Room 41

Positioned on the waterfront of the East River, we are looking across the partly frozen river towards the tall buildings of Lower Manhattan. The warehouse in shadow on the left and the massive hull of an ocean liner on the right form two powerful diagonals that meet at the sunlit Manhattan skylin...

Cézanne spent several months over the summer of 1888 working in and around Chantilly, some 24 miles north of Paris. This is one of three similar oil paintings of the park surrounding the chateau that he produced during his stay. The symmetry and spatial depth of this view may have appealed to him...

Around 200 of Cézanne’s works depict male and female nude bathers, either singly or in groups, in a landscape. This large painting is one of three pictures of female bathers that Cézanne worked on during the final decade of his life. They represent the culmination of his lifelong investigation of...

This painting is of a summer landscape in Cézanne’s native Provence in the south of France. Like the Impressionists, Cézanne was interested in depicting the landscape primarily using touches of colour. Although this painting shows Cézanne’s debt to Impressionism, his method is more controlled. Fo...

An older man sits, legs crossed and head bowed, absorbed in his reading. This is Cézanne’s father, Louis-Auguste. He was probably in his early sixties when his son painted this portrait directly onto an alcove wall in the salon of Jas de Bouffan, the country residence outside Aix-en-Provence that...

During the 1860s Cézanne divided his time between his family home in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, where this picture was probably painted. It evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. Cézanne has rearranged the objects in his studio, and we see them from a high viewpoint, as th...

A supremely poised young woman is painted in three-quarter view. Her right hand curls around the handle of a mirror, while she appears to be caressing a lock of hair with her left. She wears a white blouse under a black velvet bodice and yellow detachable sleeves over her arms. This study is one...

This is the only painting by Klimt in a British public collection, and it’s a fine example of the portraits of society women he painted in the early years of the twentieth century. Wearing a shimmering dress made of translucent white chiffon, Hermine Gallia appears almost to float before us. The...

Torrential rain in autumn 1896 caused extensive flooding near Monet’s home in Giverny. The river Epte, a tributary of the Seine, burst its banks and overflowed into the meadow next to Monet’s garden.Obliged to remain close to home, Monet painted the view of the waterlogged landscape that he saw i...

Irises were among Monet’s favourite flowers, and he cultivated many different species, planting them in both his flower garden and his water garden. This is one of approximately 20 views or irises surrounding the banks of the lily pond that Monet painted around 1914–17. It is as though we are sta...

During the final two decades of his life Monet devoted himself to painting the water garden he had created at his home in Giverny, producing around 250 innovative canvases. His paintings became increasingly experimental as he gradually abandoned depictions of the banks of the pond, its Japanese b...

Before the 1880s Renoir painted very few nudes. But the artist’s journey to Italy in 1881, where he was absorbed by Roman sculpture and Renaissance painting, rekindled his interest and he began painting them far more often. This small and intimate picture is probably one of a series made during t...

This picture, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Tambourine (also in the National Gallery’s collection), was made to decorate the dining room of the Paris apartment of one of Renoir’s most important clients, Maurice Gangnat. Of the two dancers, this figure has the more animated p...

This picture, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Castanets (also in the National Gallery’s collection), was made to decorate the dining room of the Paris apartment of one of Renoir’s most important clients, Maurice Gangnat. Of the two dancers, this figure has the more static pose...

A description on the reverse of this painting identifies it as a landscape near Annecy, a medieval town adjacent to a large lake in the Haute-Savoie region of France. The exact location has not been identified, however. As was usual in his landscapes, Renoir has used strong colour combinations, o...

This is a portrait of Misia Sert, née Godebska, who was the darling of the highest artistic circles in France at the turn of the twentieth century. It is hard to overstate quite how glamorous and influential she was: the local newspapers dubbed her the 'Queen of Paris’. A talented pianist, she a...

This picture shows the view across Moulin Huet Bay on Guernsey. Renoir visited the island for six weeks in 1883, and this is one of a group of paintings he produced during his stay. He was starting to break away from some of the techniques of the Impressionist approach to landscape painting, whic...

This sunlit scene on the river Seine is typical of the imagery that has come to characterise Impressionism, and Renoir includes several familiar Impressionist motifs such as fashionably dressed women, a rowing boat, a sail boat, and a steam train crossing a bridge. The exact location has not been...

This painting places us in a busy Parisian street close to six principal figures who fill the foreground. A milling crowd behind them almost completely blocks out the boulevard beyond. The top quarter of the picture is mostly filled by a canopy of at least a dozen umbrellas.Painted in two stages,...

Five drinkers gather in a tavern in Zarauz, the Basque coastal town where Joaquín Sorolla spent the summer of 1910. One stares at the artist through watery eyes while another pushes cider towards him, egging on the inebriate to further excess. A third glances menacingly at the painter. The canvas...