PALM SPRINGS, CA.- The Palm Springs Museum of Art presents the exhibit Return of the Masters through August 27. This summer the European Masters have returned to the Art Museum for visitors to experience eight magnificent artworks. Each work represents a significant phase in the development of Modern Art as well as within each career.

Regarded as the “father of Modern Art”, Manet was considered a Realist painter while Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas are renowned as the most highly esteemed of the French Impressionist painters. Although influenced by the Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso developed their own individual styles.

The gardens of Argenteuil, where Monet lived from 1871 to 1878, became one of his favorite subjects. The portrait by Renoir depicts his close friend Edmond Maitre, a strong supporter of music and the arts. These two paintings, created during the height of Impressionism, demonstrate the naturalism each artist achieved through the rendering of light and use of tone and color.

The pastel by Degas is a fine study of two ballet dancers—a subject that the artist returned to throughout his career. Van Gogh’s colorful still life, bathed in a golden light, demonstrates his impassioned response to the strong sunlight in Arles in the south of France. In another work, Van Gogh’s panoramic view of the landscape outside Arles demonstrates his remarkable command of the reed-pen as an expressive instrument. The use of broad brush strokes and contrasting colors to identify forms in Matisse’s still life with a self-portrait shows his transition from the influence of impressionism to his association with Fauvism. Picasso’s drawing is a study for Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, his seminal 1907 painting.