1893, the work was bought for the amazing sum of 21,000 francs ($275,000 today) by Count Isaac de Camondo, who bequeathed it to the Louvre in 1908 and from there to the Musée d'Orsay. Its original title was Dans un Café, a name often used today. Other early titles were A sketch of a French Café and Figures at Café. It was changed to L'Absinthe when it was exhibited in England in 1893.

To see original: https://bit.ly/3GgFkho

Édouard Manet - The Balcony

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Inspired by Édouard Manet - The Balcony

All the models are friends or relatives of Manet. Painter Berthe Morisot is the lady sitting on the left. Standing in the back is another painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is the violinist Fanny Claus (no kidding). The fourth figure, partially obscured in the interior's background, is possibly Léon Leenhoff, Manet's son. Berthe Morisot was one of the three important female Impressionists. She was one of Manet’s favorite models. This was the first portrait Manet did of her. Then he painted her 11 more times. She would become the wife of his brother, Eugène.

There were many iterations of this painting. It was inspired by Majas on the Balcony by Francisco Goya. Which was very similar, and which Manet gave attribution. This painting was just a redo. and it took Manet a couple of shots at to get it right. In his first version there were two women on a balcony. The name of that painting is Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus (no kidding). In the first version Fanny is seated in the chair and Berthe is standing, back to painter. In this version he added two more characters and made Berthe sit and Fanny stand. Oh, and he threw in a dog with a bow in its hair beneath Morrisot’s chair. Then Surrealist René Magritte painted Perspective II: Manet's Balcony in 1950, a commentary on this work. In Magritte’s version there are four coffins (one "seated") in place of the four people. Magritte said "For me the setting of The Balcony offered a suitable place to put coffins. The 'mechanism' at work here might form the object of a learned explanation, which I am unable to provide.”

The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1869, and then kept by Manet until his death in 1883.

To see original: https://bit.ly/3rtj39s

Jean-François Millet - The Gleaners

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Inspired by - Jean-François Millet - The Gleaners

Jean-François Millet
The Gleaners - 1857 - Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Santa Classics - 2015
Millet once said, ’’The human side of art is what touches me most." In The Gleaners, he depicts poor women collecting grain from the fields after the harvest. Millet first hung The Gleaners at the Salon in 1857. It immediately drew negative criticism from the upper classes. Having recently gone through the revolution of 1848, it was viewed with trepidation. Critics said this Image glorified the working class. To them it was a reminder that French society was built on the shoulders of the working masses. They associated the representation with the growing movement of socialism. Also, this large size was usually reserved for religious or mythological subjects. But here was used to represent the plight of the poor. Because of this criticism, after the exhibition the painting was sold for 3,000 francs well below Millet’s asking price of 4,000 francs. Twenty years later, when Millet’s popularity was on the rise, it was sold for 300,000 francs.
Gleaning was the collecting of edible leftover’s, after the crop had been harvested. In France, this had been permitted by law since 1554 and remains on the books today. The reasoning for this stems from the Old Testament. “When you’re harvesting your field, if you forget a sheaf, don’t go back into the field to get it. Let the foreigners, orphans and widows take it. If you do this, the Eternal your God will bless everything you do.” Maybe this was not generosity, but the farmer’s hope for continued good harvests. To see original: https://bit.ly/3uYf19u