Paul Chabas | Figurative painter

Paul Émile Chabas (1869-1937) was a French painter and illustrator and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

He was born in Nantes, and had his artistic training under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1890.

He was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and in 1912 received the Médaille d’honneur.

His preferred subject was a young girl in a natural setting.

Valentin De Boulogne | Baroque painter

With the exception of Valentin de Boulogne's baptismal record, bearing a disputed date of either 1591 or 1594, the artist's early life is undocumented.

The son of a painter and stained glass worker, Valentin likely received his first training with his father in his native Coulommiers, near Paris.

He may subsequently have studied with an artist in Paris or in Fontainebleau.

It is not known when he departed for Italy, where he resided the remainder of his short life.

Joachim von Sandrart remarked (1675) that Valentin reached Rome before Simon Vouet (1590-1649), who arrived around 1614.

Valentin de Boulogne | The Crowning with thorns, 1620

This masterpiece of Baroque naturalism is among the first known works painted by Valentin de Boulogne, Caravaggio’s most accomplished French follower and arguably his greatest acolyte.

Painted in Rome in 1615 or shortly thereafter, it shows to what extent and how quickly the Frenchman had absorbed Caravaggio’s radical innovations.

Valentin de Boulogne | The Crowning with thorns, 1620 (detail) | Sotheby's

Othon Friesz | Fauve painter

Achille-Émile Othon Friesz (6 February 1879 - 10 January 1949), who later called himself Othon Friesz, a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement.

Othon Friesz was born in Le Havre, the son of a long line of shipbuilders and sea captains.

He went to school in his native city.

It was while he was at the Lycée that he met his lifelong friend Raoul Dufy.

Félix Vallotton | Landscapes and seascapes

Vallotton's landscapes and seascapes avoided conventional views and techniques, and presented unusual viewpoints and perspectives.

The scene is sometimes seen from above, with the horizon very high in the picture, or without the sky being visible at all.

The forms are simplified, and the figures are often small and almost unrecognizable.

Felix-Vallotton | The Ball, 1899 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Henri Matisse | Orientalist Odalisque

In 1917 Matisse relocated to Cimiez on the French Riviera, a suburb of the city of Nice.

His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach.

This "return to order" is characteristic of much art of the post-World War I period and can be compared with the neoclassicism of Picasso and Stravinsky as well as the return to traditionalism of Derain.

Odilon Redon | Hommage a Goya, 1885 | The series

Homage to Goya (Hommage à Goya) is an portfolio of 6 lithographs on chine appliqué reveal Redon's admiration for the Spanish painter and printmaker, who died in 1828.

This series is one of many that Odilon Redon created throughout his career.

Nearly two-thirds of his lithographs took the form of portfolios - prints connected conceptually by a theme or narrative and physically by a folder or binding.

Odilon Redon | Hommage a Goya, 1885 | Scharf Gerstenberg Collection

Paul Gauguin | The Siesta, 1892-94

The unaffected grace and communal ease of Tahitian women impressed Gauguin enormously.

The artist worked on this painting over an extended period, incorporating numerous changes.

The skirt of the woman in the foreground, for example, was originally bright red; there was a dog in the position now occupied by the basket at lower right; and the woman seated at the left edge of the porch was previously situated further to the left. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Paul Gauguin quotes: "Art = a mad search for individualism"

• "L'arte è un'astrazione: spremetela dalla natura sognando di fronte ad essa e preoccupatevi più della creazione che del risultato".

• "When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body".

Felix Vallotton | Still life with gladioli, 1924

Félix Vallotton's still life paintings are characterized by their formal simplicity, striking compositions, and a cool, detached sensibility.

While still lifes were a minor subject for him earlier in his career, they became prominent in his work from around 1910 onwards.

In his later years, painting in his studio in Honfleur, Vallotton concentrated particularly on still lifes, particularly flowers, fruits and vegetables, very carefully arranged and painted with extreme precision.

Constant Troyon | The Barbizon school of painters

Constant Troyon (1810-1865), French painter, was born in Sèvres, near Paris, where his father was connected with the famous manufactory of porcelain.

Troyon was an animal painter of the first rank, and was closely associated with the artists who painted around Barbizon.

The technical qualities of his methods of painting are most masterly; his drawing is excellent, and his composition always interesting.

It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his métier, but when he realized his power of painting animals he produced a fairly large number of good pictures in a few years.

François Lassere, 1960 | Oppositionist Art

Born in Puy de Dôme, France, François Lassere is a self-taught painter who practices several techniques.

He was interested in hyperrealism for many years, then moved on to working in raw material, when a painter in Paris suggested to him to expand to new techniques.

Lassere then embarked on a new trend, which he calls “Oppositionism”. From this point on his work will mostly consist of highlighting heterogeneous styles to extract harmony from them.

Paul Gauguin | Post-Impressionist painter

Paul Gauguin, in full Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848, Paris, France-died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia) French painter, printmaker and sculptor who sought to achieve a "primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work.

The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti, French Polynesia.

His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.

Édouard Manet Quotes: "Black is not a color"

• Everything is mere appearance, the pleasures of a passing hour, a midsummer night's dream. Only painting, the reflection of a reflection - but the reflection, too, of eternity - can record some of the glitter of this mirage.

• A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds.

• A good painting is true to itself.

• In una figura, cercate la grande luce e la grande ombra, il resto verrà da sé.

Victor Gilbert | Belle Époque painter

The mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the introduction of art based on daily life, a depiction of everything from the street vendors to the homeless in and around France.

Artists were often deeply embroiled in the social issues of the time and sought to free themselves from the imposing historicism that had stifled art production for decades.

Renoir: "Irregularity is the basis of all art"

• "They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph".

• "Ti dicono che un albero è solo una combinazione di elementi chimici. Io preferisco credere che sia stato Dio a crearlo e che sia abitato da una ninfa".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Love

Renoir’s joyful, discreet and tender vision, devoid of any hint of sentimentality, ribaldry or drama, distinguishes him from the other painters of his day.

The artist locates the interactions he depicts in his paintings in the public space, the new, modern social and natural settings - theaters, restaurants, guinguettes, boulevards and gardens - frequented by various social classes.

Theses popular "scenes" of modern love encouraged greater freedom of morals and the blossoming of "illicit" loves, in an era when bourgeois conventions and religious morality still governed romantic and sexual relationships.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Estaque, 1885-1890

"L'Estaque" is an oil on canvas, 18 3/8 x 21 7/8 inches, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), created in 1885-1890.

It is part of the collection of the Portland Museum of Art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir passed through Provence on his return trip to France from Italy in January 1882, stopping at the fishing village of L'Estaque on the Mediterranean coast - close to Marseilles in the South of France, where Cézanne had painted regularly since the 1860s.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Estaque, 1885-1890 | Portland Museum of Art

Léon Perrault | Genre / Academic painter

Painter of genre, history, religion and portrait Léon-Jean-Bazile Perrault (1832-1908) stands in peril of not being remembered as distinctively as his successes might merit.

For our part, we may narrow this great artist’s claims at once by rejecting his religious painting, and we may be inclined to go on and deny him the title of historical painter, so that, although we shall have paintings of religious subjects and of historical subjects to consider, we shall in truth be considering them as work of a painter of genre and portrait.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | La Balançoire / L'altalena, 1876

Renoir gives us the impression of surprising a conversation - as if in a snapshot, he catches the glances turned towards the man seen from the back.

The young woman is looking away as if she were embarrassed.

The foursome in the foreground is balanced by the group of five figures sketchily brushed in the background.

The Swing has many points in common with The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette.

The two pictures were painted in parallel in the summer of 1876.