Manet: Portraying Life will feature the 19th-Century French painter's "great works" alongside lesser known pieces.

BBC: Manet portraits head for London's Royal Academy

French painter Edouard Manet's portraits will be showcased in a major exhibition at London's Royal Academy next year.

BBC: Manet portraits head for London's Royal Academy

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot was a leading mid-19th Century French painter who was a particular influence on the Impressionists.

BBC: Lucian Freud donates Corot and Degas works in lieu of tax

And while the French painter was painting these happy, pretty pictures, his contemporaries were dismantling art and inventing cubism.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In 1869, Henri Matisse, the French painter and sculptor, was born.

CNN: Tuesday,

It was there from 1948 onwards that he started to move in artistic circles meeting French painter and sculptor Joseph Fernand Henri Leger, Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, among others.

BBC: William Turnbull, Scottish artist, dies at the age of 90

In 1919, French impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir died.

CNN: Tuesday,

Funds could not be raised for paintings by French artist Antoine Watteau, Venetian painter Francesco Guardi and an early 19th Century Italian classical tripod.

BBC: Manet work among ?29m of treasures saved for the UK

One sunny morning in 1983, a model named Amanda slipped on an antique French blouse, swept back her long auburn hair, and turned toward the painter Tom Keating, pouting her lips as young girls did for Renoir.

FORBES: Masterpieces For Everyone? The Case Of The Socialist Art Forger Tom Keating [Book Excerpt]