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Monet left much of his late work unfinished and released few paintings for sale, reporting that he was not yet satisfied and was still working on them "with passion." This canvas is one of four water-lily pictures that, quite exceptionally, he did complete, sign, and sell in 1919.

Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The earlier series executed in Paris in 1887 gives the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set executed a year later in Arles shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. About eight months later Van Gogh hoped to welcome and to impress Gauguin again with Sunflowers, now part of the painted décoration he prepared for the guestroom of his Yellow House where Gauguin was supposed to stay in Arles. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and finally he included them in his exhibit at Les XX in Bruxelles.

Throughout his life, the French painter Paul Cézanne returned again and again to the still life. Encompassing small—scale domestic scenes rather than grand public ones, still life was considered the lowliest of genres by the French Royal Academy, the official arbiter of great art in the nineteenth century. Yet in Still Life with Apples, Cézanne proved that this modest genre could be a vehicle for thinking through the Impressionist project of faithfully representing the appearance of light and space. "Painting from nature is not copying the object," he wrote, "it is realizing one's sensations."

Although Rousseau completed more than twenty-five jungle paintings in his career, he never traveled outside France. He instead drew on images of the exotic as it was presented to the urban dweller through popular literature, colonial expositions, and the Paris Zoo. The lush jungle, wild animals, and mysterious horn player featured in this work were inspired by Rousseau's visits to the city's natural history museum and Jardin des plantes (a combined zoo and botanical garden). Of his visits the artist said, "When I am in these hothouses and see the strange plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am entering a dream." The nude model in this painting reclines on a sofa, mixing the domestic and the exotic.

Charles I with M. de St is an Flemish oil painting on canvas by Anthony van Dyck, depicting Charles I on horseback, accompanied by his riding master, Pierre Antoine Bourdon, Seigneur de St Antoine. Charles is depicted as a chivalrous knight and sovereign. He rides a large and heavily muscled white horse - possibly a Lipizzaner - under a neoclassical triumphal arch, from which fall hangings of green silk. He is clad in parade armour with the blue sash of the Order of the Garter and carries a baton of military command.