Selected Images

Click on an image below to learn more.

• 
  Seated Woman with Mandolin
  Seated Woman with Mandolin

  Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
  French, 1796–1875
  Seated Woman with Mandolin, undated
  Oil on panel
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.146

  Camille Corot considered painting figures as a distinct activity from his usual work of painting naturalistic landscapes. He took pleasure in staging his models to create romantic fantasy paintings of dreamy, picturesque subjects. Corot dressed his models in items from his collection of costumes and gave them props—like a palette, a book, or a mandolin, for example. These attributes transformed the figure into an allegory, a representation of an idea, like painting, poetry, or music, in this case. The sketchiness of the landscape background suggests this canvas may be a study for a more finished composition.

• 
  Woman Seated at Her Piano
  Woman Seated at Her Piano

  Henri Matisse
  French, 1869–1954
  Woman Seated at Her Piano, ca. 1924
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.149

  Henri Matisse painted this small canvas as a preparatory sketch for a larger composition. It shows his process of making changes to the figure’s pose and position in the picture by scraping away and repainting the head and torso. Women playing the piano are a recurrent theme in Matisse’s work. This painting, in fact, is one in a series of similar compositions that Matisse painted around 1924. They were staged in Matisse’s apartment in Nice, recognizable by the distinctively patterned wallpaper. The young piano player is Henriette Darricarrère, one of Matisse’s primary models.

• 
  Portrait of Beatrice Hastings
  Portrait of Beatrice Hastings

  Amedeo Modigliani
  Italian, 1884–1920
  Portrait of Beatrice Hastings, 1914
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.150

  The thick application of paint in short, choppy strokes in this work betrays Amedeo Modigliani’s early association with the art of the Macchiaioli, a group of Italian artists who, like the French Impressionists, painted in colorful patches. The portrait is of the English writer, poet, and literary critic Beatrice Hastings, Modigliani’s partner between 1914 and 1916. The stylization of her features—elongated nose, almond shaped eyes, long neck, and sensual orange-red coloring—is characteristic of Modigliani’s distinctive style. Hastings and Modigliani met in Paris through friends. Modigliani painted Hastings fourteen times during their two-year relationship.

• 
  Cliffs of Pourville, Rough Sea
  Cliffs of Pourville, Rough Sea

  Claude Monet
  French, 1840–1926
  Cliffs of Pourville, Rough Sea, 1897
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.153

  Claude Monet spent the winter seasons of 1896 and 1897 in the small French fishing village of Pourville on the Normandy coast. During these stays he produced many views of that picturesque town and the landscape around it. One of his favorite motifs were the cliffs rising dramatically from the sea. He often worked on several canvases at once, in order to capture changing effects of weather and light. In this composition, the viewer is placed at the edge of the rough sea and sees the cliffs through the blurring mist and haze of a passing rainstorm and foam-capped waves.

• 
  Seated Peasant Woman
  Seated Peasant Woman

  Camille Pissarro
  French, 1830–1903
  Seated Peasant Woman, 1901
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.154

  While most of the Impressionists preferred to paint the bustling boulevards of Paris and fashionable weekends resorts, Camille Pissarro in the 1880s began to focus his attention on the day-to-day life of French farmers. By the time he painted this seated woman, he had changed his style from the spontaneous naturalism of the Impressionists to the more obviously “artificial” approach of Pointillism. Pointillism was based on scientific color theories and the systematic application of uniform marks of color side by side.

• 
  Ornamental Lake at Kew Gardens, London
  Ornamental Lake at Kew Gardens, London

  Camille Pissarro
  French, 1830–1903
  Ornamental Lake at Kew Gardens, London, 1892
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.156

  Like other French artists, Camille Pissarro moved his family to London at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Like Claude Monet, he returned to England several more times to live and work—in 1890, 1892, and 1897. This picture of the famous black swans at London’s Kew Gardens—a tourist attraction to this day—was painted during Pissarro’s 1892 visit.

• 
  Calvary and Church at Nizon
  Calvary and Church at Nizon

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  French, 1841–1919
  Calvary and Church at Nizon, undated
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2019.157

  During several summers spent traveling and working in northern France, Renoir became fascinated by the distinctive architecture and landscapes of Brittany and Normandy. In this painting, done in the small Breton village of Nizon, he recorded the town’s sixteenth-century church of Saint-Amet and the calvary in front. Calvaries are monumental outdoor crucifixes found across northern France and Belgium. They served both as road markers and objects of veneration. In Renoir’s summertime view, the austere church and crucifix are softened by warm sunlight, a bright blue sky, and charming white cotton-puff clouds.

• 
  The “Trou d’Enfer” Farm, Autumn Morning
  The “Trou d’Enfer” Farm, Autumn Morning

  Alfred Sisley
  French, 1839–1899
  The “Trou d’Enfer” Farm, Autumn Morning, 1874
  Oil on canvas
  Doris and Shouky Shaheen, 2019.158

  Alfred Sisley painted this autumn landscape at Louveciennes, now a suburb of Paris twelve miles to the west, where the artist lived from 1871 to 1875. Diagonal rows of apple trees lead the eye towards the farm in the center of the composition. Most of the trees have already dropped their foliage, and a large bale of hay is stacked up at the end of the farmhouse in preparation for the winter. The long shadows cast by the trees indicate that the view was painted on a late fall afternoon.