Katie Hanson – författare

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, boasts one of the largest collections of the celebrated Impressionist artist Claude Monet’s work outside France. This book reproduces all thirty-five oil paintings by Monet in the MFA’s permanent collection, representing nearly the full span of Monet’s long career. An introductory essay presents a brief introduction to his acclaim in Boston during his lifetime, and entries for the thirty-five paintings provide an overview of his life and work. Monet returned time and again to his favourite locations and motifs, utilizing vivid colour and varied brushwork to dazzling effect and inviting viewers to see the world anew.

With vibrant colors and imaginative backgrounds, Van Gogh's affectionate renderings of an entire family underscore his love of portraitureVincent van Gogh once wrote, "What I’m most passionate about…is the portrait, the modern portrait." This passion flourished between 1888 and ’89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family that had agreed to sit for him. The family included the local postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children, Armand, Camille and Marcelle. Over the course of his year in Arles, the artist created an astonishing 26 painted portraits of the family members, both in groups and individually, as well as multiple drawings.Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family and his groundbreaking portrayals of them are at the heart of this book, the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits. Drawing on letters from the artist, archival material, contemporary criticism and technical studies, The Roulin Family Portraits features insightful essays on Van Gogh’s practice, his beliefs about portraiture, his personal relationship with the Roulins and his admiration for his contemporaries as well as 17th-century Dutch portraitists.Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) began his painting career in his late twenties, influenced first by his work as a missionary in a mining region of Belgium, and later by his exposure to Impressionism while living in Paris. His bright signature style emerged after relocating to the South of France, where he produced more than 2,000 artworks in just over a decade.