Happy birthday to Édouard Vuillard, born on this day, in 1868

Happy birthday to French Post-impressionist and Nabis painter Edouard Vuillard, born on this day in November 11, 1868.

From 1891 through 1900, Vuillard was a prominent member of the avant garde artistic group Les Nabis, creating paintings that assembled areas of pure color.

His interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, explored the spatial effects of flattened planes of color, pattern, and form.

Love Letters | Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet

Quando Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) incontra Louise Colet (1810-1876) aveva appena 24 anni. Lui aspirante scrittore e Lei, poetessa già affermata, più grande di lui di oltre dieci anni, sposata con il flautista Hippolyte Colet, amante del filosofo Victor Cousin, frequentatrice dei migliori salotti e spregiudicata.

Fu a Parigi, nell'atelier dello scultore Pradier, che il romanziere incontrò, nel giugno 1846, Louise mentre posava come modella.

Il giorno dopo Flaubert torna in atelier ed i giorni e le notti seguenti li passa con lei, in un vortice di passioni.

I due avranno una relazione molto coinvolgente, portata avanti fra contrasti dovuti in particolare al desiderio di indipendenza di Flaubert, che conduce una vita giovanile abbastanza libertina.

James Tissot | Young Lady in a Boat

Edgar Maxence | Il ritrattista romantico

Il pittore Francese Edgard Maxence (1871-1954) ha studiato con Jules-Élie Delaunay e Gustave Moreau.

I suoi contemporanei furono Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Henri Evenepoel ed altri.

La tecnica pittorica di Edgard Maxence combinava pennellate relativamente spesse con una certa purezza di linee.

Lui utilizzava la foglia d'oro, che enfatizzavano scene mistiche primitive, nonostante i volti realistici.

Camille Pissarro | The Avenue, Sydenham, 1871

"The Avenue, Sydenham" is an 1871 oil painting by a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).

This work is a product of the Impressionism movement, measuring 48 x 73 cm.

It currently resides in the National Gallery in London, UK.

From The National Gallery, London: Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Camille Pissarro and his family left France and moved to London.

This picture is one of 12 he painted while in self-imposed exile there.

One of the largest paintings in the group, this springtime scene, with the trees just coming into leaf, would have been completed in April or May 1871, shortly before Pissarro’s return to France.

Camille Pissarro | The Avenue, Sydenham, 1871 | National Gallery, London

Claude Monet | Le ninfee

Nel 1890 che Monet acquista la sua casa a Giverny ed un anno dopo realizza il suo bellissimo giardino fiorito, il Clos Normand, una vera e propria opera d’arte.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) descriveva cosi il giardino di Monet nel suo "Alla ricerca del tempo perduto":

« [...] giacché il colore che creava in sottofondo ai fiori era più prezioso, più commovente di quello stesso dei fiori; e sia che facesse scintillare sotto le ninfee, nel pomeriggio, il caleidoscopio di una felicità attenta, mobile e silenziosa, sia che si colmasse verso sera, come certi porti lontani, del rosa sognante del tramonto, cambiando di continuo per rimanere sempre in accordo, intorno alle corolle dalle tinte più stabili, con quel che c'è di più profondo, di più fuggevole, di più misterioso - con quel che c'è d'infinito - nell'ora, sembrava che li avesse fatti fiorire in pieno cielo».

Claude Monet | Valley of the Petite Creuse, 1889

The striking effects of Monet’s several paintings of the Creuse Valley in central France are achieved through complex, superimposed layers of color, as he combined bold brushstrokes with intricate passages made up of many small touches.

Title: Valley of the Petite Creuse

Author: Claude Monet (French painter, 1840-1926)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 65.4 x 81.3 cm (25 3/4 x 32 in.)

Current location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Georges Girardot | Le reverences de la lune, 1890

Georges Marie Julien Girardot (1856-1914) was a French figure, landscape and marine painter.

Girardot was born in Besançon, Doubs on 4 August 1856.

He was trained by the artist Albert Maignan in Paris.

Girardot was active in Paris, painting mostly genre paintings, female nudes and landscapes.

William Bouguereau | Joueur de flûte, 1878

In his accounts, Bouguereau gave a title of Tête d’enfant avec une flûte to the present work, yet the instrument depicted more closely resembles a piffero, an Italian folk instrument related to the modern oboe, which was used by the musical troupes who would descend from the hills around Rome to celebrate Christmas.

Both the music and the sweet expression of Bouguereau’s young musician likely evoked the artist’s happy memories of travel to Italy in the late 1840s.

Bouguereau had painted young musicians as early as 1870 in works like Pifferaro (Bartoli, no. 1870/80, and sold in these rooms April 18, 2007, lot 90).

James Tissot | Holiday, 1876

The autumn sun glows through the yellow leaves of the horse chestnut tree in this picnic scene.

The setting is the garden of James Tissot’s house in St John’s Wood, London, very close to Lord’s cricket ground.

Artist: James Tissot (1836-1902)

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Dimensions support: 762 × 994 × 20 mm frame: 925 × 1185 × 95 mm

Collection: Tate

Jean-Baptiste Greuze | Le uova rotte, 1756

Anche se questo dipinto venne eseguito a Roma e presenta ambiente e costumi italiani, la fonte del soggetto ritratto è un quadro olandese del Seicento dell’artista Frans van Mieris il Vecchio (1635-1681), Le uova rotte (Museo dell’Ermitage, San Pietroburgo), che l'artista francese Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) conosceva attraverso un’ incisione.

Le uova rotte simboleggiano la perdita della verginità.

Il bambino che cerca di ricomporre le uova rappresenta l’ignara innocenza dell’infanzia.

Il quadro suscitò una reazione favorevole quando fu esibito al Salon di Parigi nel 1757. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Baptiste Greuze | Broken Eggs, 1756 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883

Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast.

He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.

The sunlight that strikes the Manneporte has a dematerializing effect that permitted the artist to interpret the cliff almost exclusively in terms of color and luminosity.

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | Boating on the River Epte, 1890

Boating on the River Epte (also known as The Canoe on the Epte) is an 1890 oil painting by French impressionist artist Claude Monet.

It is currently housed at the São Paulo Museum of Art.

Between 1887 and 1890 Monet concerned himself with portraying scenes from the River Epte, which skirted his property at Giverny.

The sisters Suzanne and Blanche Hoschedé posed for this series of pictures, their late father being banker Ernest Hoschedé, a patron of the arts and collector of Monet, and their mother, Alice, who became Monet's second wife.

Claude Monet | Boating on the River Epte, 1890 | São Paulo Museum of Art

Claude Monet | Camille Monet à la fenêtre, 1873

In 1871, Monet took up residence in the Maison Aubry on rue Pierre Guienne in Argenteuil.

It was situated down the street from the train station, making it possible for the artist to commute to his Paris studio and return home in the evening.

Although Maison Aubry served as a frequent meeting place for Impressionist painters as well as collectors, writers, and journalists, this painting provides a rare glimpse into the interior of the Monets’ home.

Claude Monet | Camille Monet à la fenêtre, 1873 | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Claude Monet | The Stroller (Suzanne Hoschede), 1887

This painting of Suzanne Hoschedé in the meadows just south of Le Pressoir, Monet's home at Giverny, was probably made in the summer of 1887.

She became Monet's preferred model in the period after the death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879, and before 1890, when he gave up plein-air figure painting.

The model was the daughter of Alice Hoschedé, whom Monet married in 1892. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Odilon Redon | Melancholy, 1876

• "The artist lives only day by day, and is the recipient of the things that surround him; he transposes sensations from outside, according to what the fate reserves him, but transforms them relentlessly and tenaciously, in a manner determined by him alone".

Odilon Redon | Melancholy, 1876 | The Art Institute of Chicago

• "L'artista vive solo giorno per giorno, ed è destinatario delle cose che lo circondano; traspone le sensazioni dall'esterno, secondo ciò che il destino gli riserva, ma le trasforma senza sosta e tenacemente, in un modo determinato da lui solo".

Louis Rolland Trinquesse | After the Soirée, 1774

Louis Rolland Trinquesse (1746-1800) was a French Rococo painter.

He was a student at the Académie Royale from 1758 to at least 1770 and worked both as a portrait painter and a Genre painter.

His portraits are usually gentle and uncomplicated likenesses painted in pastel colours, for example the Young Girl (1777; Paris, Louvre).

Constance Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801

Constance Marie Charpentier (1767-1849) was a French painter.

She specialized in genre scenes and portraits, mainly of children and women.

She was also known as Constance Marie Bondelu.

Constance-Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801 | Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Edgar Degas | Combing the Hair, 1896

Women combing their hair, or having it combed, often appear in Degas’s work - for example, in his early Beach Scene, also in the National Gallery.

This late painting is one of his boldest treatments of the subject.

Here, a maid, wearing her servant’s uniform, combs the hair of her seated mistress, who is not yet fully dressed and who may also be pregnant.

Edgar Degas | Portrait of Estelle Musson Degas, 1872

Edgar Degas arrived in New Orleans in 1872 for an extended stay, two years after he had enlisted in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, and two years before he would join a group of painters back in Paris for the first of what would become known as the Impressionist Exhibitions.

It was a pivotal time in his career, one that brought to the fore many important familial, artistic, and personal connections.

Claude Monet | The Japanese Bridge, 1900

In 1883, Claude Monet moved to Giverny, about forty miles northwest of Paris.

For the rest of his life, he devoted himself to painting and tending his gardens, which included the Japanese footbridge in this picture.

His style became more expressive as he piled thick pigments layer upon layer in ever more intense colors that often didn’t correspond to reality (possibly because his eyesight was failing).

Giving up any desire to record minute details, he wove tangled skeins of paint with bold strokes, seeming more concerned with nature’s mysteries than with mere appearance.