From 1870 To 1875

In the 19th century, art history became a field of study in its own right for the first time. Art historians began to look at the history of art as a reflection of the history of society, and to study the relationship between art and politics, religion, and other aspects of culture.

The Dance Class

    This work and its variant in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, represent the most ambitious paintings Degas devoted to the theme of the dance.
    Some twenty-four women, ballerinas and their mothers, wait while a dancer executes an "attitude" for her examination.
    Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master, conducts the class.

A Road in Louveciennes

    This picture, which is in effect drawn directly with paint, was almost certainly executed out-of-doors about 1870.
    The site is in the village of Louveciennes, west of Paris, where Camille Pissarro lived and worked in 1869-70 and was inspired to paint the same motif, but from a different vantage point (National Gallery, London).
    At the time, Renoir was staying nearby with his parents, who had retired to Voisins.

The Artist's Cousin, Probably Mrs. William Bell (Mathilde Musson, 1841–1878)

    The sitter for this likeness is thought to be Mathilde Musson, one of Degas's cousins in New Orleans.
    Degas made a number of pictures featuring Mathilde and her two sisters when he visited the family during the fall and winter of 1872 - 73.
    The women can be difficult to tell apart, but the tilt of the head and the intelligent, sidelong gaze seen here closely resemble the figure of Mathilde in another, more finished pastel (Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen).

Apple Blossoms

    Théophile Gautier extolled Daubigny's landscapes as "pieces of nature cut out and set into golden frames."
    The artist first painted flowering orchards about 1857, reprising the motif almost every spring.
    His unpretentious subject matter, rendered with rapid, summary brushstrokes, soon earned the admiration of younger colleagues like Monet.
    By the time of this canvas in 1873, Daubigny, had, in turn, assimilated their high-keyed palette, evident in the vivid green foliage and bright blue sky.
    That same year, Monet painted two views of blossoming fruit trees, one of which is in the Metropolitan's collection (26.186.1).

彫鐫画譜 Album of Designs for Metal Carving (Chōsen Gafu)

    This is the personal sketchbook of sword fittings maker Ranzan Tsuneyuki.
    The sketchbook contains monochrome and colored pen and ink sketches as well as drawings of existing works that served the artist as model and as inspiration alike.
    Such sketchbooks were kept for personal use and not intended to be viewed by the public, although they were given to students for study purposes.

A Woman Reading

    In 1869, the seventy-two-year-old Corot showed A Woman Reading at the Salon.
    The critic Théophile Gautier praised its naïveté and its color but criticized the faulty drawing of the woman.
    Although the artist had painted similar studies for about a decade, this was the first and one of the very few that he exhibited.
    Corot returned to the canvas soon after the Salon; he reworked the landscape but left the figure intact.

Casket

    The cameos, probably carved in a Neapolitan workshop, are based on ancient models as well as on work of the nineteenth-century sculptors Antonio Canova (1757 - 1822) and Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770 - 1844).
    This unique casket may have been commissioned from the London firm Garrard & Co., Crown Jewelers from 1843 until 2007, by a client who purchased the cameos during a visit to Italy.

The Pink Dress (Albertie-Marguerite Carré, later Madame Ferdinand-Henri Himmes, 1854–1935)