Curated playlist
20th-century French painters
- Joseph-Noël SylvestreJoseph-Noël Sylvestre painted a barbarian sword raised over a fallen Rome.
- Edgar DegasEdgar Degas showed only one sculpture in his lifetime. After he died, heirs found 150 wax figures in his studio.
- Claude MonetImpressionism began as a critic's insult. Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise gave it the name.
- Paul CézannePaul Cézanne was rejected by the Salon de Paris every year from 1864 to 1869.
- Henri MatisseHenri Matisse did not pick up a paintbrush until he was nineteen. He had been trained as a lawyer.
- Pierre-Auguste RenoirPainter Renoir was once mistaken for a spy and nearly thrown into the Seine. A man he had once protected stepped in.
- Marcel DuchampIn 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a signed urinal to a New York show, and the committee turned it away.
- Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin was a stockbroker who painted only on weekends. A 1882 market crash pushed him toward full-time art.
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall fled Europe in 1941 on a ship carrying 119 refugee children. He taught them drawing.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau recorded his 1929 recovery from opium in a diary of drawings and withdrawal notes.
- Édouard DetailleÉdouard Detaille was described as the "semi-official artist of the French army," a label very few painters have ever earned. Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille was born on the 5th of October 1848 and died on the 23rd of December 1912. In those…
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky quit a law career at age 30 to enroll in an art academy in Munich. He became a pioneer of abstraction.
- Jean-Léon GérômeJean-Léon Gérôme taught more than 2,000 students, including Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins.