The Musicians
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Caravaggio killed a man in a fight in Rome in 1606 and fled the city. He spent the rest of his life painting in Naples, Malta, and Sicily while seeking a papal pardon. He died in 1610 before he could return to Rome.
Landscape with a Plowed Field and a Village
Georges Michel
Michel worked as a restorer at the Louvre, where he studied Dutch landscapes by Ruisdael, Van Goyen, and Rembrandt. This village is invented. He painted on paper mounted on canvas, a cheaper way to get the smooth surface of the wood panels those painters used.
Breton Brother and Sister
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Bouguereau based this painting on sketches he made in Brittany in the late 1860s, then completed it in his studio. The children are posed in traditional Breton clothing. American collectors bought many of these rural scenes; this one came to the Met through Catharine Lorillard Wolfe's bequest.
Girl Holding Lemons
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
In the year he painted this, Bouguereau took his son Paul to Menton on the French Riviera. Paul had tuberculosis, and his doctors recommended sea air. During the stay, Bouguereau found a room in their hotel where he could paint.
By the Stream (Au Bord du Ruisseau)
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
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The girl's red stockings lie beside her on the bank. Bouguereau painted the skin, cloth, and plants with almost no visible brushwork. His reputation declined after his death, as tastes shifted toward modern painting. Exhibitions in the late twentieth century brought renewed interest in his work.
The Veteran in a New Field
Winslow Homer
Homer first painted a scythe with a wooden cradle, a set of spokes that caught the cut wheat. He painted the spokes out, though they now show through the aging paint. The simpler blade resembles the Grim Reaper's scythe. The man's Union Army jacket and canteen lie in the lower right corner.
The Shipwreck
Claude-Joseph Vernet
Lord Arundell commissioned this with a companion painting, Moonlight, for his house in Wiltshire. The pair put a shipwreck beside a calm harbor. They stayed in the family until 1952 and were separated after that sale.
Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close
John Constable
In 1821 and 1822, Constable painted cloud studies on Hampstead Heath, often recording the date, time, wind direction, and weather on the back. These were small oil paintings made outdoors. This view of Salisbury dates from just before that period.
The Rape of Proserpine
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner showed this at the Royal Academy in 1839, with a passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses in the exhibition catalog. The subject is Pluto's abduction of Proserpine. The figures are small enough that you can take in the whole landscape before noticing what's happening at the lower left.
Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Henry McConnel commissioned this view of Venice, then ordered Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight to hang beside it. The second painting shows men loading coal at night in Newcastle. He sold both to John Naylor in 1849. When he tried to buy one back in 1861, Naylor refused.
Boats Carrying Out Anchors and Cables to the Dutch Men of War
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Seven men work the small boat in the foreground, with warships farther out. Four are rowing. The boat sits low between the waves, and another follows behind it. Turner gives most of the canvas to the sea and sky.
Intérieur du Port de Marseille
Claude-Joseph Vernet, from the Ports of France series.
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Vernet included himself, his wife Virginie, and their son Livio among the people on the quay. Louis XV's commission required him to show the work of each port in detail. Here that means cargo in jars and bales, grain piled on the quay, and ships from around the Mediterranean.
The Ninth Wave
Ivan Aivazovsky (Hovhannes Aivazian).
The title comes from a sailors' belief that the ninth wave is the largest and most dangerous. The survivors cling to a broken mast as daylight reaches the water. Aivazovsky painted his seascapes from memory in his studio; he said a breaking wave moved too quickly to paint from life.
The Hamlet of Optevoz
Charles-François Daubigny
Daubigny based this painting on drawings he made at Optevoz in 1852. He'd first visited the village in 1849. One of the preparatory sketches is also at the Met; a later painting in Philadelphia shows the same view from farther back, in different light.