Gallery A

Claude MONET
France 1840-1926

This painting of Claude Monet's son tells us a great deal about family life and the dreams and aspirations of an ambitious young painter. The first child of Monet and Camille Donciuex, Jean was born in Paris in 1867. During Camille's pregnancy, Monet lived cheaply at his father's home, painting to support his new family. He had been advised to abandon Camille, but persisted with the relationship and eventually married the mother of his child in 1870.

Monet painted Camille, Jean and their second son Michel over and over again. Jean is shown here as a five-year-old, and this is probably a birthday portrait. The gift of the mechanical horse was a novelty, proving Monet's modernity and, as importantly, the family's prosperity. Monet's painting, in spite of its formality and signature, seems to have been made for the family. It is not recorded as having been exhibited in the artist's lifetime; it was kept by Jean throughout his life, and remained in the estate of his widow in Giverny until her death.

Berthe MORISOT
France 1841-1895

A well-dressed young woman is seated in an enclosed, private garden. In spite of the presence of the rake at the left of the composition, she is not dressed for gardening, and like so many figures in French painting of the 1870s and 80s, she merely sits, facing the painter-viewer with an easy acceptance of her role as model. Her gloves, her hat and her dress are beautifully painted, each evoked confidently with thick strokes of paint. Her face reveals nothing of her character and, as if in recognition of this, it was painted with considerably less attention that the painter lavished on her costume. For Berthe Morisot, as for so many great painters of modern life, the costume and setting were as important as the head and hands.

Alfred SISLEY
France 1839-1899

From 1883 to 1889 Alfred Sisley lived in Les Sablons, at the junction of the Seine and Loing rivers and one of several small villages on the southern fringe of the forest of Fontainebleau. It was his habit to walk to picturesque local spots, carrying a portable canvas and colours to paint the riverside, forest and nearby towns of Moret, Marley and Saintes-Mammès. This is one of only a handful of paintings actually made at home.

Sisley has organised the picture around a central pathway into the picture plane, a simple composition much favoured by the artist. This grassy path through the village is likely to be the very route he took each time he went to the butcher or on a field trip to paint. Unusually, Sisley has given prominence to the figures in this painting: a backyard gardener stops work to chat with a passing neighbour. For an artist as private in his work as Sisley, it is a telling aside on the intimacy and domesticity of village life.

Paul GAUGUIN
France 1848-1903

Paul Gauguin is making pictorial reference to one of the most famous fables of Jean de La Fontaine, adapted from an earlier text ascribed to Aesop. The fable begins with a conversation between a clay jug and an iron jug, safe in the confines of a home. The iron jug proposes a journey and, although the clay jug is afraid it will be broken and wishes to remain at home, the iron jug, after repeated entreaties, prevails. After journeying for a while, the clay jug is eventually broken. The work has a biographical reading: 1880 was a year of crisis for the artist and his Danish wife Mette Gad as Gauguin struggled to paint full-time, and their lack of funds resulted in marital friction.

Édouard VUILLARD
France 1868-1940

When he painted this work Édouard Vuillard undoubtedly had in mind the dense greenery of 16th and 17th century 'verdure' tapestries, with their interlocking layers of leaves, as well as Japanese screens, with their oblique perspectives and their insight into the everyday dramas of eating, sleeping, playing and drinking tea. The surface of the painting, with its dry stucco-like character, hints at another source: fresco painting.

This delightful panorama, viewed from the security of an upstairs window, reveals the joys of ordinary life in the street below. Ironically, this scene of glorious tranquillity was installed in the dining room of the art dealer George Berheim as World War I raged across Europe. At first glance, it appears that Vuillard preferred not to acknowledge this calamity, but there are no men in the scene. He painted his preference for a world at peace and rejection of a world at war.