Art Institute of Chicago Guide: Tickets, Hours and 10 Paintings

1. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat · 1884 to 86, border added 1888 to 89

Georges Seurat collection

From a distance, the figures seem held in an unusually still arrangement. Closer looking reveals the accumulation of small coloured marks that makes the surface work. Seurat asks the viewer to keep changing the distance between those two experiences.

Notice the intervals between people as carefully as the people themselves. The upright figures, shadows and riverbank establish a rhythm across the canvas. The museum records work on the painting in 1884 to 1886, with the border added later, an important reminder that its apparent stillness was built over time.

Primary museum record or research.

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2. The Bedroom

Vincent van Gogh · 1889

Vincent van Gogh collection

The bed, chairs and wall pictures make the room easy to recognise, but the perspective does not behave like a neutral architectural diagram. Floorboards and furniture direct the eye through a space that feels at once familiar and slightly unsettled.

This is the Art Institute's 1889 version. Look at how colour gives the modest objects their force: the bed and chairs stand against the walls without requiring fine descriptive detail. The room's character comes through relationships between those large shapes, not through a complete inventory of possessions.

Primary museum record or research.

For a comparison with other versions, read our guide to Van Gogh’s Bedroom paintings.

3. Paris Street; Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte · 1877

Gustave Caillebotte collection

The couple at the right seems near enough to pass, while other pedestrians recede across an expansive junction. Umbrellas interrupt one another, and the wet street creates a broad reflective space between the figures.

Caillebotte makes the city both open and divided. Follow the lamppost, the building edges and the directions of walking. Their order does not bring the people into a single shared encounter; many seem absorbed in separate paths. That tension gives the large urban view a distinctly impersonal atmosphere.

Primary museum record or research.

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4. The Basket of Apples

Paul Cezanne · c. 1893

Paul Cezanne collection

The basket tilts, the cloth rises in folds and the table edges refuse to settle into one simple alignment. Cézanne gives ordinary fruit the force of a constructed landscape, with each round form pressing against its neighbours.

Look at the bottle as a stabilising dark vertical, then return to the uncertain surfaces around it. The picture is not an exercise in making every object obey a single photographic viewpoint. Its interest lies in the balance created across those small disruptions of space.

Primary museum record or research.

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5. Two Sisters (On the Terrace)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir · 1881

Pierre-Auguste Renoir collection

The older figure's red hat and the younger child's flower-trimmed hat establish two bright centres of attention. Around them, a basket, railing and shifting foliage create a setting that is detailed in some places and much looser in others.

The title can tempt a viewer to begin with a family story. A useful first approach is simpler: compare the faces, the different poses and the colour returning across the canvas. Renoir connects the figures to the surrounding light without making every part equally sharp.

Primary museum record or research.

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6. At the Moulin Rouge

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1892 to 95

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec collection

The foreground figure's green-lit face is difficult to ignore, but the gathering at the table has its own withdrawn atmosphere. Toulouse-Lautrec lets figures overlap, turn away and cut across the space rather than presenting a welcoming social scene.

Follow the strong diagonals of the furniture and the different directions of looking. The nightclub becomes a place of proximity without easy connection. Colour does psychological work here: the artificial light makes familiar facial features appear strange, especially at the edge nearest the viewer.

Primary museum record or research.

7. The Song of the Lark

Jules Breton · 1884

Jules Breton collection

The field worker stands still with her head lifted and a sickle hanging at her side. The title supplies a sound that the painting cannot literally reproduce, turning the raised attention of the figure into the centre of the scene.

Notice the bare feet and the contrast between the dark foreground and the low sun. Breton gives the pause a physical setting in labour rather than treating it as an abstract moment of inspiration. The picture rewards attention to what has stopped, as well as to what remains visible.

Primary museum record or research.

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8. The Herring Net

Winslow Homer · 1885

Winslow Homer collection

The two fishermen lean into work that appears to require their whole bodies. The boat is small against the moving water, and the net's weight makes the action feel specific rather than decorative.

Compare their different postures and the dark mass of the catch. Homer keeps the sea active around them, so that concentration on a task never removes the surrounding risk. A distant vessel and the horizon extend the scene, but the closest encounter is between bodies, equipment and the boat's unstable surface.

Primary museum record or research.

9. Woman at Her Toilette

Berthe Morisot · 1875 to 80

Berthe Morisot collection

Morisot gives us a partial view of an ordinary private activity. The turned body and the dressing-table setting establish the scene, while much of its atmosphere depends on paint that remains loose and visibly responsive.

Look at how differently the figure and surrounding surfaces resolve as you move your attention across the canvas. A detail can become clear, then dissolve into a broader stroke. That variation makes the picture feel intimate without making the viewer all-seeing. The withheld face is part of its effect.

Primary museum record or research.

10. Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra

Gustave Moreau · 1875 to 76

Gustave Moreau collection

Hercules stands opposite the Hydra in a setting that feels saturated with threat. The repeated heads and coiling forms make the monster difficult to take in as one stable shape, while the surrounding bodies complicate the idea of a straightforward heroic victory.

Look at the balance between the comparatively clear human figure and the dense, dark setting. Moreau's treatment asks for a slower reading than the myth's familiar outline might suggest. The museum's record identifies the finished Chicago painting, rather than one of the related studies.

Primary museum record or research.