This brook at Osny was painted by French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who endured prolonged financial hardship in keeping faith with the aims of Impressionism. Despite acute eye trouble, his later years were his most prolific : in all, Pissarro painted several hundred canvasses. The Parisian and provincial scenes of this period include Place du Théâtre Français (1898) and Bridge at Bruges (1903).Pissarro was born in St Thomas to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Portuguese sephardic Jew and Rachel Manzana-Pomié, from the Dominican Republic. Pissarro lived in St. Thomas until age 12, when he went to a boarding school in Paris.After the Franco-Prussian war, Pissarro stayed in London for many years where he came back many times after returning to France. Known as the "Father of Impressionism", Pissarro painted rural and urban French life, particularly landscapes in and around Pontoise, as well as scenes from Montmartre.Camille's great-grandson, Joachim Pissarro, is currently the Head Curator of Drawing and Painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His great-granddaughter, Lélia, is a successful painter and resides in London. During his lifetime, Camille Pissarro sold few of his paintings.This picture sold for 560 Pounds in London in 1922 and fetched 26,000 Guineas in 1965 (1 Guinea=1 Pound and 1 shilling). By 2005, however, some of his works were selling in the range of $ 2 to 4 million. In 1981, a record was set for the artist at Sotheby's impressionist and modern art auction in New York when La Rue Saint- Lazare sold for $ 4,512,806.
The boy in the painting has often been identified as Rembrandt van Rijn's son, Titus, because his face is rendered in sensitive, intimate detail, as if depicting a beloved family member. A mysterious animal, perhaps a pet, sits on the boy's shoulder. Some experts identify it as a parrot, others, a monkey. Rembrandt Harmenszon van Rijn, born 15 July 1606 in Leiden, was the son of a miller, Harmen Gerritsz. van Rijn (1568-1630), and his wife Neeltgen van Zuytbrouck (1568-1640). The youngest son of at least ten children, he left the University to study the fundamentals of painting with the Leiden artist Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburgh (1571-1638). Rembrandt was enthusiastically praised by the secretary to the Prince of Orange, Constantijn Huygens (1596-1674) who admired particularly Rembrandt's ability to convey feeling through gesture and expression.In 1663 a plague that ravaged Amsterdam claimed the life of his lifetime companion Hendrickje Stoffels . Four years later Titus married Madgalena van Loo (1642-1669), but the following year, in 1668, he also died, the victim of another plague epidemic. When Rembrandt died on 4 October 1669, he was buried in an unknown rented grave in the Westerkerk, Amsterdam.The painting, thought to be of the artist’s son, was last on view at the National Gallery more than 40 years ago. It made a brief stop there before it found its way to California after Norton Simon, the industrialist and collector who died in 1993, bought the Rembrandt at a Christie’s auction in London in 1965. The sale was considered so monumental it made the cover of Time magazine.Not only was the price considered staggering — $2.2 million- which at the time made it the second most expensive painting ever sold. So was the bidding war that Simon fought to get the painting. When the auctioneer announced that the winning bid had come from Marlborough Fine Arts, Simon sprang to his feet and announced that he hadn’t stopped bidding. It turned out that he had given the auctioneer Peter Chance, head of Christie's, such confusing instructions that Peter Chance misunderstood Simon’s body language, thinking he had finished when he hadn’t. So the bid was reopened, and Simon bought the portrait.There is a fantastic picture of Mr Norton Simon looking angrily at Peter Chance who had misunderstood their very confusing bidding arrangements.Those arrangements written down on a piece of paper were saying "If I stay sit I bid, if I stand I do not bid." Peter Chance said later that the furore caused by the sale of Titus was "the worst moment" of his life.
This last portrait by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was made during the artist's stay in Auvers (near Paris, France) in 1890 where he rented a cheap room (3,5 FF /day) in the café of the family Ravoux. Vincent made this portrait of the daughter of the innkeeper, Arthur-Gustave Ravoux : she was then 13 but looked 16. After painting the portrait he gave it to the family to thank them. Mlle Ravoux described the portrait as a "symphony in blue." Van Gogh finished at least seventy paintings in the seventy days he lived in Auvers, the final days of his life.Van Gogh painted with his heart since he so beloved all the pure colors. "How beautiful was yellow! How lovely was red! He wanted to paint with the simplicity that a child thinks. To go back to nature meant to see the world as a child sees it, act as a child, feel as a child. This is why he believed color should be applied pure, with a sense of urgency on the canvas. The sense of emotion could only be achieved without exactness. A very arguable point but who am I to argue with van Gogh ?Vincent then lapsed into the madness that took his life and died a month later. This last painting was bought in 1921 for $20,000, along with two other Van Gogh works, by a sharp-eyed Pennsylvania clergyman named Theodore Pitcairn, heir of a very wealthy family. It also used to belong to the New Yorker artist Katherine Sophie Dreier (1877-1952) who lent it to the Armory show. In 1966, it was sold for $441,000 -the highest price for a van Gogh- to art collector Walter P. Chrysler Jr. (1909-1988) and it is now in the Cleveland museum of Art.
In this picture (143.5x136.5 cm.) painted by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) in 1653, the artist ponders visually the importance in life of material success, fame, and power, compared with being true to art. Rembrandt does so by confronting the greatest Greek philosopher, Aristotle, with the greatest Greek poet, Homer.The picture that was the property of the advertising millionaire Alfred W. Erickson was sold at the most attended auction of the early 60s at Parke-Bernet in NYC to James R.Morimer, Director of the Metropolitan Museum New York, for the then fabulous sum of $ 2,3 million (1961).
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"Deux blanchisseuses portant du linge" by Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Almost blind for his last twenty years, Degas worked mostly in pastel with increasingly broad, free handling. He loved to paint simple people's lives insisting on the dureness of their condition.
Five of Degas's pictures of laundresses including this one were shown at the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876.
In his novel the Dram Shop, French writer Emile Zola described laundresses at work, detailing the physically demanding labor involved in the act of pressing the iron. Similarly Degas emphasized the effort involved in carrying a heavy load of linen by showing the limping of the two women.
In addition to his artistic endeavors, Degas amassed a vast collection of art and considered to establish his own private museum. The museum was never realized and Degas passed away in 1917. The next year a big Degas sale was auctioned off by Christie's in London and this picture fetched 2300 Guineas (1 Gn=1 Pound and 1 Shilling).
This brook at Osny was painted by French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who endured prolonged financial hardship in keeping faith with the aims of Impressionism. Despite acute eye trouble, his later years were his most prolific : in all, Pissarro painted several hundred canvasses. The Parisian and provincial scenes of this period include Place du Théâtre Français (1898) and Bridge at Bruges (1903).
