Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye
The Floor Scrapers, Calliebotte, oil on canvas, 1875. Artist submitted painting to French Salon jury, canvas was rejected, caught eye of impressionists: invited artist to show his work the following year at their second exhibition, hanging alongside Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Monet, gained attention. Critics: praised shirtless urban laborers for realism. Conservative reviewers found offensive, writing: "Do nudes, but do beautiful nudes, or don't do them at all!"
Edgar Degas | The Dance Class | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). The Dance Class, 1874. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, 1986 (1987.47.1) #dance #Degas | When this work and its variant in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, were painted in the mid-1870s, they constituted Degas's most ambitious figural compositions except for history paintings.
art for art's sake
The Women of Algiers in their Apartment, Eugene Delacroix. 1834. This would have been painted around the time that France annexed Algeria in July 1834, after the initial invasion four years previously. North Africa held a certain enchantment for French painters, seeking to escape the hectic, urban life of Paris for a different culture, often fetishized and feminized in art from this period, known as “Orientalism”.
