Guggenheim Museum, New York

While we were in New York, during our visit to the Guggenheim we also looked at some of the paintings in their permanent collection.

Woman with Yellow Hair, 1931

Marie-Therese Walter, who was 17 when she first met Picasso. He was thirty years older than her and since he was married, they kept their affair secret.

Haere Mai, 1891

Probably depicts the area surrounding the village Mataeia where Gauguin settled during the fall of 1891. Haere Mai means 'come here' in Taitian, but this does not appear to coincide with the meaning of the painting.

Le Viaduc, Vincent Van Gogh, 1887

Mountains at Saint-Remy, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889


'Mountains' was painted while Van Gogh was in hospital recovering from one of his attacks of mental distress.

He wrote to his brother Theo: "I rather like the 'Entrance to a Quarry' - I was doing it while I felt this attack coming on - because to my mind the sombre greens go well with the ocher tones; there is something sad in it which I think is healthy, and that is why it does not bore me. Perhaps that is true of the mountain too. They will tell me that mountains are not like that and that there are black outlines of a finger's width. But after all it seemed to me it expressed the passage in Rod's book... about a desolate country of somber mountains, amongst which are some dark goarherds' huts where sunflowers are blooming".

Peasant with Hoe, Georges Seurat, 1882

This vibrant and harmonious image, comprising distinct daubs of complementary colour revolutionised painting: Seurat called his method chromoluminarism, while contemporary critics christened it Pointillism of Neo-Impressionism.

Farm women at work, Georges Seurat, 1882-83

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In the Salon, 1893

Claude Monet, Palazzo Ducale, 1908

Canals seen throuth haze and mist, Venice reduced to its most basic: stones, light, water, mist, each interacting with each other - Monet's 'concern with truth'.