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From www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?tab=2&resource=209:

A look at Monet's still life painting and his ability to both animate the scene and anchor it with a sense of stability.

Claude Monet took up still-life painting for a time around 1880. This traditional genre may seem an unlikely arena in which to stage a career shift, but Monet hoped to expand his market during a period of economic recession. He renewed his attempts to gain access to the Salon and tried to form associations with dealers other than Paul Durand-Ruel. In addition to being easier to sell than landscapes, still lifes allowed the artist to continue his experimentation with the textures and colors of nature during periods when bad weather prohibited him from painting outdoors.

Here, Monet depicted an assortment of two different kinds of apples, together with green and red grapes, and introduced an element of animation, even suspense. This still life is anything but still: the smaller apples at the lower right seem ready to roll off the steeply angled table, and the folds of the cloth appear to ripple like waves. Yet the artist's control over the objects is evident, giving the composition a sense of stability and vitality. Not only did Monet adopt a magisterial view from above, but he also anchored the fruits and basket with palpable, grayish-green shadows. Exploring the possibilities of materials at hand—one of the central challenges of still-life painting—Monet found several ways to use the same dabs of white pigment: on the grapes, they represent translucent fragility; on the large apples, matte solidity; and on the little apples, glossy sheen.

Still life never became central to Monet's repertory, but it is tempting to look from this brief experiment to those of his colleagues—most notably Paul Cézanne, who would bring the genre to new heights of complexity and beauty.

I ran across this in the archives from my trip to England last May - I think we're all looking forward to springtime about now.....

From the museum label: The setting of "Near the Lake" has not been identified, although it could perhaps be the tourist destination of Lac Enghien, about fifty minutes by train from Paris via Argenteuil. Renoir used his friends as models to celebrate the pleasures of leisure and companionship away from the city center. Along with earlier scenes of waterside conviviality, such as "Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise", this painting looks forward to Renoir's most celebrated masterpiece, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party" (1880-81 - Phillips Collection, Washington, DC).

From www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?tab=2&resource=490:

With Claude Monet, Renoir is known for his contributions to impressionism as the style developed in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In order to capture light and movement, their technique made use of broken brushstrokes and bold combinations of colors.

Like that of his contemporaries, much of Renoir's work depicted pleasurable occasions. He apparently once shocked his teacher by saying, "if painting were not a pleasure to me I should certainly not do it."

Renoir was born in Limoges in southwest France, where as a teenager he was apprenticed to a porcelain painter. In the early 1860s he attended Charles Gleyre's studio, where he met Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. In 1869 Renoir and Monet worked together at La Grenouillère, where they created the style that was eventually labeled impressionism.

Renoir participated in several of the group's shows. He began to move toward a classicizing phase in 1879; this development was indebted in part to the work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, which emphasized pure, clear line. It was also reinforced by a visit to Algeria in 1881, followed by a trip to Italy. Renoir's family and circle of acquaintances, as well as landscapes and still lifes, were his chief subjects from the late 1890s until his death. His late style combined the classicism of the 1880s with softer, almost diaphanous glazes of paint.

From the Museum label:

Along with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro pursued the theme of snow throughout his career, producing nearly 100 snow paintings. In 1879 France experienced an extraordinarily severe winter, which Pissarro explored in this and other works painted at his home in Pontoise, 30 miles west of Paris along the Seine River. In "rabbit Warren, snow covers the ground, houses and vegetation in a frothy coat that results from the artist's vigorous brushwork. Throughout, small spots of color in the chimneys, greenish shrubs and clothing of the man at right punctuate what is otherwise a predominately yellowish white and uninhabited fragment of nature,

From www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?tab=2&resource=486:

Pissarro, primarily a landscape painter, was a driving force behind the impressionist group shows. Slightly older than the other members of the circle, he made many of the arrangements, reconciled disputes among painters, and contributed a number of canvases to all eight impressionist exhibitions.

Born in the West Indies, Pissarro worked mainly in Pontoise, a suburb of Paris. He was obliged to help run the family business during early adulthood, teaching himself to paint in his spare time. Although Pissarro's work was accepted to the Salon in 1859 and again in the later 1860s, he became embittered with the academic system. He in turn developed an impressionist style characterized by loose brushwork and a concern for reflected light.

By 1880 Pissarro began working in a new style: a thick application of paint in small crosshatched strokes. Five years later he met Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, and was impressed with their unique method. In 1886 Pissarro adopted a neo-impressionist style characterized by discrete touches of unmixed pigments that were often densely applied to form a complex web of color. However, he eventually found the meticulous technique too limiting and abandoned it in 1891.

Pissarro's political beliefs inclined toward anarchism. His paintings of peasants working in gardens or fields reflected his belief in the essential dignity of the laboring class. As anti-anarchist sentiments reached a climax in the 1890s, Pissarro went into exile in Belgium.

See also: n.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/WebListe_EN?SearchView&count=30&Start=1&Query=pissarro

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From: www.artic.edu/aic/resources/resource/56

Having spent much of 1882 and 1883 scouring the cliffs of the Normandy coast for motifs, Claude Monet passed the winter and early spring of 1884 in the south of France, on the Mediterranean. In December of the previous year, he had discovered the area while traveling with Pierre Auguste Renoir; but he returned alone, determined "to do some astounding things."

Monet remained dedicated to Impressionism at the very moment that his colleagues, Renoir among them, were turning away from its aim of capturing transitory natural effects. Thus, in Bordighera, a resort town just over the Italian border, he responded immediately to the warm and constant southern light, so different from that of northern regions. Searching for painterly equivalents to this new environment, Monet covered canvases such as this one with a riot of intense greens and blues that at first glance seem to struggle with each other, but ultimately coalesce into a vibrant composition. Through a foreground choked with olive trees, we glimpse a sun-bleached town, beyond which the sea forms an expansive horizon.

Absorbed in the unique features of Bordighera, Monet worried that people would think his renderings false or exaggerated. He disregarded the picturesque conventions of guidebook illustrations to reveal the almost overpowering brilliance of the Mediterranean. Monet did not seek to contain or control the twisted tree trunks, bent by centuries of strong coastal winds; nor did he modify the gemlike azure of the water. Using what he described as a "palette of diamonds and precious stones," he moved beyond naturalism and emphasized the decorative aspects of his work, thus taking an early step along the road to his own version of Post-Impressionism.

Monet painted Villas in Bordighera, Italy in 1884. The artist spent three months working in Bordighera, a popular Italian resort town on the coast of the Mediterranean.

In letters to friend Alice Hoschedé, Monet expressed his delight at the natural colors of the sea and sky, shades of blue he feared he could not approximate. He confessed that the palm trees caused him problems, but his stay was productive, and the setting heated the color of his palette.

The Citta Alta of Bordighera emerges from behind the pine trees. The canvas was painted by Monet from The Torre dei Mostaccini.

From booksandvines.com/2011/08/12/monet%E2%80%99s-bordighera/:

Bordighera, painted in 1884, illuminates the essence of Italy’s beauty. Bordighera is just across the border from France on Italy’s Ligurian Coast. Monet found the intensity and clarity of the colors of the area amazing, and somewhat terrifying, concerned about his ability to accurately capture them. Looking at the below, one can safely say he captured the intensity just fine. Just look at the sea, the deep blue nearly jumping off the canvas directly into one’s daydream, with the town resting gently, the amber and clay warmly glowing from the Mediterranean sun, basking in the beauty of the surrounding countryside.