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The Floor Scrapers and the Making of Caillebotte's Masterpiece

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Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers , 1875  Musée d'Orsay, now on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Right now the National Gallery is having an exhibition of an Impressionist whose reputation has grown over the last 25 years, Gustave Caillebotte.   Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye will be on view until October 4. It's interesting how his first masterpiece, The Floor Scrapers was rejected by the Salon in 1875, but part of the Impressionists' exhibition the next year. The masterful painting granted Caillebotte entry into the Impressionist group. He repaid his dear friends by buying up many of their works and then donating them to the French state after he died.  Many of the paintings he owned are part of Paris' great early modern museum, Musée d'Orsay. It's appropriate that the museum that houses so many Impressionist works is a former train station, since modern trains inspired viewers to observe the transient views of the world that ...
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Dürer, French Drawings and the Stages of Life

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Albrecht Dürer , The Head of Christ , 1506 brush and gray ink, gray wash, heightened with white on blue paper overall: 27.3 x 21 cm (10 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.) overall (framed): 50 63.8 4.1 cm (19 11/16 25 1/8 1 5/8 in.) Albertina, Vienna The National Gallery of Art is hosting the largest show of Albrecht Dürer drawings, prints and watercolors ever seen in North America, combining its own collection with that of the Albertina in Vienna, Austria.  Across the street in the museum's west wing is the another exhibition of works on paper, Color, Line and Light: French Drawings Watercolors and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac .  The French drawings are spectacular, but it's hard to imagine the 19th century masters without the earlier genius out of Germany, Dürer, who approached drawing with scientist's curiosity for understanding nature. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait at Thirteen , 1484 silverpoint on prepared paper, 27.3 19.5 cm (10 3/4 7 11/16 in.) (framed): 51.7 43.1 4.5 cm (20 3/8 16...
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Arcimboldo: Where Art and Science Meet

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"Vertumnus," 1590, is a portrait of a Habsburg ruler, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Arcimboldo betrays a knowledge of plants from the New World: corn and pumpkins. This painting may suggest Rudolf II's worldliness and the bounty of his reign. In the tradition of L eonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer, 16th century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his artistic skills to record his knowledge of the animals, plants, birds and fish, and he combined the seemingly opposite disciplines of art and science in a unexp ected way. The National Gallery exhibition of his paintings is called Arcimboldo 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy. The paintings on display are primarily portraits. But instead of recognizable faces with traditional features, he composed his portrait heads of painted vegetables, fruits, flowers, fire, fowl, fish and frogs. His human beings are a rich composite of the natural world. Arcimboldo worked in Vienna as the court painter for the Holy Roman Emperor, first...
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