100 Years of French Painting

Nestled in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is home to an extraordinary collection of European and American paintings. The collection is particularly rich in nineteenth-century French paintings. During that period, Paris was the center of the European art world, and the extraordinary variety of styles and subjects reflects an exciting and sometimes turbulent atmosphere of social, political, economic, and technological change.
In this selection of thirty images from the extensive holdings of the Clark, you will find examples of the traditional grand portraiture of Jacques-Louis David; the romantic bravura of Theodore Gericault; idealized descriptions of country living by Barbizon artists Jean-Francois Millet and Camille Corot; the social satire of Honore Daumier; brilliant and deceptively casual “snapshots” of everyday subjects by Edgar Degas; a voyeuristic look at an “exotic” culture by Jean-Leon Gerome; the cool academic representation of the ideal human form exemplified by William Bouguereau; experiments in new subjects and painting techniques developed by Impressionists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro; the radical approach to color and pattern of post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin; and more. These different artistic visions demonstrate the dramatic breadth of style and subject produced by nineteenth-century French artists.
Pomegranate’s books of postcards contain up to thirty top-quality reproductions bound together in a handy, artful collection. Easy to remove and produced on heavy card stock, these stunning postcards are a delight to the sender and receiver. Postcards are oversized and may require additional postage.