Gerard David (Netherlandish, c. 1455-1523) - The Nativity, c.1490 (Oil on panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) - For a moment in time, Heaven appeared under the Earth and the sky stood in bright witness. A simple stable where angels rubbed shoulders with Magi and jostled with shepherds became the Cave of Wonders, filled with light, peace and silence…

Peter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, c. 1525-1569) - The Census at Bethlehem, c. 1566 (Oil on panel, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels) - Luke describes the event. “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered… Joseph went to Bethlehem to be registered with Mary, who was with child.” For Bruegel, the event is contemporary, taking place in his native Belgium in the harshest of winters. Mary and Joseph are just two more poor people trudging through the freezing air to queue for this ruthlessly imposed bureaucracy. The only thing that distinguishes them in the general misery and chaos is the proverbial donkey…

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, Italian, c. 1477/8–1510) - The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1505-10 (Oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) - The mysterious Giorgione left very few works at his premature death, but this one is a masterpiece of contemplation. The elderly Joseph is deep in prayer, Mary holds a pose of silent worship before the Christ child, whose hazy face appears so inward-looking. The shepherds, in their ragged clothes, are speechless and spellbound, but full of love for the baby. They are the first to arrive, the first to understand what they are seeing, before the rest of the crowd arrives. The scene is very close and intimate, against the distant Venetian landscape. Not a sheep in sight. By their humility shall you know the shepherds…

Winter solstice... when the longest and darkest of days wraps itself around as the sun is reborn once again...

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973): Woman with a Book, 1932 (Oil on canvas. The Norton Simon Foundation) - Picasso transforms the earnestness of the mid-19th century sitter into a dreamy portrait of his current lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977). The chromatic riot and the web of thick black lines describing the simplified forms of both her bourgeois interior and her ripe sexuality contrast with the dreamy mystery of the sitter’s gaze…

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967): Automat, 1927 (Oil on canvas, 71.4 cm × 91.4 cm. Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines) - Hopper, the quintessential realist painter of 20th century America, portrayed the commonplace and made the ordinary poetic. Hopper’s empty places and solitary figures repeatedly suggested pangs of loneliness to a public increasingly interested in psychoanalytic thought and aware of the growing anonymity of contemporary urban life. “It’s probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don’t know. It could be the whole human condition.” – Hopper

Pál Fried (Hungarian/American, 1893-1976): Blue Ballerina (Oil on canvas) - Fried studied at the Hungarian Academie under Professor Hugo Pohl and in Paris under Claude Monet and Lucien Simone. Under Pohl’s influence, he executed many portraits, nudes and Oriental scenes in pastel. He was also greatly influenced by the French Impressionist School of Renoir and Degas…

Maria Szantho (Hungarian, 1897-1998): The Violinist (1 of many) - Szantho’s first love was music; she was a talented piano player. Shortly after completing her music studies she had decided to pursue her interest in painting. Her rich and detailed naturalist paintings were inspired by the hedonism of Károly Lotz and the joie de vivre of Gyula Benczúr… Since her first love was music, her portraits and nudes often were permeated with musical themes and idyllic environments…

Pál Fried (Hungarian, 1893-1976): Dancer (Oil on canvas) - Fried’s paintings were usually of dancers, nudes, and portraits, and his subjects were almost always women. He titled his paintings after the names of models or, in this case, a place or nickname for the model… - Fried immigrated to the US in 1946 after WW II, and became a US citizen in 1953. He lived in Los Angeles and New York City…

Frigyes Frank (Hungarian, 1890-1976): Mimi in the Deckchair, 1927 (Oil on canvas) - After World War I, Frank moved to Paris where his works were exhibited by the Societé des Artistes Français and the Salon d'Automne. At an exhibition in the Bleinheim Jeune Gallery in 1926, Mimi, a portrait, was awarded “Honorable Mention,” and later “Diplôme d'Honnoeur” at an exhibition in Bordeaux….

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906): Table, Napkin, and Fruit (A Corner of the Table) 1895-1900 (Oil on canvas, The Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania) - After studying Dutch and French Old Master still life painting at the Musée du Louvre and other Paris galleries, Cézanne formulated his own semi-sculptural approach to still lifes. Typically strewn across an upturned tabletop, Cézanne's pears, peaches, and other pictorial elements seem at once to rest on a solid, wooden plank and yet float across the surface of the canvas like a new kind of calligraphy. As if to press home that point, Cézanne typically includes chairs, wooden screens, water pitchers, and wine bottles to suggest that the gaze of the viewer rise vertically up the canvas, rather than plunge deep within any implied corner of a real kitchen…

Raphael (Italian, 1483-1520): Madonna of the Goldfinch, c.1506 (Oil on poplar panel. Uffizi, Florence) - The meeting of the infant Saint John the Baptist and Christ is from an extra biblical source known as the Pseudo-Bonaventura. The Virgin is seated on a rock and in bare feet, in adherence to the theme described as the Madonna of Humility. The Virgin holds a book but does not glance at it directly. The focal point is the European Goldfinch, a bird symbolically linked to the Passion owing to the fact that it feeds while perched on thorns…

Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926): Wheatstacks (End of Summer), 1890-91 (Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago) - Claude Monet, the Father of Impressionism, was so charmed in 1890 with haystacks he painted 25 canvases of them! These haystacks are astonishing with the differences in light at various times of day, seasons, and types of weather. They are some of the most beloved works of art in the world…

Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935): In the Garden at Villiers-le-Bel, 1889 (Oil on canvas) - It is scenes of women and flower gardens that are a genre for which Hassam is particularly recognized and which comprise the subject of some of his most memorable images. In the garden at Villiers-le-Bel, pots of brilliant flowers take center stage. The flowers in small pots await planting while the lady (perhaps Hassam’s wife) reads in comfort…

Henri Charles Manguin (French, 1874–1949): The Nap (The Rocking Chair, Jeanne), c. 1905 (Oil on canvas, Villa Flora, Winterthur, Switzerland) - Manguin, along with Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Albert Marquet and Charles Camoin, was a founder and early exponent of the Fauve movement. He had been close friends with Camoin, Matisse, and Marquet since 1895 when they were students of Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Their camaraderie and shared theoretical philosophy contributed to the momentous joint impact of their pioneering canvases when they were first shown to the public… In 1905, Manguin, Marquet and Camoin took up residence in Saint-Tropez while Matisse traveled east along the coast to Collioure, where they all experimented with brilliantly colored canvases. In the fall of 1905, Manguin exhibited five of these paintings alongside works by his friends in the notorious Room VII--the cage aux fauves--at the Paris Salon d'Automne…