Curated category
20th-century French painters
- Joseph-Noël SylvestreJoseph-Noël Sylvestre was born on the 24th of June 1847 in Béziers, a city in the South-West of France that would send him on a long journey toward the grand…
- Edgar DegasEdgar Degas was born on the 19th of July 1834 in Paris, under the full name Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas. He later adopted the simpler spelling himself, a…
- Claude MonetClaude Monet was born on the 14th of November 1840, on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte in Paris, and died on the 5th of December 1926, having spent the…
- Paul CézannePaul Cézanne was born on the 19th of January 1839 at 28 rue de l'Opéra in Aix-en-Provence, a city he would never truly leave behind.
- Henri MatisseHenri Émile Benoît Matisse did not pick up a paintbrush until he was nineteen years old. He had been trained as a lawyer, and was working as a court…
- Pierre-Auguste RenoirPierre-Auguste Renoir painted the portrait of the composer Richard Wagner in just thirty-five minutes. It was the 15th of January 1882, and Wagner received…
- Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp walked into a New York exhibition hall in 1917 and submitted a urinal for display. He had signed it with a pseudonym, "R.
- Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin was born in Paris on the 7th of June 1848, in the middle of a year when revolutions were sweeping across Europe.
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall spent nearly a century alive on earth, and almost every one of those years was spent either fleeing something or painting it.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau called himself a poet, and only a poet, even after he had written novels, staged plays, drawn erotica, and directed films that critics still…
- Édouard DetailleJean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille entered the world on the 5th of October 1848 in Paris. He grew up in Picardy within a prosperous military family.
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky stood in his studio one day and stared at a painting on the wall for a long moment before realising it was his own work, hanging upside…
- Jean-Léon GérômeJean-Léon Gérôme was born on the 11th of May 1824 in Vesoul, a small town in the Haute-Saône region of France, and by 1880 he had become arguably the most…