1891

NG 1651

This is a work from Monet\'s celebrated series of poplar paintings made between the spring and autumn of 1891. He used a boat as a floating studio and captured beautifully the shimmering effects of sunlight on water.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 81.80 x 81.30 cm
• National Galleries of Scotland

c.1875-6

This picture offers a characteristic glimpse of a Parisian café - a typical subject for the French Impressionists. In Britain however, the absinthe-drinker and her dissipated companion were considered to be unsuitable subjects for representation and the picture, which was owned by a Glasgow merchant, was regarded as morally degrading.

• Musée d'Orsay, Paris

1888

NG 1643

This is one of Gauguin\'s most famous works. The Breton women, dressed in distinctive regional costume, have just listened to a sermon based on a passage from the Bible, relating to the story of Jacob, who, after fording the river Jabbok with his family, spent a whole night wrestling with a mysterious angel..

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 72.20 x 91.00 cm
• National Galleries of Scotland

1881

Renoir painted this work during a trip to Italy in 1880-1. He depicts the cool atmosphere of a winter’s morning, the boats anchored in the harbour and the outline of mount Vesuvius in the background. The painting’s first owner was James Duncan, a Greenock sugar refiner, who bought it in Paris in 1883.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Julia W. Emmons, 1956. (56.135.8)
• © 1999 The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photograph)

1889

NG 1803

Van Gogh was fascinated by the gnarled structures and changing colours of olive trees. This picture is one of at least fourteen canvases of olive trees Van Gogh painted while in the asylum at Saint-Remy, and its intense character may well reflect the artist's agitated state of mind.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 51.00 x 65.20 cm (framed: 85.40 x 72.40 x 11.10 cm)
• National Galleries of Scotland

c.1872-5

This painting is dominated by Battersea Bridge, with Chelsea Old Church and the lights of the newly built Albert Bridge just visible in the background. Whistler does not portray the riverside crowded with factories, warehouses, wharves and mills; instead he captures the atmospheric effects of the water in the evening.

• © Tate, London 2008

1885

This work was painted near Paisley in Renfrewshire during the summer of 1885. Lavery captures the figures in mid-action, like a photographer taking a single snapshot. Despite is spontaneous appearance, the composition was based on a preliminary sketch and built up over a period of weeks.

• Aberdeen Art Gallery

1883

The setting for Guthrie’s rosy-cheeked goose girl is Crowland, in the flat fenlands of Lincolnshire. The unusual, cropped composition was possibly inspired by Japanese prints which were then in vogue.

• Aberdeen Art Gallery

1883

Walton painted the wives and daughters of Helensburgh businessmen taking the air, often depicting them in strangely desolate urban landscapes. Influenced by Degas’s unusual compositions he has placed the two young women in this watercolour off centre and to the front of the picture space, emphasising the width and emptiness of the wide avenue behind them.

• Private Collection, courtesy of Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

1922

Fergusson had Cézanne in mind when he painted this landscape near Milngavie, just north of Glasgow and close to Loch Lomond. The painting is closely comparable with Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte Victoire, but Fergusson is more interested in the decorative potential of this typically Scottish scene.

• Private Collection, courtesy of the Fergusson Gallery, Perth & Kinross Council
• © Perth & Kinross Council

c.1912

The vivid yellows and vigorous brushwork in this unusual still life were a result of Peploe’s exposure to modern French art. Peploe moved to Paris in 1910 and was able to see the work of the Fauves, a group of artists led by Henri Matisse, who believed in the expressive power of pure colour.

• Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow