Top 100 · Urban landscapes
Cities, streets, ports and metropolises
One hundred artists to see how painting accompanied the transformation of cities.
The urban landscape was born well before modern boulevards. The squares of Venice, the Dutch canals and the monuments of Rome first established a tradition of precise sight, intended for residents, travelers and collectors. In the 19th century, Paris, London and New York imposed other subjects: train station, crowds, window, construction site, night lighting and industrial outskirts. The 20th century then fragmented the metropolis, making it mechanical, anxious, abstract or photorealistic. This classification evaluates the influence of artists, the singularity of their view of built space, the strength of their urban series and the diversity of the cities represented.
Architecture, crowds and light tell as much of an era as its monuments.
A genre with open borders
What's an urban landscape?
A city painting can be an exact topographical view, an architectural whim, a street scene, a port, an interior open to traffic or an imaginary vision of the metropolis. There veduta venetian favors the readability of places; Dutch masters measure squares and facades; the impressionists follow variations in traffic and light. Later, the expressionists and photorealists showed that the city was never limited to its plan: it also involved the body, memory and psychology.
The rupture of the 19th century
Why is the modern city changing the painting?
Railways, gas lighting, department stores, boulevards, photography and high-rise buildings simultaneously change the landscape and the way we look at it. The framing becomes faster, sometimes cut like a photograph; the viewpoints go up to the balconies or down into the street; steam, rain and electric light blur the contours. At Caillebotte, Monet, Degas or Pissarro, traffic is no longer a detail: it completely organizes the composition.
Classification method
How did we choose these 100 artists?
Rank depends on the specific contribution to the urban landscape, not just general fame. The invention of a visual vocabulary, the importance of series devoted to the city, the influence on subsequent generations, the documentary or poetic quality of the works and the ability to represent a singular urban experience are taken into account. The journey combines old masters, impressionists, expressionists, social realists, Japanese engravers and contemporary painters in order to avoid a limited history in Paris and New York.
The essential images
Top 10 - The painters who defined the modern city
From Venice to New York, these ten artists gave the urban landscape its most enduring models: precision, crowds, light, speed and solitude.
#1
Canaletto
Its vedute of Venice adjusts the perspective of squares, quays and canals with spectacular precision, while discreetly recomposing the city to reinforce its readability.
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#2
Camille Pissarro
From the windows of Parisian hotels, he observes boulevards, crossroads and crowds at different times; circulation becomes for him a changing material of light and rhythm.
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#3
Claude Monet
Smoky stations, London bridges and Venetian facades allow him to capture the city like an atmosphere, dissolved by steam, fog and reflections.
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#4
Gustave Caillebotte
Its wet avenues, balconies and bird's-eye views reflect Haussmannian Paris with a bold construction, where modern space separates as much as it brings passers-by together.
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#5
Edward Hopper
Dinners, offices, gas stations and silent buildings make up an urban America of waiting; the electric light reveals the solitude behind the windows.
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#6
Vincent van Gogh
In Paris then in Arles, he transformed cafes, streets and starry nights with an expressive color that made the city a mental landscape as much as a real place.
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#7
Maurice Utrillo
Montmartre is its territory: white walls, sloping streets, churches and bistros are painted in a chalky material which combines topography and intimate memory.
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#8
Georges Seurat
Quays, bridges, suburbs and places of leisure obey a rigorous organization of tones; the industrial city becomes an almost immobile balance of silhouettes and light.
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#9
Paul Signac
Mediterranean ports and urban shores are built in distinct colorful touches, giving masts, houses and water a methodical light vibration.
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#10
LS Lowry
Factories, viaducts, stadiums and streets in the north of England are populated by small, hurried figures; its industrial world is at once documentary, invented and deeply human.
Read the Wikipedia entryVeduta and topography
Ranks 11 to 25 - Measuring the city before modernity
Squares, canals, churches and panoramas became autonomous subjects thanks to Vedutists, Dutch masters and British watercolorists.
#11
Bernardo Bellotto
Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw are depicted with monumental sharpness, dramatic skies and powerful shadows that give the architecture an almost theatrical presence.
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#12
Francesco Guardi
In Venice, he replaces Canaletto's crystalline precision with a nervous touch; festivals, lagoon and palace seem to vibrate in an unstable light.
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#13
Giovanni Paolo Panini
His views of Rome order ancient monuments, squares and imaginary galleries as theaters of memory where the visitor measures the cultural power of the city.
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#14
Jan van der Heyden
Dutch bricks, canals, churches and squares are rendered with luminous meticulousness, but always animated by small scenes which prevent the architecture from becoming cold.
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#15
Gerrit Berckheyde
It favors the civic facades, markets and large squares of Haarlem or Amsterdam, balancing architectural accuracy, spatial calm and daily circulation.
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#16
Pieter Saenredam
Its church interiors and architectural views eliminate the picturesque in favor of clear volumes, measured proportions and a light that makes the space almost abstract.
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#17
Johannes Vermeer
His View of Delft condenses sky, ramparts, water and bricks in a silent balance; the city appears familiar, precise and mysteriously suspended.
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#18
Carel Fabritius
The small View of Delft experiments with a curved perspective and a surprisingly open space, showing how an ordinary street can become an optical laboratory.
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#19
Hendrick Avercamp
On the frozen canals, the city transforms into a collective scene where skaters, merchants and elegant people tell the story of an entire society through a multitude of tiny episodes.
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#20
Jacob van Ruisdael
Its panoramas of Haarlem combine immense horizons, bell towers, roofs and bleaching fields; the city is part of a territory dominated by the sky.
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#21
William turner
London, Venice and industrial ports dissolve in rain, smoke and fire; urban modernity becomes a light energy difficult to contain.
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#22
John Constable
Even when he paints Salisbury or Brighton, the architecture remains subject to climate: clouds, wind and humidity connect the city to its immediate environment.
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#23
Samuel Prout
His watercolors of ancient streets give as much importance to irregular stones as to monuments; it makes us feel the wear, uses and historical depth of European cities.
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#24
David Roberts
From Spain to the Middle East, he constructs vast views of cities and monuments where the human scale underlines the power of the architecture observed while traveling.
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#25
Thomas Girtin
His sense of masses and light renews topographical watercolor; bridges, towers and streets cease to be simple surveys and become atmospheric experiences.
See the collection19th century capitals
Ranks 26 to 50 - Paris, London and the invention of urban life
Boulevards, stations, cafes, ports and shows reveal a society transformed by traffic, leisure and new settings.
#26
Édouard Manet
Concerts, cafes, train stations and boulevards introduce fragments of Parisian life into the painting, with its crossed perspectives, its reflections and its discontinuities.
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#27
Edgar Degas
He prefers behind the scenes of the metropolis: café-concerts, laundresses, offices and rehearsal rooms, framed like moments captured in the middle of the movement.
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#28
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Balls, theaters and terraces show a social city where bodies, fabrics and light mingle; Paris becomes a scene of proximity and shared pleasure.
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#29
Berthe Morisot
From gardens, balconies and windows, she explores the way women live and observe the modern city, between public space and domestic interior.
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#30
Jean Béraud
Boulevards, theater releases, cabs and elegant ones are described with chronicler's precision; its Paris reveals its social codes as much as its architecture.
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#31
Stanislas Lépine
The banks of the Seine, the bridges and the margins of Paris receive a soft and continuous light, far from the spectacular hustle and bustle of the grand boulevards.
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#32
Johan Barthold Jongkind
Its ports and wet streets use fast notations and moving light that announce impressionism without losing the precise design of urban structures.
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#33
Eugene Boudin
On the quays of Le Havre or Trouville, ships, piers and silhouettes are gathered under vast skies; the port city is first measured by its climate.
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#34
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Its Thames nights reduce docks, bridges and chimneys to a few colorful chords, transforming London into visual music rather than topographical surveying.
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#35
John atkinson grimshaw
Leeds streets, Liverpool quays and moonlit suburbs shine on the wet cobblestones; its nocturnal realism gives the industry a disturbing poetry.
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#36
James Tissot
In London as in Paris, piers, parks and social interiors become the precise setting for social relationships where every item of clothing and every distance counts.
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#37
Walter Sickert
Music halls, streets of Camden and Venetian facades are painted in dark material, attentive to the ambiguities of the spectacle and the margins of modern life.
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#38
Felix Vallotton
His views of Paris use flat areas, dives and sharp silhouettes to reveal the geometry of crowds, protests and lit streets.
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#39
Pierre Bonnard
Squares, cabs and boulevards seen sideways become colorful surfaces full of fleeting details; the city seems to remember itself when it is painted.
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#40
Édouard Vuillard
Parisian theaters, squares and streets extend his taste for interlocking motifs; passers-by and facades blend into the same decorative and sensitive texture.
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#41
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Montmartre, its cabarets and posters make up an immediately recognizable visual ecosystem, populated by artists, dancers and night owls observed without idealization.
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#42
Albert Marquet
From a window or a quay, it simplifies ports, bridges and rivers into large, calm masses; a few colorful accents are enough to bring traffic to life.
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#43
Raoul Dufy
Walks, ports and regattas are opened by a quick design and independent color, which transform the maritime city into a light and mobile party.
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#44
Henri Matisse
Collioure, Nice and the window views allow it to articulate interior and city; urban space becomes a field of bold colors and arabesques.
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#45
Georges Braque
From the tawny ports to the cubist houses of Estaque, he reduces the built landscape to interlocking plans that challenge the traditional perspective.
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#46
Fernand Léger
Panels, scaffolding, machines and fragmented silhouettes make up a mechanical city where color rivals advertising and industrial speed.
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#47
Robert Delaunay
The Eiffel Tower, bridges and colorful discs make Paris a dynamic structure; real architecture shifts towards a simultaneous vision of modernity.
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#48
Giorgio de Chirico
Deserted squares, arcades, statues and trains create a metaphysical city where shadow and perspective produce an expectation without a clearly identifiable event.
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#49
Umberto Boccioni
Construction sites, trams and crowds are no longer separate subjects: they merge in the same surge of forces that celebrates and worries the futuristic city.
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#50
Carlo Carrà
From futuristic tumult to metaphysical places, it makes urban space a terrain of rupture, capable of moving from the sonorous crowd to the most enigmatic silence.
Read the Wikipedia entryMetropolises under tension
Ranks 51 to 75 - Expressionism, industry and social realism
Berlin, Oslo, Moscow, Barcelona and New York show the city as energy, conflict, crowds, work and psychological experience.
#51
Ernst ludwig kirchner
The streets of Berlin stretch out from sharp angles; elegant, signs and traffic convey the excitement as much as the anxiety of the modern metropolis.
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#52
George Grosz
Son Berlin is a collision of profiteers, soldiers, prostitutes and buildings; the dislocated perspective serves as a fierce satire of social and political violence.
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#53
Otto Dix
Cafes, streets and characters from the Weimar Republic are described with biting precision that confronts urban luxury with the wounds left by war.
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#54
Max Beckmann
Frankfurt, Berlin or exile become spaces compressed by black contours; the city locks its figures in a dense theater of signs and tensions.
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#55
Lyonel Feininger
Churches, streets and houses are transformed into transparent prisms, as if urban architecture could be reconstructed by light and rhythm.
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#56
Lesser Ury
Berlin appears behind coffee windows, in the rain or in the glow of street lamps; its reflections make the solitude in the heart of the crowd noticeable.
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#57
Adolph Menzel
Berlin streets, construction sites and factories are observed with inexhaustible curiosity; it links documentary precision, popular movement and the power of industrial production.
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#58
Edvard Munch
On Karl Johan or in the suburbs of Oslo, the city amplifies anxiety and isolation; the crowd becomes a procession of closed faces.
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#59
Konstantin Korovin
Paris and Moscow shine with quick touches, signs, cabs and night lights; urban impression trumps detailed description.
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#60
Aristarkh Lentulov
Moscow's cathedrals and neighborhoods burst into colorful plans, combining Russian architectural tradition, cubism and futuristic energy.
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#61
Boris Kustodiev
Russian markets, fairs and small towns are overflowing with colors and characters; popular memory takes the form of a generous and constructed spectacle.
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#62
Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva
Its woodcuts from Saint Petersburg give the bridges, palaces and canals a monumental clarity, modulated by the seasons and the changes in the sky.
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#63
Aleksander Gierymski
Warsaw is shown through its workers, markets and poor neighborhoods; an attentive light reveals the dignity of scenes rarely admitted in official painting.
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#64
Jakub Schikaneder
Prague streets, damp walls and isolated silhouettes make up nocturnals where architecture serves a melancholy narration, often close to news items.
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#65
Dario de Regoyos
Trains, factories, markets and towns in northern Spain are painted without easy folklore, in a divided light attentive to the transformations of the country.
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#66
Ramon Casas
Modern Barcelona can be recognized by its cafes, velodromes, automobiles and elegant figures; its flexible design links painting, posters and urban culture.
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#67
Santiago Rusiñol
From Paris to Sitges, streets, gardens and cultural places become the settings of a Mediterranean modernity that is more contemplative than triumphant.
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#68
Aureliano de Beruete
He painted Madrid from its outskirts, connecting domes, dry land and Castilian sky; the capital is understood as a form inscribed in its landscape.
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#69
George Bellows
Construction sites, crowds, bridges and working-class neighborhoods in New York are launched on the web with a robust touch that makes the city physical, unstable and conflicting.
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#70
John Sloan
Roofs, fire escapes, restaurants and night streets tell the story of daily life without heroism; his New York can be discovered from close and indiscreet points of view.
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#71
William Glackens
Parks, cafes and crossroads show the social energy of New York and Paris, first in a dark palette then with an increasingly bright color.
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#72
Robert Henry
Leader of the Ashcan School, he encourages his students to take the street as their subject; his own urban scenes prioritize lived experience over academic conventions.
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#73
Childe Hassam
Rainy avenues, flags and cabs transpose impressionism into American metropolises, where light cuts through the floors, the trees and the flow of passers-by.
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#74
Maurice Prendergast
Parks, beaches and squares fill with colorful figures arranged like a mosaic; the city becomes a festive surface rather than a deep perspective space.
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#75
Joseph Stella
The Brooklyn Bridge and the lights of Manhattan take on the dimension of modern cathedrals, celebrating engineering while retaining an almost mystical intensity.
See the collectionGlobal modernities
Ranks 76 to 100 - From American machines to global cities
Precisionism, muralism, shin-hanga and contemporary realism expand the urban landscape to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia.
#76
Charles Sheeler
Factories, silos and railroads are described with a cold clarity that transforms American infrastructure into classic architecture of the industrial age.
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#77
Reginald Marsh
Metro, urban beaches, cinemas and Broadway crowds overflow with carnal energy; he observes how spectacle and consumption organize bodies.
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#78
Stuart Davis
Signs, taxis, storefronts and jazz rhythms are converted into flat, syncopated shapes; the American city becomes an abstract vocabulary without losing its popular accent.
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#79
Oscar Bluemner
Its small industrial towns use reds, yellows and blacks to charge houses and railways with intense emotion, far from topographical neutrality.
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#80
Pio Collivadino
Buenos Aires is modernizing under his gaze: factories, smoke, docks and peripheral streets are treated with vibrant light and a precise sense of urban transformation.
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#81
Benito Quinquela Martin
In La Boca, cranes, ships, workers and warehouses are tied in thick material; the port becomes the energetic symbol of a neighborhood and a popular identity.
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#82
Diego Rivera
His frescoes connect architecture, industry and crowds in a public narrative; the modern city is shown as a productive machine crossed by social conflicts.
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#83
Jose Clemente Orozco
In its wall cycles, the city and technology do not automatically promise progress; they become the critical theater of power, crowds and violence.
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#84
Utagawa Hiroshige
Bridges, pleasure districts, temples and roads of Edo change with rain, snow and seasons; each print combines urban traffic and weather sensation.
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#85
Katsushika Hokusai
Edo appears through its trades, its bridges and its unexpected points of view; Mount Fuji often connects the hustle and bustle of the city on a larger scale.
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#86
Kobayashi Kiyochika
He records Tokyo at the time of street lamps, bricks and the railway, mixing Western shadows and Japanese cutting to reflect accelerated modernization.
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#87
Hiroshi Yoshida
From Tokyo to Venice, he adapts shin-hanga to the architectures encountered while traveling; light, water and construction are regulated with great spatial clarity.
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#88
Tsuchiya Koitsu
Temples, bridges and night streets are shrouded in rain or snow; its subtle gradients give the Japanese city a silent depth.
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#89
James Wilson Morrice
Paris, Venice, Tangier and Montreal are captured in small colored notations; the travel city becomes a condensed memory rather than a descriptive inventory.
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#90
David Milne
His New York years reduced streets, gardens and buildings to a few lines and reserves of paper, revealing the structure of a place with a radical economy.
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#91
Arthur Streeton
Melbourne and Sydney are painted as cities open to the sun, rail and harbor; Australian modernization is part of dry and ample light.
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#92
Clarice Beckett
Suburban roads, trams and seaside disappear into the mist; its restrained tones make the outskirts of Melbourne a modern waiting area.
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#93
Carlos Botelho
Lisbon is its stubborn motif: hills, tight facades and river are reconstructed in a dense painting that oscillates between observation and memory.
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#94
Nadir Afonso
An architect by training, he converts the silhouettes of cities into colorful geometric networks; the metropolis becomes rhythm, tension and movement rather than faithful representation.
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#95
Gerard Sekoto
Sophiatown and District Six are painted from the inside, through streets, houses and residents; its colors affirm urban vitality in the face of apartheid violence.
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#96
Antonio Lopez Garcia
His patient views of Madrid follow years of work, from empty outskirts to grand avenues; precision also measures time and changes in light.
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#97
Jeffrey Smart
Highways, signs, parking lots and industrial zones are composed with almost classic rigor; a few isolated figures make the urban order subtly strange.
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#98
Richard Estes
Showcases, buses and crossroads multiply in reflections; his photorealism reconstructs the city with a clarity superior to the initial photograph.
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#99
David Hockney
Los Angeles offers swimming pools, houses and horizontal boulevards; the sharp color and deliberately unstable perspectives question our way of living and looking.
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#100
Wayne Thiebaud
Its San Francisco streets rise, plunge and intersect at impossible angles; the city becomes a tactile, colorful and almost dizzying construction.
Read the Wikipedia entrySources and extensions
Compare cities in public collections
Museums make it possible to find the works, their dimensions, their techniques and the precise context of their creation. These resources complete the classification with notices devoted to vedutism, the impressionist landscape and American urban realism.
Read on Alpha Reproduction
Museum references
- National Gallery - Canaletto and la veduta
- Metropolitan Museum of Art - Canaletto, Piazza San Marco
- Metropolitan Museum of Art - transformation of the landscape in France
- National Gallery of Art - Robert Henri and urban realism
- National Gallery of Art - George Bellows, New York
- Tate - LS Lowry, industrial landscape
Painting a city means choosing what the times will leave visible
Canaletto organizes Venice to make it memorable; Pissarro follows the flow of the boulevard; Caillebotte measures the distance between passers-by; Hopper illuminates the isolation behind the windows; Lowry populates industry and Hiroshige makes Edo dependent on rain or snow. None of these cities are just a setting.
Through five centuries, the urban landscape moves from architectural survey to physical experience of the metropolis. He can celebrate monuments, observe work, criticize crowds, record modernization or transform streets and buildings into pure geometry. These hundred artists ultimately show that the painted city is always twofold: a concrete place that we can recognize and a mental construction that reveals our way of living there.
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