Highlights of Himeji City Museum of Art | Himeji Castle and Western Modern Art

Camille Corot was a leading figure of the Barbizon School, a group of French painters who turned to nature for inspiration before the rise of Impressionism. Corot’s serene landscapes, filled with soft light and poetic atmosphere, had a profound influence on later artists like Monet and Pissarro.

Corot painted The Lake late in his career. It depicts trees along a quiet lakeshore, with a small town faintly visible beyond. The soft, hazy brushwork and gentle light give the scene a dreamlike quality — as if you’re looking at a memory rather than a real place.

While Corot’s early works were more realistic, he gradually shifted toward a style that emphasized light and air over detail. His delicate, silvery tones — often called “Corot gray” — create a tranquil mood that still resonates with viewers today.

A true gem of the museum’s collection, this piece captures the timeless calm and subtle beauty that define Corot’s later art.

Gustave Courbet was a pioneering French painter and a central figure of Realism, a movement that rejected idealized subjects in favor of portraying the world as it truly is. Throughout his career, Courbet painted landscapes, portraits, and scenes of everyday life — but in his later years, he became especially fascinated by the sea.

Courbet began painting seascapes in the late 1860s and went on to create more than 100 of them. His marine paintings range from calm, reflective waters to powerful crashing waves like the one captured in The Wave.

Here, Courbet’s bold brushstrokes make you almost hear the roar of the surf. The painting radiates raw energy — a direct expression of nature’s untamed force. Courbet never followed fashionable styles like Romanticism or Neoclassicism; instead, he focused on “painting reality as it is.”

In The Wave, that philosophy comes alive. Each swell and ripple seems to shift from moment to moment, capturing the fleeting, ever-changing beauty of the sea. It’s a stunning example of Courbet’s dedication to realism — and his deep respect for nature’s power.

Adolphe Monticelli was a French painter whose bold and colorful style had a strong influence on Vincent van Gogh. Though less known to the general public today, Monticelli was an artist far ahead of his time.

His works are instantly recognizable for their rich colors, thick impasto, and decorative flair. Influenced by Romanticism, Monticelli applied paint so heavily it seemed almost sculpted onto the surface — a technique that later inspired Post-Impressionist and Fauvist painters.

In Gathering in Front of a Mosque, Monticelli depicts a group of figures gathered before an Islamic-style building. The forms of the people and architecture are only loosely defined, yet that soft vagueness gives the painting its dreamlike atmosphere.

The layered paint catches light in different ways, creating a vivid texture and rhythm across the surface. The result is both mysterious and mesmerizing — a scene that feels less like a record of reality and more like a fleeting vision from a dream.

Claude Monet was one of the leading figures of Impressionism, the art movement that changed the way we see light, color, and nature.

In this serene painting, a few sailboats float gently on the Seine River at sunset. Monet painted it while living in Argenteuil, a town just outside Paris where he spent much of the early 1870s. The scene across the river — Petit-Gennevilliers — was a favorite subject of his during this time.

Here, Monet captures the fleeting beauty of light: dark clouds tinged with gold, the glowing sun slipping below the horizon, and shimmering reflections rippling across the water. It feels as if he painted the moment directly from memory — before it disappeared.

The year 1874 was also when Monet exhibited his now-famous Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) — the painting that gave Impressionism its name. Though critics dismissed the style at first, Monet continued to explore the play of light and color that would later make him one of the most beloved artists in the world.

Edgar Degas is best known for his graceful paintings of ballet dancers, but he also explored a more intimate theme throughout his career — women bathing. Nude Woman in the Bath is part of that series, created using one of Degas’s most unusual techniques.

The piece was made using a monotype, a type of print in which an image is painted directly onto a metal plate, then transferred to paper — producing only one unique impression. It’s more like a single-use print or a “painted stamp” than a traditional printmaking process.

In this work, Degas pulled a second, lighter print from the same plate — the faint leftover ink from the first impression — and then added color with pastel on top. The first, stronger impression of this same image is now held at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Degas often used this method in his later years, partly because it allowed him to work quickly. After his father’s death, Degas faced heavy family debts and produced many works during this financially difficult period.

But his fascination with monotype wasn’t just practical. At a time when lithographs and etchings allowed for easy reproduction, Degas deliberately chose a one-of-a-kind process — a sign of his deep personal attachment to experimentation and the expressive potential of the medium.

Despite its bold composition and color, Nude Woman in the Bath has a quiet, introspective mood. It perfectly reflects Degas’s mix of technical innovation, emotional restraint, and sharp observation.

Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956) was a British artist of Welsh and Belgian heritage — a painter, printmaker, and designer known for his bold, energetic style. Active from the late 19th to early 20th century, Brangwyn absorbed influences from Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and Symbolism, yet developed a look entirely his own.

Morning Market in Venice captures the vibrancy of a Venetian street scene, but with a twist. Rather than focusing on realistic detail, Brangwyn infuses the view with an exotic, almost Oriental atmosphere, reflecting his travels to places like Turkey and North Africa.

The pink tones of the walls are especially striking — a vivid, almost fluorescent hue that only Brangwyn could pull off. Set against the soft blue of the sky, the colors create a brilliant visual harmony that makes the entire scene glow with life.

His rich sense of color may have been shaped by memories of his travels — perhaps by the reddish sands of African deserts or the warm tones of southern sunlight. Whatever the source, the result is pure Brangwyn: dynamic, colorful, and full of movement.