TISSOT : BANC DE JARDIN

James Tissot (1836-1902) give us a glossy and accurate mirror image of European high society. He was at home both in Paris, where he lived and exhibited in the 1860s, and in London, where he spent a professionally successful decade after the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871. Tissot's art belongs to an international milieu of high fashion on both sides of the Channel, today he would depict people wearing Dior, Vuitton and others luxurious fashionable items.

This painting that should be called Banc de Jardin pour Riches considering the expensive fur skin which has been pulled on the bench represents his mistress Mrs Kathleen Newton and her kids. The phrase "Social Realism" is usually applied to art that reveals truths about the oppressed working class, but it would seem no less applicable to Tissot's documentary revelations about high society in the 1860s and 1870s. However to be realistic this Social Realism should be dubbed Capitalist Realism.

This Social Realistic picture was sold in 1983 for $842,000 (£561,000).The descendants of the people in the picture probably bought it to have a closer and better look at their glorious ancestors.

PISSARRO : BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro, known as Camille Pissarro, was born on July 10, 1830 on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies; to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, of Sephardic (or "Morrano") Jewish ancestry, and Rachel Manzano-Pomié, a Dominican of Spanish descent. His parents sent him to Paris at age 12 to a small boarding school. It was there that the director, seeing his interest in art, advised him to take "advantage of his life in the tropics by drawing coconut trees." When he returned to St. Thomas in 1847, this advice had been taken to heart.

He moved to Paris in 1855 and studied there with the French landscape artist Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. He later became associated with the Barbizon school. Afterwards, he came under the influence of Claude Monet and other impressionists. During the Franco German War he lived in England, where he made a study of the landscapes of Joseph Mallord Turner. On his return to France he settled in Normandy. An active, productive Master of his art until the end, Camille Pissarro succumbed to blood poisoning on 13 November, 1903 in Le Havre, France.

His landscapes have a naturalism that places him close to the Barbizon school and a firm classical structure shared only by his good friend Paul Cézanne. This Blvd Montmartre in Paris is part of a series of the same scene that he painted under different weather conditions in 1897.

In 1973 it went on auction for £ 161,764 in London ($275,000). The scene to the right is another version of Blvd Montmartre at night which is now property of the National Gallery London. Whilst in England in the 70s and back in the 90s, Pissarro was introduced to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel who bought two of his London’ paintings. Durand-Ruel subsequently became the most important art dealer of the new school of French Inpressionism.

In March 1893, in Paris, Durand-Ruel organized a major exhibition of 46 of Pissarro's works along with 55 others by La Gandara. But while the critics acclaimed Gandara, their appraisal of Pissarro's art was less enthusiastic. During his lifetime, Camille Pissarro sold few of his paintings. By 2005, however, some of his works were selling in the range of $ 2 to 4 million.

Pissarro died in 1903 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

BASSANO : FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

Jacopo Bassano del Grappa (1510-1592) also known as Jacopo da Ponte, painted this picture in 1542. Bassano started painting in the workshop of his father and then launched himself in the painting of a large variety of religious scenes. After 1560 he devoted his talent to pastural scenes that made him quite famous in Italy. Bassano specialized in the production of Biblical, pastoral scenes featuring peasants and animals. His paintings were admired for their richness of color and complex designs.

Influenced by Tintoretto and Titian, he established a workshop in Bassano with his four sons: Francesco the Younger (1549–1592), Girolamo (1566–1621), Giovanni Battista (1553–1613), and Leandro (1557–1622). They shared his style, and some works are difficult to attribute precisely.

In 1969 the infamous Norton Simon -who had once caused enormous trouble in a sale at Christie's - bought the painting for $ 655,200. It is still in the Norton Simon Art Foundation in Pasadena, Calif. The huge price paid by Simon underlined then a growing tendency that works of impeccable beauty, preservation and authenticity did not have to be by the biggest names like Rubens and Titian to fetch high prices.

TIEPOLO : ALLEGORY OF VENUS

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) was the sparkling star of eighteenth-century decorative painting in Italy. He was a virtuoso master of the fresco medium, sought after not only in Italy but also in Germany and Spain. As a colourist, Tiepolo is unsurpassed, progressing from the rather dark tonality of his early works to his characteristically sunny palette from the early 1730s.

Tiepolo was born in Venice, Italy. At 19 years of age, Tiepolo completed his first major commission, the Sacrifice of Isaac. By 1750, his reputation was firmly established throughout Europe and in 1753, he was richly in demand locally and abroad, where he was elected President of the Academy of Padua.

In 1761, Charles III commissioned from the painter a large ceiling fresco to decorate the throne room of the royal palace of Madrid where he died on March 27, 1770.

This picture -Allegory of Venus entrusting Eros to Chronos (292 x 190 cm.) painted in 1754-58- has a terrific history. At the turn of the XXth century, the House of Henri L. Bischoffsheim in Audley Street in Mayfair London was redecorated but nobody paid sufficient attention to the ceiling of a drawing-room that displayed this fantastic painting by Tiepolo. At the death of Mr. Bischoffsheim's widow in 1922, once more nobody paid attention to this ceiling and the House was acquired by the Egyptian embassy that totally overlooked the fantastic asset they had upon their head.

In 1962 an Italian expert, Pr. Antonio Morassi, published a catalogue of Tiepolo's paintings that mentioned this picture in Mayfair House and referred to an article of 1876 in which the author described the painting as a forming part of the ceiling of "one of the grandest houses in Mayfair, London, present whereabouts unknown."

This was not lost for everybody. In 1964, one director of Christie's was browsing through this book and checked who was now living in this house. When he saw that it was the United Arab Republic embassy he picked up his phone and asked for a visit from the Cultural Attaché. It was granted and here he found the Tiepolo on the ceiling. Five years later, the Ambassador decided that the picture represented a great fire risk and that it was not relevant to the UAR collections. So the Egyptian governement of Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to sell and to use the proceeds for the conservation of the temples in the Nile valley.

It was not easy to remove the Tiepolo from its place as the frame was screwed to the ceiling. When it finally came up for sale, it was bought by the National Gallery in London for 390,000 Guineas ($ 982,000). In the meantime a copy of the master was made by a local artist John Lewis for £ 350 which now proudly fills the emptiness left by the master's picture.

MODIGLIANI : PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG FARMER

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist born in Livorno of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture who pursued his career for the most part in France. There he developed a unique style : today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35.

In 1965, the Young Farmer fetched £ 22,320 at Parke-Bernet in New York and Christie's sold it for £ 59,574 in 1969 in Tokyo. It was the first sale of Christie's in Japan which was a great success. In 2006, the portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillaune who helped Modigliani in his débuts went for $ 4.8 million under the hammer at Sotheby's to Nahmad Gallery, dealers in New York.

After the First World War, Modigliani returned to Paris. After several successful exhibitions in England, English collectors started to buy his paintings. But by the end of the year Modigliani became seriously ill with tuberculosis. On January 24 1920 he died. On the following day the pregnant his companion Jeanne Hébuterne committed suicide. A portrait of her went for $26.9 million in a sale in 2006 ; it had fetched $15.1 million in 1998.

The artist and his companion are buried together in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Their orphan daughter Jeanne (1918-1984) was adopted by Modigliani’s sister in Florence; later she would write an important biography of her father Modigliani:Man and Myth.