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.

Mary Cassatt | La Festa in Barca / The Boating Party, 1893/1894

This bold composition reveals the influence of the flat, patterned surfaces, simplified color, and unusual angles of Japanese prints, which enjoyed a huge vogue in Paris in the late 1800s.

The dark figure of the man compresses the picture onto the flat plane of the canvas, and the horizon is pushed to the top, collapsing a sense of distance. Our higher vantage point gives us an oblique view into the boat. Its form is divided into decorative shapes by the intersection of its horizontal supports.

After 1893, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) began to spend many summers on the Mediterranean coast at Antibes.

Mary Cassatt | La Festa in Barca / The Boating Party, 1893/1894 | National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Vincent van Gogh | Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, 1889

Vincent van Gogh painted this picture soon after his release from the hospital, where he was recovering from the disastrous final days of Paul Gauguin’s stay with him in Arles.

In a long letter to his brother Theo posted January 23, 1889, he mentions creating this painting alongside several other issues, including the need to make money through picture sales. He likely had the market in mind in painting this still life.

The painter was clearly attracted to the shapes and hues of the citrus fruit arrayed in the wicker basket, and the way their varied orb shapes play against the weave of the dried sticks, the whole set off by the prickly needles of the cypress branches. Van Gogh refers in his letter to an "air of chic" in this picture, prompted perhaps by the inclusion of blue garden gloves.

The painting reveals the artist’s extraordinarily original sense of color, as well as his richly expressive paint application as he struggles to evoke the nubby waxen skin of the various fruits, the spiky fur of the branches, and the limp material of the worn gloves.

Tintoretto in America

La collezione Samuel Kress comprende oltre 3.000 opere d'arte europea ed è rinomata per l'abbondanza di dipinti del Rinascimento italiano.

La collezione è stata donata a decine di musei d'arte regionali e accademici negli Stati Uniti tra il 1929-1961, con la più grande donazione riservata alla National Gallery of Art di Washington D.C. | © Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York

Tintoretto | Self-Portrait, 1588 | Musee du Louvre

Claude Monet | The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874

Claude Monet | The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874 | National Gallery of Art, Washington-DC

From a distance of ten feet or so, Monet's brushstrokes blend to yield a convincing view of the Seine and the pleasure boats that drew tourists to Argenteuil.

Up close, however, each dab of paint is distinct, and the scene dissolves into a mosaic of paint-brilliant, unblended tones of blue, red, green, yellow.

In the water, quick, fluid skips of the brush mimic the lapping surface.

In the trees, thicker paint is applied with denser, stubbier strokes.

The figure in the sailboat is only a ghostly wash of dusty blue, the women rowing nearby are indicated by mere shorthand.

Claude Monet | The Japanese Footbridge, 1899

Japanese Footbridge is an oil painting by Claude Monet.

It was painted in 1899. It measures 81.3 x 101.6 cm (32 x 40 in.) It hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

In the last decades of Monet's life, his prized water garden at Giverny became a subject the artist explored obsessively, painting it 250 times between 1900 and his death. Eventually, it was his only subject.

He began construction of the water garden as soon as he moved to Giverny, petitioning local authorities to divert water from a nearby river.

The resulting landscape was Monet's invention entirely, and he used it as his creative focus and inspiration.