Pictures to build
Jigsaw puzzles by painter.
Some painters left enough behind in The Met's open collection to fill an evening on their own. Here they are, each with a note on what their pictures are actually like to put back together, because a painter's hand changes the puzzle more than the subject does.
Thick paint, seen close
Vincent van Gogh
Paintings from the last five years of his life, all of them from the Met. Roses and irises, olive trees and cypresses, a pair of worn shoes, the people of Arles. Almost every one is built from short, loaded brushstrokes you can follow with your eye.
17 pictures →
Posters and late nights
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Mostly prints and drawings rather than oils. Cabaret bills, the Moulin Rouge, singers and dancers caught mid-gesture, and a handful of quieter portraits. Flat colour, a quick line, a lot of bare paper.
19 pictures →
Rehearsal rooms
Edgar Degas
The dance class runs through most of these. Girls at the barre, a ballet seen from the pit, tulle in pink and green. Around them sit the quieter ones: a woman ironing, a collector of prints, a portrait or two.
13 pictures →
A face out of the dark
Rembrandt
Nearly all of these are people. Aristotle with his hand on Homer, Flora in her spring clothes, Hendrickje, and several heads and half-lengths that carry no name at all. The light finds a face and lets the rest go.
11 pictures →
Bright American afternoons
William Merritt Chase
Loose and quick and mostly sunlit. Children at the seaside, a girl in a park, a vase of azaleas, a table of fish. He painted fast and left the brush showing.
7 pictures →
Portraits and travels
John Singer Sargent
From the famous black dress of Madame X to bright scenes carried home from Egypt and Spain. A society painter with a restless streak.
6 pictures →
River afternoons
Édouard Manet
Paintings from his lighter years. A boat on the Seine, the Monet family under their garden trees, fishing, and one small brioche on a cloth.
6 pictures →
Solid and unsentimental
Gustave Courbet
Paintings with weight to them. A woman in the waves, a fishing boat, village girls out walking, a parrot on a wrist. Thick paint, worked with the knife as much as the brush.
6 pictures →
Soft edges, silver light
Camille Corot
Pictures where the light does most of the work. Hagar in the wilderness, travellers in a landscape, a woman reading, a letter half written. Feathery trees and a grey green hush over everything.
6 pictures →