Edgar Degas is acknowledged as the master of drawing human figures in motion. In the early 1870s, the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes. Although he worked in many mediums, he preferred pastels to all others.

Sandro Botticelli was summoned to Rome in 1481 by Pope Sixtus IV, and charged with decorating the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli completed three paintings, "Events of the Life of Moses", "The Temptation of Christ", and "The Punishment of Korah", only to have his work upstaged two decades later by the ceiling frescoes of Michelangelo?

When Van Gogh was hospitalized on Christmas Eve, 1888, after trying to cut off his own ear, the official diagnosis furnished by the hospital in Arles was "acute mania with generalised delirium." There is no consensus on a modern diagnosis of van Gogh's illness, though some have suggested bipolar disorder, possibly exacerbated by absinthe drinking and venereal disease.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was designed by American architect Maya Lin. In 2007, it was ranked tenth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects.

Louis Leroy, an art critic for the French newspaper Le Charivari, coined the term "impressionists" to satirize the artists involved in an 1874 art show entitled The Exhibition of Impressionists. In his review, he wrote: "Impression I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it -- and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape." The term was subsequently adopted by the artists themselves and has become the name of one of the most influential movements in the history of art.

Orphism or Orphic Cubism, was an offshoot of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors. The movement was influenced by Fauvism, the theoretical writings of Paul Signac, Charles Henry and the dye chemist Eugène Chevreul.

The Post-Impressionists rebelled against the Impressionists' naturalistic depiction of light and color. They continued using vivid colors and real-life subject matter, but emphasized geometric forms, distorted form for expressive effect, and used unnatural or arbitrary color. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.

Clement Greenberg was probably the single most influential art critic in the twentieth century. he is best remembered for his promotion of the abstract expressionist movement and was among the first published critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock who he championed as the greatest painter of his generation.

In 1877, after viewing Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket in a contemporary art exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries, John Ruskin wrote in the pages of Fors Clavigera, "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler subsequently sued the great art critic for dismissing him as a fraud.

The Impressionists were interested in trying to capture the changing effects of light on the landscape by using a more exact analysis of tone and color. Their ideas were inspired by Eugene Chevreul's scientific research into color theory.