Boucher, François
Pensent-ils au raisin? (Are They Thinking about the Grape?)
1747
Oil on canvas
oval, 80.8 x 68.5 cm; 31 3/4 x 27
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This work is probably my favorite work.  The painting itself is based on a French theatrical presentation from the Rococo Period in Art.  In reality, a Shepard and Shepardess  would not be so formally dressed, nor would they be lounging around in such a pastoral setting.  Are they thinking about the grape?  Of course not!

Munch, Edvard
Girl Looking out the Window
1892
Oil on canvas
38 x 25 3/4 in.
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This is another one of my favorite paintings.  Painted by Munch during his transition, it is not quite post-impressionism, but not yet expressionism either.  The melancholy pose of the young girl is indicative of her thoughts about life.  We can easily feel the somber mood and the soft glow of the moonlight.

Munch, Edvard
The Scream
1895
Lithograph in black on heavy cream wove paper
image: 355 x 253 mm; sheet: 510 x 385 mm
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This is one of Munch's most famous images.  It is also one of the most definitive image of the expressionist movement.  This lithograph was made after his famous painting, where we see a figure with his hands raised to his face, standing behind two gentlemen.  The work depicts not so much an incident or a landscape as a state of mind. The drama is an inner one, and yet the subject is firmly anchored in the topography of Oslo.  The road with its railing, leading diagonally inwards, creates a powerful pull of perspective in the composition, and intensifies the disquieting atmosphere in the picture.

"I was walking along the road with two friends.  The sun was setting.  I felt a breath of melancholy  -  Suddenly the sky turned blood-red.   I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired - looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and town.   My friends walked on - I stood there, trembling with fear.   And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature."

David, Jacques Louis
Madame de Pastoret and Her Son
mid-1791/mid-1792
Oil on canvas
129.8 x 96.6 cm; 51 1/8 x 38

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Jacques Louis David is often considered to be the "Father of Neoclassicism.  In this scene, one gets a sense of the maternal instincts of the  bourgeoisie mother, yet a woman of this caliber is unlikely to have been sitting next to her infant son while sewing.  This painting is actually incomplete:  notice the woman sewing, yet there is no thread; the chair is visible through the baby's head and cradle, and there is no real background.  One can notice the intricate folds in the woman's dress, yet the remainder of the work appears to be unfinished.