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List
of Modern Paintings Analyzed
Please Note
(1) New paintings are added each week.
(2) Unless otherwise stated, the medium is oil on canvas.
Listed A-Z By Artist
• FREDERIC BAZILLE (1841-70)
Realist-style painter associated with the early Impressionist movement.
Gave generous financial support to Monet and others. Died at only 29.
- Family Reunion (1867)
- Bazille's Studio (1870)
• MAX BECKMANN (1884-1950)
German expressionist painter, associated with Die Neue Sachlichkeit
group, best-known for his self-portraits and three-panel triptychs.
- The Beginning (triptych)
(1949)
• PIERRE BONNARD (1867-1947)
Post-Impressionist French painter, printmaker, decorative artist, co-founder
of Les Nabis, best-known for intimate domestic scenes and dreamlike
colourism.
- The Green Blouse (1919)
- The Terrace at Vernon (1939)
• GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE
(1848-94)
Like Bazille, a wealthy patron of the Impressionist group but now recognized
as a highly talented if inconsistent painter.
- The Floor Scrapers (1875)
- Paris Street; Rainy Day
(1877)
• CARLO CARRA (1881-1966)
Italian Divisionist and Futurist who became noted for both his 'metaphysical
paintings' and his classical Renaissance-inspired paintings.
- The Drunken Gentleman
(1916).
• MARY CASSATT (1845-1926)
Paris-based and wealthy, she was the leading female American Impressionist
painter. Famous for her female portraits and genre pictures.
- Young Woman Sewing in the Garden
(1886)
• CEZANNE (1839-1906)
Persuaded by Pissarro to adopt Impressionist-style plein-air painting,
Cezanne's desire for form and structure led him to develop a personal
Post-Impressionist idiom with strong classical features that combined
nature and art. Influenced both Cubists and classical realists.
- The House of the Hanged Man
(1873)
- The Bridge at Maincy (1879)
- Mont Sainte-Victoire Paintings
(1882-1906)
- The Boy in the Red Vest
(1889-90)
- Man Smoking a Pipe
(1890-2)
- Woman with a Coffee Pot
(1890-5)
- The Card Players (1892-6)
- The Large Bathers (1894-1906)
London and Philadelphia
- Lady in Blue (c.1900)
- Young Italian Woman Leaning on
her Elbow (1900)
• GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888-1978)
Italian painter and writer, inventor of Metaphysical painting, active
in the Classical Revival that gathered momentum in the 1900s. Acknowledged
as a pioneer of Surrealist painting
- The Uncertainty of the Poet
(1913)
- Song of Love (1914)
- The Mystery and Melancholy
of a Street (1914)
• COURBET (1819-77)
The acknowledged leader of French Realism, he is best-known for his use
of huge canvases to add extra monumentality and significance to his radical
pictures honouring the common people and their environment.
- A Burial at Ornans (1850)
- The Artist's Studio
(1855)
• DEGAS (1834-1917)
Impressionist genre painter and portraitist who specialized in pictures
of ballerinas, women at their toilette and jockeys at the races. Like
his friend Edouard Manet, Degas revered the Old Masters and preferred
studio work to plein-air painting.
- The Bellelli Family (1858-67)
- Race Horses in front
of the Stands (1866-8)
- The Ballet Class (1871-4)
- Absinthe (1876)
- Portraits at the Bourse
(1879)
- Women Ironing (1884)
- Woman Combing Her Hair
(1887-90)
• DELACROIX (1797-1863)
Leader of French Romanticism, he specialized in history paintings as well
as Orientalism. Personified the free-flowing, colourist wing of French
painting, in contrast to the calm. measured neoclassicism of J.A.D. Ingres
and others.
- Death of Sardanapalus
(1827)
- Liberty Leading the People
(1830)
• GOYA (1746-1828)
Spanish Romantic artist, official portrait painter to Charles IV, noted
for his etchings and engravings as well his aptly named "Black Paintings",
which reflected the deep depression and paranoia from which he suffered
in his sixties and seventies.
- The Third of May, 1808 (1814)
Oil on canvas.
- The Colossus (1808-12) Oil on
canvas.
- Saturn Devouring his Son
(1822) Mural painting transferred to canvas.
• EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967)
American realist artist best-loved for his offbeat urban genre paintings
as well as his personal vision of 20th-century America.
- Lighthouse at Two Lights
(1929)
- Nighthawks (1942)
• J.A.D. INGRES (1780-1867)
Conservative neoclassical-style academic painter, best-loved for his female
nudes and portraits. Led the opposition to Delacroix's Romanticism
- The Valpincon Bather (1808)
- La Grand Odalisque (1814)
- Portrait of Monsieur Bertin
(1832)
- Portrait of Madame Moitessier
(1844-56)
• WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-97)
Dutch-born American abstract expressionist painter, member of the New
York School, best-known for his style of gestural painting, as exemplified
by his semi-abstract images of women.
- Seated Woman (1944) Oil
and charcoal on canvas.
• FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955)
Cubist-style painter, member of Section d'Or, inventor of "Tubism"
- a Cubist idiom that used cylindrical shapes rather than flat overlapping
planes of mainstream Cubism. During the 1920s and 30s he joined the Classical
Revival.
- Soldiers Playing at Cards
(1917) Kroller-Muller State Museum, Otterlo.
- The Mechanic (1920) National Gallery
of Canada.
- Three Women (Le Grand Dejeuner)
(1921) MOMA, New York.
- Nudes against a Red Background
(1923) Kunstmuseum, Basel.
- Two Sisters (1935) Gemaldegalerie
SMPK, Berlin.
• EDOUARD MANET (1832-83)
One of the founding fathers of modern art, greatly admired by Monet and
others, he was a realist painter with Impressionist tendencies.
- Dejeuner sur l'herbe
(1863)
- Olympia (1863)
- The Balcony (1868)
- Portrait of Emile Zola
(1868)
- Portrait of Berthe Morisot
(1872)
- The Road-Menders, Rue de Berne
(1878)
- A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
(1882)
• HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954)
French painter, printmaker and graphic artist, famous for his expressionistic,
highly coloured imagery. Together with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp,
Matisse is considered to be one of the three most influential artists
of the early twentieth century.
- Nasturtiums and the 'Dance'
(1912)
• JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET (1814-75)
French Realist painter, contemporary of Courbet, member of the Barbizon
School near Fontainebleau. Best-known for his dignified genre paintings
of peasants tilling the soil.
- The Gleaners (1857)
- The Angelus (1859)
- Man with a Hoe (1862)
• MODIGLIANI (1884-1920)
Highly innovative Italian painter and sculptor, active in Paris, best-loved
for portraits and female nudes executed in a 'flat' primitive style marked
by elongated faces and figures. Died of tubercular meningitis at the age
of 35.
- Portrait of Juan Gris
(1915)
- Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne
(1918)
• CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Founder and driving force behind French Impressionism, and probably the
greatest ever exponent of plein-air painting. Dominated by his
lifelong quest to master the depiction of sunlight, he painted the same
scene (Gare Sainte-Lazare, Rouen Cathedral west facade, Hay Stacks, Water
Lilies) many times over in order to capture the changing conditions of
sunlight and colour.
- Women in the Garden (1866-7)
Musee d'Orsay.
- La Grenouillere (1869)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Beach at Trouville
(1870) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT
- Impression, Sunrise (1873)
Musee Marmottan-Monet, Paris.
- Poppy Field (Argenteuil)
(1873) Musee d'Orsay.
- Gare Sainte-Lazare (1877)
Musee d'Orsay
- Rouen Cathedral Paintings
(1892-4)
- Water Lilies (Nymphéas)
(1897-1926) Various art museums
- Water Lily Pond: Green Harmony
(1899) Musee d'Orsay.
• BERTHE MORISOT (1841-95)
The greatest female Impressionist - along with Mary Cassatt - and a close
friend of Edouard Manet whose brother she married.
- The Cradle (1873)
• GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)
American artist - known as the 'Mother of American modernism'- famous
for her (typically vivid) close-ups of individual flower petals, as well
as her 'Precisionist' New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes.
- Black Abstraction (1927)
- Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue
(1931)
• PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Prolific, avant-garde Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and designer,
active almost exclusively in Paris and the South of France. Co-founded
Cubism and Collage art (with Georges Braque), as well as constructed sculpture.
He is the acknowledged leader of modern art.
- La Vie (Life) (1903) Cleveland
Museum of Art.
- Boy with a Pipe (Garcon à
la Pipe) (1905) Private Collection.
- Two Nudes (1906) Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
- Portrait of Gertrude Stein
(1906) Metropolitan Museum, NY.
- Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(1907) MOMA, NY.
- Seated Woman (Picasso)
(1920) Musee Picasso, Paris.
- Large Bather (1921) Musee
de l'Orangerie, Paris.
- Two Women Running on
the Beach (The Race) (1922) Musee Picasso.
- Woman in White (1923) Metropolitan
Museum, NY.
- Guernica (1937) Reina Sofia Museum,
Madrid.
- Weeping Woman (1937) Tate Modern,
London.
- Neoclassical
Figure Paintings by Picasso (1906-30)
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Along with Monet and Sisley, Pissarro was devoted to 'pure Impressionism',
the capturing of fleeting moments of light and colour achieved by painting
outdoors in front of the subject.
- The Red Roofs (1877)
- Vegetable Garden
with Trees in Blossom, Spring, Pontoise (1877)
- Boulevard Montmartre
(1897-8)
• JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-56)
Hugely influential American painter, dominant figure of the post-war New
York School, inventor of action painting, and chronic alcoholic. Husband
of the talented artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence
on his work.
- Pasiphae (1943) Good example
of mythological painting
of the modern era.
- Jackson
Pollock's Paintings (1940-56)
• RENOIR (1841-1919)
After Monet, the greatest of all Impressionist painters, who produced
masterpieces in all the genres. These are his two great genre paintings.
- Dance at Le Moulin
de la Galette (1876)
- The Swing (La Balancoire) (1876)
- Path Leading Through
Tall Grass (1877)
- Luncheon Of the Boating
Party (1880-1)
• MARK ROTHKO (1903-70)
Latvian-born painter of Jewish descent who became famous in the late-1940s
and 50s for his signature style of Abstract Expressionism, which consisted
of large-scale, "multiform" paintings, characterized by blocks
of glowing colour. His huge canvases were designed to envelope the viewer
with colour and trigger an emotional response.
- Mark Rothko's
Paintings (c.1938-70)
• HENRI ROUSSEAU 'Le Douanier'
(1844-1910)
Leading contributor to 'Outsider Art', noted in particular for his primitivist
jungle pictures, anticipating Cubism and Surrealism.
- The Sleeping Gypsy (1897)
- The Dream (1910)
JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925)
Precociously gifted painter, one of the finest portrait artists of all
time, specializing in society portraits in an Impressionist or Realist
style. The Boit Sisters is his greatest masterpiece.
- Daughters of Edward
Darley Boit (The Boit Sisters) (1882)
- Portrait of Madame X
(Madame Pierre Gautreau) (1884)
- El Jaleo (1882)
• GEORGES SEURAT (1859-91)
Inventor of 'Pointillism' a style of Neo-Impressionist painting based
on the scientific theory of Divisionism. Died at the age of 31.
- A Sunday Afternoon
on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-6)
- Bathers at Asnieres (1883-4)
• ALFRED SISLEY (1839-99)
Specialized in plein air landscape painting - pure Impressionism - around
the Ile-de-France. Experienced great hardship and died in poverty
- Canal St Martin (1870)
- Chemin de la Machine, Louveciennes
(1873)
- Misty Morning (Fog, Voisins)
(1874)
- Snow at Louveciennes (1878)
• CHAIM SOUTINE (1893-1943)
Lithuanian-born painter who became a member of the Ecole de Paris.
Best known for his expressionist portraiture.
- Portrait of Madeleine Castaing
(1928)
• ANDY WARHOL (1928-87)
American postmodernist artist who became a leading figure in New York's
avant garde art world during the 1960s and 70s, and the dominant figure
in American Pop-art. A master of silkscreen painting, he helped to develop
several other new forms of contemporary art, including video, photography,
assemblage and conceptual art.
- Andy Warhol's
Pop Art Paintings (c.1959-73)
• GRANT WOOD (1892-1942)
Iowa-born painter best-loved for his paintings of the American West. Associated
with American Scene Painting (c.1925-45) and its offshoot known as American
Regionalism (flourished 1930s).
- American Gothic (1930) Oil
on beaver board
- Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
(1931) Oil on masonite.
Educational Articles
For advice about how to interpret art,
see:
• How
to Appreciate Paintings (500-present)
• How
to Appreciate Modern Sculptures (1800-present)
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