Object Notes

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet painted together on many occasions, including at Argenteuil, where Monet lived. The products of their work were never closer than the similar paintings they made of the duck pond at Argenteuil, in which the short brushstrokes, colors, and points of view are almost identical. The paintings are often quoted to prove the collaborative relationship between the two men.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir often used his friends as models for genre scenes, most of which were posed and painted in the studio. The sitters for this small painting were the amateur critic Georges Rivière and the artist's model Marguerite Legrand, known professionally as Margot.

Although Pierre-Auguste Renoir is often considered a figure painter, the landscapes he painted in the 1860s and 1870s were daringly experimental. In The Seine at Châtou, he fills nearly the entire canvas with water and sky.

Berthe Morisot spent the winter of 1881–1882 with her family on the Mediterranean coast in Nice, France. As she often did while traveling, Morisot brought along her plein-air (outdoor) painting kit and worked outside when the weather permitted.

Camille Pissarro captures a cold morning and the resulting veneer of frost that coats the picturesque Parisian suburb of Louveciennes, where the artist lived at the time. This painting depicts the landscape in late fall or early winter, just as the trees lose their leaves and frost begins to form. The sun rises and casts long shadows, melting the ephemeral frost.

One of only four self-portraits by Camille Pissarro, this three-quarter-length likeness was created during a particularly sorrowful time in the artist's life. In 1897, one of Pissarro's sons suffered a stroke and another died from tuberculosis. Additionally, he was plagued with the worsening of a chronic eye infection that forced him to paint indoors.