For Webmuseum, Paris:
URL:
This site has a wonderful collection of good digital reproductions of paintings, western and Japanese. The commentary is also helpful.
Click on the “Famous Paintings” link, and then search for the individual painter in the ‘Artist Index.’ You can also look up schools of art or movements such as ‘Expressionism,’ ‘Impressionism,’ etc. under the ‘Glossary Link,’ and under ‘Theme Index.’
For example, under ‘Edouard Manet’ you will find the following text, along with about 20 pictures: “Manet, Edouard: (b. Jan. 23, 1832, Paris, France--d. April 30, 1883, Paris)
French painter and printmaker who in his own work accomplished the transition from the realism of Gustave Courbet to Impressionism. Manet broke new ground in choosing subjects from the events and appearances of his own time and in stressing the definition of painting as the arrangement of paint areas on a canvas over and above its function as representation. Exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass") aroused
the hostility of the critics and the enthusiasm of a group of young painters who later formed the nucleus of the Impressionists. His other notable works include Olympia (1863) and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).”
Under ‘Gogh, Vincent van’ you will find the following short notice with many pictures:
“Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van (b. March 30, 1853, Zundert, Neth.--d. July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris), generally considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt; he powerfully influenced the current of Expressionism in modern art. His work, all of it produced during a period of only 10 years, hauntingly conveys through its striking colour, coarse brushwork, and contoured forms the anguish of a mental illness that eventually resulted in suicide.
Among his masterpieces are numerous self-portraits and the well-known The Starry Night (1889).”
Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul: “(b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), one of the leading French painters of the Postim- pressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. After spending a short period with Vincent van Gogh in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through colour. From 1891 he lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. His masterpieces include the early Vision After the Sermon (1888) and Where Do We Come From?”
Cézanne, Paul: “(b. Jan. 19, 1839, Aix-en-Provence, Fr.--d. Oct. 22, 1906, Aix-en-Provence)
French painter, one of the greatest of the Postimpressionists, whose works and ideas were influential in the aesthetic development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne's art, misunderstood and discredited by the public during most of his life, grew out of Impressionism and eventually challenged all the conventional values of painting in the 19th century through its insistence on personal expression and on the integrity of the painting itself. He has been called the father of modern painting.”