European Paintings

Spanning more than six centuries, the New Orleans Museum of Art's collection of paintings includes notable examples from the major national schools. The display is especially rich and varied in the French and Italian galleries, as well as those devoted to modern painting.

In the 1930s the great American collector and philanthropist Samuel H. Kress presented the museum with the first of what would become a gift of more than thirty paintings. The Kress gift formed the core of what has grown into a splendid survey of Italian painting from the early Renaissance to the 18th Century.

The subjects of the magnificent French paintings include kings and queens, aristocrats and peasants, mythologies and luminous landscapes. Highlights include a grand portrait of Marie-Antoinette by Madame Éisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, and a sublime landscape by Claude Lorrain. The Dutch and Flemish collections are particularly outstanding for subjects from everyday life, exquisite still-lifes, mythology and religious pictures.

Paintings by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean-Leon Gérôme, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin represent the innovative vision of 19th Century French artists. The collection provides an opportunity to study all the major movements of modern painting, from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to the exploration of abstraction.