Philip Pearlstein - Two Models in a Window with Cast Iron Toys [1987]

Philip Pearlstein (born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 24, 1924) is an American painter, and part of the contemporary Realist school. In Pearlstein's paintings, the human body, placed in a corner of a floodlighted studio, assumes a new range of plastic realities; for instance, the relationship of limbs to torso; the continuity of skin and muscle. The mass and weight of the body are emphasized in the unstudied character of the pose: all are normal in our experience, but the point of view from which we see them is detached and the facts they represent are seen in a new context.

[Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 182.9 cm]

Everett Spruce - Twins [1939-40]

Everett Spruce (Conway, Arkansas, 1908 - Austin, Texas, 2002) went to Dallas, at age 17, on a scholarship to study at the Dallas Art Institute, under Olin Travis and Thomas M. Stell Jr. In 1931, he became gallery assistant at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and in 1934 married Alice V. Kramer, a fellow art student. He was one of the "Dallas Nine" – a group of Southwest artists. By the time he joined the art faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 1940, he had achieved national recognition, and his work has been chosen for inclusion in major national juried exhibitions.

Spruce continued to paint and exhibit into his 88th year. He included a sense of music and poetry in his painting. In many instances he could identify the exact spot he translated into paint, describing the time of day, the weather, the light and where he stood when he viewed it. His paintings are rich in colour, texture and mood, communicating strength and substance. He was an amazingly productive artist, painting mostly landscapes, though he occasionally painted fascinating people, birds and animals.

Ed Paschke - Violencia [1980]

Edward Francis Paschke (June 22, 1939 - November 25, 2004) was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, where he spent most of his life. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons led him toward a career in art. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat. Although Paschke was inclined toward representational imagery, he learned to paint based on the principles of abstraction and expressionism. Paschke received his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1961, and later his master of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970.

Themes of violence, aggression, and physical incongruity prevail in his work of this period. Returning to Chicago in 1968 he exhibited with other artists whose work, like Paschke's, shared references to non-Western and surrealist art, appropriated images from popular culture and employed brilliant colour throughout a busy and carefully worked surface. Known collectively as the Chicago Imagists, their work attracted attention both regionally and nationally. Paschke died of heart failure.

[Oil on canvas, 187.96 x 243.84 cm]

Frederick C. Frieseke - Cherry Blossoms [c.1913]

Frederick Carl Frieseke (April 7, 1874 – August 24, 1939) was an American Impressionist painter. He was born in Owosso, Michigan and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Frieseke and his family resided for fourteen years in Giverny, which was also home to Monet. He had a great influence on the Americans at the colony there, many of whom shared his Midwestern American background.

[Oil on canvas]

Arthur F. Mathews - Spring Dance [c.1917]

Arthur Mathews (Markesan, Wisconsin, 1860 - San Francisco, California, 1945) led a group of progressive Californians who believed that fine art and design served the public good. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, he and his wife, Lucia, also a designer led the effort to rebuild the city's fine public spaces. The pastoral scene in Spring Dance resembles civic-minded murals created for museums, libraries, and concert halls at the turn of the twentieth century. But Mathews had more on his mind than ancient Greece or Rome. His Arcadia is the luminous landscape of California, and the planes of colour and the graceful postures of the dancers show the artist is looking across the Pacific to Japan. The ornate frame is a reproduction of the original. It repeats the colours in the painting, reflecting Mathews’ commitment to designing furniture, art, and architecture to create an aesthetic whole.

[Oil on canvas, 131.7 x 121.0 cm]

Berthe Morisot - Lilacs at Maurencourt

Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. Undervalued for over a century, possibly because she was a woman, she is now considered among the first league of Impressionist painters.

In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874; she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar.

She became the sister-in-law of her friend and colleague, Edouard Manet, when she married his brother, Eugène.

[Oil on canvas]

Felix Vallotton - Woman with a Black Hat [1908]

At the age of seventeen, Felix Vallotton left for Paris to learn painting at the well-known Academy Julian, where many famous post-impressionist artists went studied in the late 19th century.

Within ten years the young Swiss artist succeeded in making has name in avant-garde Paris and internationally as well where his modernist infused woodcuts and black-and-white illustrations generated much interest. From 1899 onwards Vallotton devoted himself essentially to painting which he regularly exhibited in Paris and in Switzerland as well have as in the best known international exhibitions.

Vallotton dealt with all standard of painting: still lifes, portraits, interiors, figures, nudes, landscapes and broad mythological and allegorical scenes. Felix Vallotton's work is widely diversified and includes at least 200 engravings, innumerable drawings, some 1700 paintings, a few sculptures, as well as writings including three novels, several plays, essays and art criticism.

[Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 65 cm]