Nature as Muse

Book excerpt: Featuring rarely seen paintings from the collection of Frederic C. Hamilton of Denver, supplemented by works from the Denver Art Museum, this book presents a broad-ranging history of Impressionist landscape--from the pioneering artists who painted in the forest of Fontainebleau and such paragons and teachers as Courbet, Corot, Daubigny, Boudin, and Manet through the central figures of Impressionism--Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Morisot--and ultimately to Caillebotte, Cézanne, and van Gogh, whose works marked the start of a new era.