Not all the painters they had in their sights were French. Some weren’t even particularly new. Henri Matisse, André Derain and the Spaniard Pablo Picasso were very much alive, but Paul Cézanne had been dead since 1906, and Paul Gauguin since 1903. The Dutchman Vincent van Gogh had committed suicide in 1890. In addition to works by artists who have since become legends, there were scores of others by the likes of Rouault, Vallotton and Vlaminck. Édouard Manet was represented by eight paintings, chief among them A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, which he had completed the year before his death in
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