The 16 Greatest French Painters of All Time
Sixteen centuries of French painting in one list, from the court of Louis XIV to the sunlit garden at Giverny. The names everyone knows sit next to the ones art historians fight for.
1Claude MonetFounder of Impressionism, who painted the Water Lilies and the Rouen Cathedral series.1000pts
2Henri de Toulouse-LautrecChronicler of Montmartre cabarets and the poster as an art form.882pts
3Gustave CourbetRealist who insisted on painting only what he could see.716pts
4Nicolas PoussinSeventeenth-century classicist whose compositions taught French painting its grammar.681pts
5Jean-Baptiste-Camille CorotLandscape painter who linked the classical tradition to the Impressionists.661pts
6Georges SeuratInventor of pointillism and painter of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.600pts
7Henri MatisseLeader of the Fauves, later the inventor of the cut-out.529pts
8Pierre-Auguste RenoirImpressionist known for warm, crowded scenes of Parisian leisure.448pts
9Paul CezannePost-Impressionist whose still lifes and Mont Sainte-Victoire canvases opened the way to Cubism.448pts
10Edgar DegasPainter and sculptor of dancers, racecourses and bathers in late 19th-century Paris.353pts
11Camille PissarroThe only painter to show in all eight Impressionist exhibitions.353pts
12Jean-Honore FragonardRococo painter of The Swing and the pleasures of the ancien regime.353pts
13Edouard ManetPainter of Olympia and Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, the bridge from realism to Impressionism.240pts
14Jacques-Louis DavidNeoclassical painter of The Death of Marat and Napoleon's coronation.240pts
15Eugene DelacroixRomantic painter of Liberty Leading the People.0pts
16Berthe MorisotImpressionist painter of domestic interiors and one of the movement's founders.0pts
#art36#france48#classics486#all-time321#painters5
Comments
Poussin and Fragonard were dead before Monet was born; Matisse outlived him by decades. Four centuries in one list, and where Monet sits in it: https://youpick.best/articles/monet-ranked-many-ways
