Monet, Van Gogh and Cézanne — three painters, three card studios

The three painters behind this studio and its two friend sites: how Monet's Impression, Sunrise named a movement, and where to paint with all three palettes.

Monet's Card is built on one painter's obsession — light, painted so directly that the subject almost dissolves into it. Two friend sites are built the same way: Van Gogh's Card, for the swirling long strokes Van Gogh pushed to their limit in Arles and at Saint-Rémy, and Cézanne's Card, for the constructive colour patches with which Paul Cézanne rebuilt Mont Sainte-Victoire more than eighty times. Monet was the eldest of the Impressionists and outlived the argument: he was still painting the water lilies at Giverny in 1926, forty years after the movement was named after one of his own canvases.

1874 · The name

Monet shows Impression, Sunrise at the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris; a critic's mockery of the title gives the whole movement its name.

1886 · Paris

The last Impressionist exhibition is held, and Van Gogh arrives in Paris the same year — meeting the Impressionists and Cézanne's generation head-on.

1888–1890 · Arles and Saint-Rémy

Van Gogh's most productive years: the Yellow House, the sunflowers and The Starry Night. Cézanne keeps working alone in Provence.

Today · Where they hang

Monet's Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Van Gogh's The Starry Night at MoMA, Cézanne's Card Players at the Musée d'Orsay — and a palette studio for each of them online.