French Moderns

In the years between the Revolution of 1848 and the end of World War II, the art world, centered in Paris, witnessed remarkable transformations as artists experimented with bold, expressive styles—Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism—that soon joined the Western artistic canon.

This splendid volume, refreshed with new artworks, features masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned European collection, marking France as the center of international modernism from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Ranging in scale, subject, and style, these paintings and sculptures were produced by the era’s leading artists, including Cézanne, Chagall, Courbet, Degas, Derain, Matisse, Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Rodin, and Vuillard.

Organized into four sections, the works in French Moderns exemplify the successive avant-garde movements that defined modern art in the 19th and 20th centuries, tracing a shift from naturalism to the rise of abstraction.