World Paintings

Charles August Mengin

Sappho, 1877, oil on canvas, 230.7 × 151.1 cm, Manchester Art Gallery.

Sappho was a Greek poet who lived around 600 BC. She wrote about love, yearning and reflection, often dedicating her poems to the female pupils who studied with her on the island of Lesbos. Mengin has chosen to paint a legend narrating that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for unrequited love of Phaon, a ferryman. This legend is regarded as unhistorical by modern scholars, but it may have resulted in part from a desire to assert Sappho as heterosexual.

Cuno Amiet (Swiss, 1868–1961)

Portrait of Frau Kottmann, 1925, oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm, private collection.

Federico Zandomeneghi (1841 – 1917)

Matilde, pastel on paper, Musei civici di Pavia.

Federico Zandomeneghi was an Italian Impressionist painter. Born in Venice, he spent almost all his life in Paris. Like his close friend Edgar Degas he was primarily a figure painter, although Zandomeneghi’s work was more sentimental in character than Degas’. He also admired the work of Mary Cassatt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and his many paintings of women in their domestic routines follow their example.

Edgar Degas

La ballerina, 1884, pastel on cardboard.

Ferdinand Hodler

Detail of Woman in Ecstasy, 1911, oil on canvas, private collection, Solothurn Art Museum, Switzerland.

Giovanni Boldini

Girl with Black Cat (Bambina con il Gatto Nero in Braccio), 1885, oil on canvas, private collection.

Pablo Picasso

Pierreuse with her hand on her shoulder, 1901, oil on cardboard, 69.5 x 57 cm, Museu Picasso, Barcelona.

Edvard Munch

Self-portrait I, 1895 - 1896, lithography on paper, 58.3 x 43 cm, MoMA.

Aristide Maillol

Pensive, 1893, private collection.

Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol was a French Catalan sculptor, painter, and printmaker.