Collecting Guides

French Impressionist Landscape Painting Beyond the Famous Names

Thirty painters showed in 1874. Four entered the canon. The others were painting the same rivers in the same years.

Animated Landscapes, Figures in 19th-Century French Painting

A landscape in which figures appear, but in which the figures are not the subject. How to read the French paysage animé — and why the same canvas sells for less catalogued one way than the other.

Haystacks in French Painting, Before and After Monet

Sixty years of French haystacks before Monet made them the whole picture, and the difference between a sheaf and a stack.

Pastoral Scenes, Shepherds and Sheep in 19th-Century French Painting

The century that took the pastoral back from porcelain shepherdesses and gave it the weight of a biblical scene.

The Barbizon School in Painting

A village an hour from Paris, an inn, and the painters who decided a stand of oaks deserved what the Salon gave to Ovid.

Salome and the Head of John the Baptist in Painting

Salome and the head of John the Baptist: the platter that identifies her, the painters who made the subject from Luini to Moreau, and how to collect it.

Judith and Holofernes in Painting

To view our collection on Judith and Holofernes Part of our series on the Women of the Gospels in Painting. See also our guides to Mary Magdalene and the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Caravaggio, ...

Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well in Old Master Painting

Our collecting guides → She does not weep. She does not kneel. She does not repent. She stands by a well at noon, holding a clay jar, and argues with a stranger who turns out to be God. Christ and...

Mary Magdalene in Old Master Painting

She was a sinner, a saint, a hermit, a feminist icon and for five centuries, the woman every European painter wanted to paint. From Titian's golden storms of hair to Caravaggio's quiet Roman girl i...