Although most of Jan Steen's paintings were genre scenes of domestic 17th century Dutch life. The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah though is a Biblical story. The story dates from the 2nd century BC and is in the apocryphal book of Tobias. In this painting, Jan Steen recreates this story in a contemporary Dutch setting.

Within the painting, Tobias marries Sarah underneath a hanging wreath of sunflowers. At the table, Sarah's parents review the marriage contract drafted by a notary ... in this case, portrayed by a self-portrait of Jan Steen cloaked in gold. This Dutch home has items from Holland's worldwide colonial enterprises including a Turkish carpet and Chinese porcelain. Like many of Jan Steen's work, this painting has lots going on. Notice the one young man heading for more wine from the cask, the child partaking of what appears to be a piece of imported citrus fruit from a blue bowl and a family dog participating in the goings on.

Frans Hals is known for his portraits of individuals, married couples, families and institutional group portraits. I have seen his paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Louvre. They are always entertaining, catching the subject in a moment. He was most popular among the wealthy of Haarlem. In Portrait of a Gentleman in White, he shows some of his painterly skill, rendering this white outfit with all its texture, light and shadow, and notice the intricate work of white lace.

When it comes to English painters today, the names of Gainsborough and Constable are referred to as if they were a duo, the Simon and Garfunkle of 18th century landscape painting. But they never met! Although their birthplaces were only ten miles apart and both lived to age 61, Thomas Gainsborough was 49 years older than John Constable. Gainsborough died when Constable was only twelve.

I've seen Gainsborough and Constable paintings in a number of museums, but most notably at the Tate Britain and the National Gallery in London. The Legion of Honor has a single painting by Gainsborough and two by Constable.

Thomas Gainsborough 1727-1788 was an English landscape painter, draftsman and printmaker. He made most of his money from painting portraits, but found his greatest satisfaction painting landscapes. He had strong negative feelings about painting portraits for wealthy clients. He wrote, "... damn Gentlemen, there is not such a set of Enemies to a real artist in all the world as they are. They think they reward you by their company, but the only part of them worth looking at, is their purse. Their hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it."

Gainsborough is given credit as the originator of the British Landscape School, and he was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy. Art historian Michael Rosenthal described Gainsborough as "one of the most technically proficient and, at the same time, most experimental artists of his time". He painted quickly and worked more from observations of nature than from formal academic rules.

Landscape with Country Carts was based on a painting by Dutch painter Pieter Molyn 1595-1661. Gainsburough had a keen interest in 17th century Dutch landscapes. This painting also exhibits Gainsborough's looser paint handling and the luminous quality of his mature style.

John Constable 1776-1837 was never financially successful. He was not elected to the Royal Academy until late in his career when he was 52 years old. By that time, he was influenced by the Barbizon School in France. The French influence on his paintings increased his sales. His paintings sold better in France than they ever did in England. He was admired by Barbizon painter Eugène Delacroix. His painting Hay Wain was awarded a gold medal by Charles X in the Paris Salon of 1824. It now hangs in the National Gallery in London.

Arundel Mill shows the mill on the River Arun. In the distance, the high walls of Arundel Castle are visible.

The Legion of Honor's collection of French paintings is impressive. They have some from the 17th and 18th centuries and an impressive array of impressionist and post impressionist works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Le Nain Brothers were born in the late 16th and early 17th century in Picardy, Northern France, Antione in 1588, Louis in 1593 and Mathieu in 1607. One hundred and forty years before the birth of Impressionism, in 1630, the three Le Nain brothers were living in Paris where they shared a studio. Antione was admitted to the Painters Guild, and his two younger brothers trained with him. The brothers worked corroboratively, producing portraits, altarpieces, Biblical scenes and luminescent scenes of French peasants. In 2016, San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum held an exhibition entitled The Brothers Le Nain.

In Peasants Before Their House, c1641 Louis Le Nain shows us a peasant family outside a farmhouse. Such farmhouses were common in northern France. Louis Le Nain was known for his frank depictions of rural people. Urban artists often treated the peasantry of rural France as comedic figures, whereas Louis Le Nain painted them with high regard and respect.

Tissot, James, French, 1636-1902
Winter of Mavourneen or Portrait of Kathleen Newton, 1877

William-Adolphe Bouguereau's The Broken Pitcher is absolutely stunning, one of my favorite paintings held by the Legion of Honor. This peasant girl's eyes are large, dark and captivating. Bouguereau was an influential teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This painting is representative of the stylistic qualities which were central to academic teaching in the mid 19th century with its careful description of forms and his idealistic approach to the human figure. This scene is charged with sexual tension, with the cracked pitcher alluding to her loss of virginity, or of a love abandoned.


In 2018, Linda and I visited the Petite Palais in Paris where we saw a large number of James Tissot's paintings. Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile was one of the highlights of our trip.

James Tissot's Self Portrait c1865 shows an artist who made, in retrospect, a really bad decision in 1874. In that year, Edgar Degas invited Tissot to participate in the Impressionists' first exhibition, but Tissot declined the invitation.

Degas wrote him, "Look here, my dear Tissot, no hesitations, no escape. You positively must exhibit at the Boulevard. It will do you good. There must be a salon of realists. So forget the money side for a moment. Exhibit. Be of your country and with your friends."

But at that time, Tissot's paintings were being shown at London's Royal Academy, and he was making good money there. At the time, a sure thing was better than a risky venture with friends.

Winter of Mavourneen or Portrait of Kathleen Newton 1877 is of his companion Kathleen who lived with Tissot in London in 1876-77, and modeled frequently for him. This painting's title, Kathleen Mavourneen, was so named after a well known Victorian sentimental song from a play of the same name. "Mavourneen" is an Irish Gaelic term of endearment meaning "my beloved."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a leader among the French Impressionists. His style was influenced greatly by Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet. In April of 1874, he joined with Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas and Paul Cèzanne in the First Impressionist Exhibition.

Alfred Sisley was born in France to British parents. Even through he lived most of his life in France, he retained his British citizenship his entire life. He did make several trips to Great Britain, creating a series of paintings of the River Thames near Hampton Court, some of his most famous works. In France, he made his home in the village of Moret-sur-Loing, a small village west of Paris near the Forest Fontainbleu. His paintings were often characterized by tranquility, with pleasing pale shades of green, pink, purple, dusty blue and green.

The great Eiffel was France's 1889 brash statement of modernity. The tower was built for the 1889 Exposition. Here the Eiffel Tower is captured by Georges Seurat. The tower's rust color towers against a pale blue sky. This painting demonstrates Seurat's revolutionary pointillism technique, his laborious application of dots of color in complementary juxtaposition, allowing the colors to vibrate, giving his subject a great color intensity. The tower was yet unfinished when Seurat produced this painting.

Vincent Van Gogh painted Shelter on Montmartre a year after he moved to Paris where he shared an apartment with his brother Theo. In 1887, the Montmartre section of Paris was still partly rural. In his brief time in Paris, Van Gogh adopted quick brushstrokes, replacing broad handling of paint in his earlier works. This was during "The Beautiful Era" (La Belle Époque) in Paris, but Van Gogh did not think so. He found life in Paris overwhelming and retreated to the South of France in 1888.

The Road Near the Farm, 1871 is a scene from Louvenciennes, about 12 miles West of Paris along the Seine. This village was Pissarro's home 1869-1870. He left in 1870 for London to flee the Franco-Prussian War. In his absence, Prussian troops sacked his home and destroyed many of his canvases. This painting was done upon his return, just months after the fighting had ended. This scene looks pleasant enough, with no hint of the violence or ravages of war. Here, a man simply carries a heavy load up a narrow lane while his horse waits patiently on the main road, about the business of moving on after the war.

Camille Pissarro and his wife Julie Vellay had seven children. Jeanne was his youngest daughter and, like her father, was an artist. In Jeanne Reading, Jeanne Marguerite Eva is captured in a moment of solitude. Her family's nickname for her was Cocotte.

Camille Pissarro painted this scene of the Harbor of Dieppe in 1902 the year before his death. This was Pissarro's second stay in Dieppe that year and it was exceptionally productive; he created over twenty paintings. In a rare gesture, he donated this painting to the town museum.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art