In 1926, at the age of 60, Pierre Bonnard moved into a villa in the Côte d’Azur, above Cannes.

At the beginning of the 20th century Hodler developed into one of the few great independent landscape artists in Europe. For more than a decade he occupied himself with motifs from the mountain and lake landscape of Switzerland.

Pablo Picasso was fond of painting the motifs he was working with in a series. Every day he would take the subject in hand and paint a new version of it.

In 1909 Vallotton rented a villa in Honfleur on the coast of Normandy as a summer residence. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in his painting; in the years that followed he turned his attention to landscape painting.

Bonnard, Vuillard and Félix Vallotton belonged to the circle of Nabis painters. Among them Vallotton was “le nabi étranger”, the stranger from the Canton of Vaud, and also the outsider.

This portrait of a child by Henri Rousseau is supposed to have been a contracted picture. From early on, both the picture and its artist were surrounded by myths.

Impressionism was born in 1874. An exhibition was organised in Paris under the title of “première exposition impressionniste,” which launched a new style of painting and caused a sensation.

Vincent van Gogh became familiar with Impressionism in Paris. When he arrived in Arles in 1888 this encounter lay in the past and he was looking for new mediums of expression.

During the 1920s Brussels and Antwerp were two important centres of Avant-garde. A circle of literati gathered around the painter René Magritte in Brussels.

The Bauhaus was an innovative school. Renowned artists taught there– Klee, Kandinsky, Albers, and Oskar Schlemmer as well.