It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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The Card Players by Paul Cezanne ca. 1892
As a later work, The Card Players is more indicative of Cezanne’s earlier impressionism. It does have the thick lines and bright colors of the impressionist school, but also the fragmented quality that Cezanne used to separate the shapes and forms within his paintings. This painting was created in Cezanne’s mature period, in Provence, where he stabilized his family residence and completed many of his later paintings. It was at this time that Cezanne employed the use of his wife, son, local peasants, children, and art dealers as his models and subjects. You can almost image Cezanne sitting across from these two players in a local tavern, as he was inspired by them, returning to his estate to paint them.
Ouverture des États généraux à Versailles, 5 mai 1789,Auguste Couder, 1839, Musée de l’Histoire de France (Versailles).
The Estates-General (or States-General) of 1789 (French: Les États-Généraux de 1789) was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobles (Second Estate), and the common people (Third Estate). Summoned by King Louis XVI to propose solutions to his government’s financial problems, the Estates-General sat for several weeks in May and June 1789 but came to an impasse as the three estates clashed over their respective powers. It was brought to an end when many members of the Third Estate formed themselves into a National Assembly, signalling the outbreak of the French Revolution.
@credits
François-Auguste_Biard, L’abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaisesOn 27 April 1848, under the Second Republic (1848–52), the decree-law Schœlcher abolished slavery for the second time. The state bought the slaves from the colons, and then freed them.
Jean François de Troy’s 1735 painting Le Déjeuner d’Huîtres (The Oyster Luncheon) is the first known depiction of Champagne in painting
Madame de Staël en Corinne (1807), Firmin Massot, huile sur bois, 61 x 52 cm - Collection du château de Coppet (Suisse) -
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein; 22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era of which she was a principal opponent. Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism.
Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (anonymous, 17th century)
Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (1588 – 2 December 1665), known as Madame de Rambouillet, was a society hostess and a major figure in the literary history of 17th-century France.
Marguerite Bourgeoys par Pierre le Ber
Marguerite Bourgeoys, C.N.D., was the French foundress of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in the colony of New France, now part of Canada. She lived in Fort Ville-Marie (now Montreal) as of 1653, educating young girls, the poor, and natives until her death at the turn of the 18th century. She is also significant for developing one of the first uncloistered religious communities in the Catholic Church. She has been declared asaint by the Catholic Church.
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The Magpie, Claude Monet, 1868-1869
In the late 1860s, Monet started to extend the need to capture sensations and render “the effect” to all transitory, even fleeting states of nature. Taking Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley with him, Monet tackled the great challenge of a snow-covered landscape, which Courbet had grandly explored with great success not long before. Toning down Courbet’s lyricism, Monet preferred a frail magpie perched on a gate, like a note on a staff of music, to the world of the forest and hunting. Sun and shade construct the painting and translate the impalpable part-solid part-liquid matter. The Impressionist landscape was born, five years before the first official exhibition when the movement was given its name.
This painting of a place in the countryside near Etretat, executed on the spot, uses very unusual pale, luminous colours, a fact highlighted by the critic Felix Fénéon: “[The public] accustomed to the tarry sauces cooked up by the chefs of art schools and academies, was flabbergasted by this pale painting.” The novelty and daring of Monet’s approach, which was more about perception than description, explain the painting’s rejection by the jury of the 1869 salon.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/c69cdf7f885a48d509010fe93df275ea/tumblr_mjj6oc5ZnX1ripbrdo1_500.jpg)
The Magpie, Claude Monet, 1868-1869
In the late 1860s, Monet started to extend the need to capture sensations and render “the effect” to all transitory, even fleeting states of nature. Taking Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley with him, Monet tackled the great challenge of a snow-covered landscape, which Courbet had grandly explored with great success not long before. Toning down Courbet’s lyricism, Monet preferred a frail magpie perched on a gate, like a note on a staff of music, to the world of the forest and hunting. Sun and shade construct the painting and translate the impalpable part-solid part-liquid matter. The Impressionist landscape was born, five years before the first official exhibition when the movement was given its name.
This painting of a place in the countryside near Etretat, executed on the spot, uses very unusual pale, luminous colours, a fact highlighted by the critic Felix Fénéon: “[The public] accustomed to the tarry sauces cooked up by the chefs of art schools and academies, was flabbergasted by this pale painting.” The novelty and daring of Monet’s approach, which was more about perception than description, explain the painting’s rejection by the jury of the 1869 salon.
Constance Marie Charpentier, Melancholy, 1801, oil on canvas, 130 x 165 cm. Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France
Constance Marie Charpentier (born 1767 Paris, France – August 3, 1849 France) was a French painter. She specialized in genre scenes andportraits, mainly of children and women. She was also known as Constance Marie Bondelu.
Records of Charpentier’s training are unclear, but she might have studied with numerous artists. She is typically believed to have studied with the acclaimed French painter Jacques-Louis David, but may also have been a pupil of François Gérard, Pierre Bouillon, Louis Lafitte, and either Johann Georg Wille or his son, Pierre-Alexandre Wille.
In 1788 she received a ‘Prix d’Encouragement.’ From 1795 to 1819 she exhibited approximately thirty painting at various Salons, winning a gold medal in 1814 at the Paris Salon and a silver medal in 1821 at the Salon at Douai.
Le Tricheur à l’as de carreau, vers 1635,musée du Louvre, Paris
The only diurnal painting by Georges de La Tour in the Louvre along with the Saint Thomas, the Cheat illustrates a theme that was frequently taken up in the wake of Caravaggio. The young man is subjected here to three major temptations according to 17th-century moral standards: gambling, wine, and lust. Another version with notable variations is known to exist, the Cheat with the Ace of Clubs (Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum).
1972, the year of La Tour’s renaissance
One of George de La Tour’s masterpieces and a classic of French painting, the Cheat occupies a particular place among the artist’s works for several reasons. Purchased in 1926 by Paul Landry from an antique dealer on the Île Saint-Louis, the painting bearing the artist’s handsome signature, was made public by Hermann Voss, in 1931, in an article that was to deliver the artist from the depths of oblivion. In this respect, the Louvre painting is one of La Tour’s “firsts.” In 1934, the Cheat featured in the memorable exhibition of the Painters of Reality (Peintres de la réalité) that brought French 17th-century painting back to glory and marked the revival of Georges de La Tour. This sparked a growing craze for the artist and the corpus of his works broadened. Lastly, the year 1972 saw the first monographic exhibition devoted to the painter. It was a huge success and, on this occasion, Landry donated the work to the Musée du Louvre.
The fleecing of the young man
Four figures are gathered around a table and are playing cards. They all seem to be suspended in time. On the right, a lavishly dressed man is going through his cards. He is set apart from the other figures and does not share in their complicity, which is visible in their sidelong glances. Slightly off-center, a woman with a sophisticated hairstyle and plunging neckline beckons us with her eyes and hand position toward the left side of the composition where another player, plunged in shadow, is discreetly producing an ace of diamonds from under his belt. To complete the scene, a maidservant is preparing a glass of wine between him and the courtesan. The situation seems quite clear. The young man, drawn into the game by the courtesan not lacking in assets, is intoxicated and will be divested of his possessions by the man on the left. The painting reworks a subject introduced by Caravaggio in a work currently in the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth, the companion piece to the Fortune Teller in the Louvre by the same artist. A canvas similar in subject painted by La Tour (Metropolitan Museum, New York) formed the pendant to the composition in the Louvre, or more probably to an earlier version of it, also in Forth Worth.
