# data[].attributes.headline
"The Dancing Class" by Edgar Degas (1873-76)

# data[].attributes.subject
"The Dancing Class" by Edgar Degas (1873-76)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Though Degas had been treating the subject since 1870, this is his first fully accomplished ballet work. It was painted in two stages: from late 1873 to mid-1874 and then in 1875-6, when it was substantially reworked. There is a variant in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. X-ray photographs and associated drawings reveal that the painting originally showed the foreground dancer with a fan posed looking out at the viewer and leaning against the piano, while the unidentified dance master was seen from the back. Some features of this original dancer can be seen beneath the present one: the dark brown patch on the fan was originally part of the hair of the first figure. The anonymous figure of the dance master was replaced with that of Jules Perrot, whom the artist had probably first met in 1874. Perrot had been a famous dancer at the Opera and had also worked in Russia, before later becoming a teacher. Degas thus transformed the original work into a kind of homage to Perrot, turning the foreground dancer away from the viewer so as not to distract from his figure. Her present position, watching Perrot, serves to direct the eye towards the centre.

This reworking of the image is typical of Degas' laborious method, and signs of alteration are also evident in many other works. The setting was probably a room in the old opera house in the rue Le Peletier, which had burnt down in 1873. Though supposedly a class, hardly any of the dancers are actually paying attention to Perrot. The dancer in the foreground, seated on the piano, is scratching her back, while the one at the far end of the room above the rest is adjusting her choker. Most of the others are similarly distracted. In the background, to the right, can be seen some of the dancers' mothers, while the small dog in the foreground adds a further incidental detail.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Though Degas had been treating the subject since 1870, this is his first fully accomplished ballet work. It was painted in two stages: from late 1873 to mid-1874 and then in 1875-6, when it was substantially reworked. There is a variant in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Pierre Auguste Renoir (1881)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Pierre Auguste Renoir (1881)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Begun in the late summer of 1880, this large work is a sequel to Dance at the Moulin de la Galette of 1876 and treats the same subject as a smaller scale work of 1879-80. The location is the Restaurant Fournaise on the island of Chatou in the Seine, west of Paris, and was a popular meeting place for rowers. The models for several of the figures can more or less be certainly identified. Standing on the left is the testaurant owner Alphonse Fournaise and on the chair next to him, with a dog, is Aline Charigot, latet Renoir's wife. Seated in the right foreground is Caillebotte, while to his left is possibly the model Ellen Andree or the Montmartte model Angele, with the Italian journalist Maggiolo. The top-hatted figute in the background is the rich collector and amateur writer Chatles Ephrussi. Leaning on the terrace is possibly Fournaise's daughtet Alphonsine, talking to Baron Raoul Barbier, an ex-cavalry officer and friend of Maupassant as well as of Renoir. In the right-hand corner are Renoir's friends, the journalist Lhote (in the straw hat) and the government official Pierre Lestringuez.

In contrast to Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, this work is much more strongly composed and modelled. There are fewer figures and each is more individualized, and the whole is set in a more enclosed space. Renoir constructed various visual links between the elements, for example, through the similar outfits of Fournaise and of Caillebotte, and through the scattered straw hats and the accents of red on various details. Space is also compressed such that the foreground figures are disproportionately sized in comparison with those in the background. However, this structure serves only pictorial ends: Renoir makes no attempt to forge any narrative links between the characters as would traditionally have been expected of a genre scene. In execution, the painting shows Renoir moving away from the open air light effects of Dance at the Moulin de la Galette. Filtered through the awning, the light is diffuse and largely uniform leading to none of the mottling effects of the earlier work. With the richly painted still-life of the foreground, the picture has resonances with Renaissance and Baroque banquet scenes, and communicates a sense of relaxed, convivial enjoyment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Luncheon of The Bboating Party, 1881by Pierre Auguste Renoir

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Begun in the late summer of 1880, this large work is a sequel to Dance at the Moulin de la Galette of 1876 and treats the same subject as a smaller scale work of 1879-80. The location is the Restaurant Fournaise on the island of Chatou in the Seine, west of Paris, and was a popular meeting place for rowers.

# data[].attributes.headline
"A Bar at Folies-Bergere" by Edouard Manet (1882)

# data[].attributes.subject
"A Bar at Folies-Bergere" by Edouard Manet (1882)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is Manet's last great masterpiece, painted at a time when he was already ill and finished a year before his death. It depicts a scene at the highly fashionable cafe-concert, the Folies-Bergere. Cafes-concerts flourished at this time and were places where one could drink and s ocialize as well as see circus acts, operettas and the like on the stage. Manet made a number of sketches at the Folies-Bergere, but actually painted this work in his studio.

The central female figure was modelled by a girl called Suzon, who worked at the Folies-Bergere, while the man on the right was posed by the painter Gaston Latouche. Other figures in the reflected balcony are also identifiable. As was immediately noticed by the critics at the Salon of 1882 the depiction of the reflections in the mirror that runs the entire length of the background, parallel to the counter, are incorrect in naturalistic terms. The girl's reflection is shifted too far to the right, while the reflected image of the man is such that he ought to be seen in the foteground, somewhere between the viewer and the bar maid. The bottles reflected to the barmaid's left should be on the near, rather than the far, side of the mirror-image counter. Comparison with an oil study (Amsterdam, Stedelijk) shows that Manet deliberately changed his original composition in order to achieve this effect. He also altered the figure of the bar maid such that she appears in a more frontal and direct manner.

Many of those who attended the Salons, would have thought barmaids to be of dubious character, offering themselves, as well as drinks, to prospective clients, and this caused the familiar criticism that the work depicted something unseemly. In fact, however, the expression of the barmaid is melancholy and indifferent, rather than enticing, though by contrast, her reflected image leans forward in a more forthcoming way. The subdued emotion that she communicates may suggest the deadening effect of commercialism, in which human affection is a commodity like any other. It has often been suggested that by the distorted optics of the work Manet meant to imply that the viewer was the original of the man reflected: the responsiveness of the barmaid in reflection may thus have been intended as an enactment of male desire. The way Manet painted Suzon, more solid and modelled than the other figures, makes her dominate the work. The reflected figute of the man she serves is much sketchier, while those in the balconies behind are very loosely brushed and lacking in individual features. So as to maintain this focus, the activity in the rest of the composition is deliberately marginalized: for example, at the top left we see only the cut-off lower half of a trapeze artist. The only other element of the wotk that attracts the eye so quickly is the still-life on the counter, one of Manet's finest, with its richly painted arrangement of bottles, fruit and flowers. This equivalence of treatment highlights the ambiguity as to what the barmaid offers for sale.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Bar at Folies-Bergere by Edouard Manet

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is Manet's last great masterpiece, painted at a time when he was already ill and finished a year before his death. It depicts a scene at the highly fashionable cafe-concert, the Folies-Bergere. Cafes-concerts flourished at this time and were places where one could drink and s ocialize as well as see circus acts, operettas and the like on the stage.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Lady at the Tea Table" by Mary Cassat - American (1883-85)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Lady at the Tea Table" by Mary Cassat - American (1883-85)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Title: Lady at the Tea Table

Artist: Mary Cassatt (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1844-1926 Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise)

Dimensions: 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 1923

Accession Number: 23.101

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mary Cassatt | Lady at the Tea Table | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Title: Lady at the Tea Table Artist: Mary Cassatt (American, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1844-1926 Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise) Dimensions: 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm) Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 1923 Accession Number: 23.101

# data[].attributes.headline
"Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field" by John Singer Sargent- American (1885)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field" by John Singer Sargent- American (1885)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Singer Sargent | Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sargent spent the summer and fall of 1885 in Broadway, a village in the English Cotswolds popular with many English and American artists and writers. This fluidly painted landscape conveys the pleasures of his rural idyll. The bright palette reflects the warmth of the midday sun, while Sargent's sickle-shaped brushstrokes and impressionist technique evoke the reapers' tools and labor.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh (1889)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh (1889)

# data[].attributes.body
(Post-Impressionist)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An end-of-the-world cataclysm in vades Van Gogh's "Starry Night", one of apocalypse filled with melting aerolites and comets adrift. One has the impression that the artist has expelled his inner conflict onto a canvas. Everything here is brewed in a huge cosmic fusion, as in the nebulae painted by William Blake. The sole exception is the village in the foreground with its architectural elements.

While giving free rein to his wild imagination, Van Gogh recalled his childhood and youth. In his article written in 1890 Albert Aurier spoke of "a kind of drunken giant, better able to move mountains than to handle bibelots, an ebullient brain which irresistibly pours its lava into all the ravines of art." To which Van Gogh replied several months after painting "Starry Night," ". . . the emotions which seize me when I am confronted with nature sometimes produce fainting spells, and then the result is a fortnight during which I am incapable of working." On the left of the composition the dark mass of the cypress tree rises to the sky. "I have always been preoccupied by cypresses," wrote Van Gogh in June, 1889. "Their lines and proportions are as handsome as an Egyptian obelisk. And the dark green has such a distinguished quality. It is the dark note in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting dark notes, the most difficult to hit just right, that I can imagine."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An end-of-the-world cataclysm in vades Van Gogh's "Starry Night", one of apocalypse filled with melting aerolites and comets adrift. One has the impression that the artist has expelled his inner conflict onto a canvas. Everything here is brewed in a huge cosmic fusion, as in the nebulae painted by William Blake.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Still Life with Apples and Oranges" by Paul Cezanne (1895)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Still Life with Apples and Oranges" by Paul Cezanne (1895)

# data[].attributes.body
(Post-Impressionist)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Still life, which was Cezanne's major theme, offered him complete freedom to paint the subject as he wished. A skillful disorder, the result of a careful arrangement, characterizes the artist's compositions. As Charles Sterling wrote, "One cannot help believing that Cezanne constantly had in mind Dutch painters as well as Chardin when, before painting the objects, he would arrange on the table a white cloth which hangs from the edge.

Still Life with Apples and Oranges dominated by a white zigzag (far right), or based on the counterpoint of an oval and a play of broken lines, Cezanne's composition is always seen from a superior view. The most lively colors are concentrated on the smallest masses, the rest of the painting being formed of generally soft tones and light hatchwork.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Still Life with Apples and Oranges, 1895 by Paul Cezanne

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Still life, which was Cezanne's major theme, offered him complete freedom to paint the subject as he wished. A skillful disorder, the result of a careful arrangement, characterizes the artist's compositions.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Across the Room" by Edmund Charles Tarbell-  American (1899)

# data[].attributes.subject
"Across the Room" by Edmund Charles Tarbell-  American (1899)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
William M. Laffan, New York, died 1909; his estate, 1909-1911; sale, American Art Association, New York, 20 Jan. 1911, no. 12; Charles Adams Platt, Boston, 1911-died 1933; his wife, Eleanor Hardy Bunker Platt, Boston, 1933-1949; their son, William Platt, New York, as agent, 1949; with Milch Galleries, New York, 1949; Adelaide Milton de Groot, New York, 1949-died 1967

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edmund Charles Tarbell | Across the Room | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
William M. Laffan, New York, died 1909; his estate, 1909-1911; sale, American Art Association, New York, 20 Jan. 1911, no.

# data[].attributes.headline
Water Lilies Series by Claude Monet (1900-26)

# data[].attributes.subject
Water Lilies Series by Claude Monet (1900-26)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1) Water Lilies is not a name of a single painting, but a name of a series of works. During his lifetime, Claude Monet comes back to this subject matter several times, and painted more than 250 water lilies paintings. Along with Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Water Lilies are the most iconic images of Impressionism.

2) The first series of "Water Lilies," a total of twenty-five canvases, was exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1900. This was followed nine years later by a second series of forty-eight canvases. "These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession," wrote Monet on August 11, 1908. "This is beyond the strength of an old man, and yet I want to express what I feel. I have destroyed some of the canvases. I begin once again. ... I hope something will come of all this effort."

3) In all of the "Water Lilies" paintings, Monet focuses on the surface of the water. He dispenses with any representation of the land or sky, only showing their reflection in the water. These paintings are typical with willows present only as a reflection. The sky, with its white clouds, is reflected in the water, so the blue of the sky and the blue of the water are one. Only the presence of the water lilies helps the observer to understand that this is a reflection.

4) Monet planted the water lilies before he painted them. Monet organized his property at Giverny as though it were a huge painting. Thanks to a small army of gardeners, he diverted a river, planted water lilies, exotic flowers, weeping willows, bamboo trees, and willows. He seeded the pond and added enclosures with white chickens, ducks, and pheasants. Nature, recomposed by the artist, began to resemble his art. "My finest masterpiece," he later said, "is my garden."

5) When Monet come back to his water lily paintings in 1914 following the death of his beloved wife Alice in 1911. he made some radical changes in his approach, namely in the scale of the canvases. They were monumental in scale, most measuring around two metres (six feet) square. He also changed his palette ond used brilliant spots of color to suggest the flowers. His avant-garde approach and his extraordinary use of point and color began the trail for subsequent art movements: his contemporary Paul Cezanne became affiliated with Post-impressionism; Henri Matisse, who had studied Monet, became of the first of the Expressionist artists.

6) By the time Monet embarked on his last monumental series of water lily paintings, he had gained critical and commercial success. This gave the artist added freedom to explore motifs of his choice and paint to his own schedule. Although he returned again and again to the water lilies, it was a subject that caused him difficulties, and he worried about the paintings, often reworking them. Monet has focused on colour: the clash of green trees as their reflection creeps into the violet-blue depths of the pond's water. He has used small accents of complementary reds, pinks and yellows in the buds of the lilies that sit atop curiously colourless lily pads using expressive, but smooth brushwork.

7) Prime Minister Clemenceau had always been a loyal supporter of Monet's work. In 1914 he urged the artist to work on a larger project, which became a formal state commission in 1916. This was for a set of large canvases depicting water lilies that would be displayed together permanently. Between now and his death this was to be the main preoccupation of Monet's work.

8) At the age of eighty-two Monet discovered that he had a cataract. The deterioration of his eyesight was horrifying to the artist, who wrote, 'I realized with terror that I could see nothing with my right eye .. a specialist... told me that I had a cataract and that the other eye was also slightly affected. It's in vain that they tell me it's not serious, that after the operation I will see os before, I'm very disturbed and anxious,' In 1923 he was operated on three times to try and correct his right eye. The brilliant fiery reds and yellows of Water Lilies - Japanese Bridge, 1923 are indicative of the impaired sight of the artist, seeing his bridge within a reduced palette. Yet it is the most evocative sum of color and light and composition, creating on overall startlingly emotive effect.

9) Water Lilies opened the path to abstract painting. By the time of Monet's death in 1926 the art world, both in Paris and in America, was a very different place from the one he had largely struggled against during much of his life, Monet and his circle were the first to truly challenge the conventions of Parisian art in the modern age, and by doing so and progressing their works towards greater understanding of color and light, they opened the door for successive generations of artists. Monet and his contemporaries broke down barriers and persevered in their artistic quest against great hardship in order to achieve a freedom of expression that is now taken for granted. Towards the end of his life, Monet's work increasingly reflected a form of abstraction through his simplification of composition and reduction of all unessential elements. By doing this ond through his obliquely structured compositions ond focus on pure vivid colour, he set a precedent for later artists, particularly those of the Post-impressionist, Expressionist and Abstract-expressionist movements.

10) Water Lilies Series in the Orangerie, Paris is the last sery that Monet worked on before he died. In 1917 Monet's friend, the politician Clemenceau, was elected Prime Minister of France (for the second time) and told Monet that the State would purchase 12 of the monumental paintings and house them in a specially designed building. Clemenceau was not re-elected in 1920, but the commission continued and, after extensive communications, it was decided to adapt the Orangerie in the Tuileries to create the space reguired to display Monet's works. In early 1926 he told Clemenceau he was 'waiting for the paint to dry'. On 5 December 1926 the artist died. The canvases were taken from his studio and the Orangerie was opened to the public in May 1927.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Facts You Might Not Know About Claude Monet's 'Water Lilies'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1) Water Lilies is not a name of a single painting, but a name of a series of works. During his lifetime, Claude Monet comes back to this subject matter several times, and painted more than 250 water lilies paintings. Along with Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Water Lilies are the most iconic images of Impressionism.