Le Débardeur (The Stevedore)

This is one of Constantin Meunier’s best-known works, initially designed as part of a Monument to Labour that was never completed. Meunier worked from life when planning the project, putting together a repertoire of typical…

Vierge à l’offrande (Virgin of the Offering)

In 1914, war broke out between France and Germany, with Alsace and Lorraine in the thick of the fighting. The industrialist Joseph Vogt, mayor of Niederbruck, Alsace, vowed to raise a statue to the Virgin…

Retour du baptême (Returning from the baptism)

European genre painting began to develop a taste for what might be termed “local exoticism” in around 1830, a trend that culminated at the turn of the twentieth century. It drew on increasingly confident expressions…

Portrait d’Édouard Rod (Portrait of Édouard Rod)

At the time this work was painted in 1909, Édouard Rod, a native of the Vaud, was a leading figure in the Swiss community in Paris. As a devotee of Émile Zola and the…

Salomé

Jules Desbois showed an interest in subjects from Antiquity early in his career, presenting at the 1875 Salon a prize-winning Orpheus that was subsequently acquired by the French state. The subject and pose were not…

Triton

Carl Milles was a towering figure in Swedish sculpture in the first half of the twentieth century. His early politically committed style eventually turned more classical. From 1915 on, as Swedish urban culture began to…

Portrait d’Arthur Honegger au « Roi David » (Portrait of Arthur Honegger at “King David”)

The sonorous, clashing rhythms and strident colours which fill Alice Bailly’s work reflect the crucial role music played in her understanding of the world around her. She attended the 1913 premier of Stravinsky’s Rite of…

Paysage, le lac (Landscape, the lake)

In the early 1860s, landscape painting was a way for Auguste Renoir, then a fledgling artist, to paint out in the open air. He would set out with Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley,…

Quatre torses (Four Torsos)

Félix Vallotton was too old to join up in the First World War, choosing instead to explore a burning question for all artists of the day: how to paint warfare. He tried a number of…

Les Charbonnières

Félix Vallotton, who had been living in Paris since 1882, underwent a crisis in the late 1880s that saw him sink into depression. He faced both financial difficulties and a crippling crisis of artistic faith:…