In ‘Le Printemps’, spring, love and the feeling of renewal are blended in this style. The light seeping through the woodland highlights the delicate creases in the lovers’ garments, such details that distinguish the classical style from all others. And Cot was to give way to a whole new manner of using the light to find the detail. It was in 1883, the year of Cot’s death, that Pierre-Auguste Renoir created some of the first examples of Impressionism, an art form that rejected classical styles but would never have flourished without looking back at such paintings as this.

Another of Cot’s masterpieces is ‘The Storm’, a similar, emotive and delicate painting in the Beaux Arts Classical style.