"I am convinced that the true collector does not acquire objects of art for himself alone. His is no selfish drive or desire to have and hold a painting, a sculpture, or a fine example of antique furniture so that only he may see and enjoy it. Apprec...

The name Manet often evokes the provocative, heroically scaled pictures he painted in the 1860s for the Salon, but in the late 1870s and early 1880s the artist produced quite a different body of work: stylish portraits of actresses and demimondaines,...

Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), arguably the most important French landscape artist of the mid-nineteenth century and a leader of the so-called Barbizon School, occupies a crucial moment of transition from the idealizing effects of academic painting t...

Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) was an undisputed success during his life. Crowds flocked to see his vibrant compositions and thanks to mass marketing of his work through mechanical reproduction, he reached audiences on an unprecedented scale. Despite G...