Childe Hassam - Poppies (Poppies, Isles of Shoals) [1891]

Childe Hassam - Poppies (Poppies, Isles of Shoals) [1891], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting shows the view from Celia Thaxter's flower garden on the Isles of Shoals toward an outcropping called Babb's Rock. Although one could see ample signs of man's presence from Thaxter's garden, Hassam usually excluded them from his paintings. Here, only a sailboat passing in the distance hints that we are not in a pristine, wild environment. The composition is arranged with three distinct and equal bands of space. In each zone different colours predominate: green and red for the flowers; blue, purple, and white for the rocks and water; and pale blue for the sky. Hassam's brushwork is equally varied, ranging from lush red and white strokes defining the flowers to long drags of pigment to suggest the multihued surfaces of the rocks. At the bottom he left areas of canvas bare, adding yet another colour and texture.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on canvas, 50.2 x 61 cm]

Claude Monet - Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil [1875]

Claude Monet - Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This work is one of four similar views of the plain of Gennevilliers, just southeast of Argenteuil, which Monet executed in summer 1875. He first painted the subject two years earlier in the celebrated "Poppies near Argenteuil" (Musée d'Orsay, Paris).

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 54 x 73.7 cm]

Studio of Gerard ter Borch the Younger - The Music Lesson [c.1670]

Studio of Gerard ter Borch the Younger - The Music Lesson [c.1670], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on canvas, 69 x 55.1 cm]

Gerard Ter Borch - The Music Lesson [c.1668]

Gerard Ter Borch - The Music Lesson [c.1668], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

"Love will prevail as long as there is music and merrymaking," wrote Dutch poet Jacob Cats in the 1600s; this painting exemplifies Cats's slogan. As the elegantly dressed woman plays the lute, a man, who may be her instructor, keeps rhythm and time with his hand. The foot warmer in the lower left corner symbolises love, and the bed suggests an amorous relationship between the man and woman, maybe even seduction. 

Gerard ter Borch always set a mood, creating a subtle psychological interplay between the people in his intimate paintings. He delighted in meticulously describing and contrasting varied textures: the soft pile of the woman's velvet jacket, distinguished from its plump white fur trim; the shimmer of her pearl-colored satin dress; the dog's soft, wavy fur; and the variations of wood grain in the cello, furniture, and floor. He noticed even the most minute details, such as the nails in the floorboards and the brass door handle. Ter Borch created about eleven paintings of female lute players, often repeating the motifs of the woman in the satin gown and fur-trimmed jacket, the dog, the foot warmer, the four-poster bed in the background, and the partially opened door.

[Paul Getty Museum - Oil on canvas, 26.625 x 21.625 inches]

Giovanni Boldini - Highway of Combes-la-Ville [1873]

Giovanni Boldini - Highway of Combes-la-Ville [1873], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Giovanni Boldini (Ferrara, December 31, 1842 - Paris, July 11, 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter. Boldini attained great success in London as a portraitist. From 1872 he lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Impressionist influence but which most closely resembles the work of his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu. 

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 69.2 x 101.4 cm]

Giuseppe De Nittis - Return from the Races [1875]

Giuseppe De Nittis - Return from the Races [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Giuseppe De Nittis (Barletta, February 25, 1846 - Saint-Germain-en-Laye, August 12, 1884) was an Italian painter whose work merges the styles of Salon art and impressionism. 

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 58.1 x 114.6 cm]

Johan Barthold Jongkind - The Boulevard de Port-Royal, Paris [1877]

Johan Barthold Jongkind - The Boulevard de Port-Royal, Paris [1877], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jongkind produced a number of views of this newly constructed boulevard near his studio in Paris, and a related watercolour of 1874 includes detailed notes about the subject. A late work, this is an important example of the roughly handled paint surface and use of colour that was admired by the younger generation of Impressionists.

[National Gallery, London - Oil on canvas, 42.2 x 66.5 cm]