The art of the French avant garde in the 19th century is often underestimated as safe or bourgeois. But as a new exhibition in London underlines, Monet, Renoir, Manet and their contemporaries remain so popular not because people want 'safe' art – but because the impressionists captured the feel of modernity in unprecendented, rich and strange ways
The art of the French avant garde in the 19th century is often underestimated as safe or bourgeois. But as a new exhibition in London underlines, Monet, Renoir, Manet and their contemporaries remain so popular not because people want 'safe' art – but because the impressionists captured the feel of modernity in unprecendented, rich and strange ways.
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| Girl With a Fan, c1879, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir |
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| Moss Roses in a Vase, 1882, by Édouard Manet |
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| The Cliffs at Etretat, 1885, by Claude Monet |
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| Banks of the Seine at By, c1880-81, by Alfred Sisley |
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| Portrait of Madame Monet (Madame Claude Monet Reading), c1874, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir |
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| Shepherdess: Plains of Barbizon, before 1862, by Jean-François Millet |
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| Chrysanthemums, c1874, by James Tissot |
(Source: Guardian)
