In the past few days we’ve fea­tured a series of remark­able lit­tle films of French artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Mon­et and Edgar Degas. Today we wrap things up with just one more: a rare glimpse of the great sculp­tor Auguste Rodin.

The footage was tak­en in 1915, two years before Rod­in’s death. There are sev­er­al sequences. The first shows the artist at the columned entrance to an uniden­ti­fied struc­ture, fol­lowed by a brief shot of him pos­ing in a gar­den some­where. The rest of the film, begin­ning at the 53-sec­ond mark, was clear­ly shot at the pala­tial, but dilap­i­dat­ed, Hôtel Biron, which Rodin was using as a stu­dio and sec­ond home.

The man­sion was built as a pri­vate res­i­dence in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry, and served as a Catholic school for girls from 1820 until about 1904, when it became ille­gal for pub­lic mon­ey to be used for reli­gious edu­ca­tion. When the last of the nuns cleared out, the rooms of the Hôtel Biron were rent­ed out to a diverse group of peo­ple that includ­ed some notable artists: Jean Cocteau, Isado­ra Dun­can, Hen­ri Matisse and Rain­er Maria Rilke, who served for a time as Rod­in’s sec­re­tary. It was Rilke’s wife, the sculp­tor Clara West­hoff Rilke, who first told Rodin about the place in 1909.

Rodin first rent­ed four rooms on the main floor, but was alarmed when he learned of plans to sell the prop­er­ty off in pieces to devel­op­ers. So he made a deal with the gov­ern­ment: In exchange for bequeath­ing all his works to the French state, the sculp­tor was allowed to occu­py the man­sion for the rest of his life, and after he died, the estate would become the Musée Rodin.

By the time actor Sacha Gui­t­ry and his cam­era­man arrived to film this scene from Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land,” Rodin was the sole occu­pant of the Hôtel Biron. The film shows the 74-year-old artist walk­ing down the weed-cov­ered steps of the man­sion and work­ing inside, chip­ping away at a mar­ble stat­ue with a ham­mer and chis­el. When Rodin was asked once about how he cre­at­ed his stat­ues, he said, “I choose a block of mar­ble and chop off what­ev­er I don’t need.”

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Edgar Degas was near­ly blind when this film footage was tak­en in 1915. The great French Impres­sion­ist painter had begun to lose his eye­sight in his thir­ties, when he became extreme­ly sen­si­tive to bright light and expe­ri­enced a loss of vision in his right eye. Degas devel­oped blind spots in both eyes, and by the time he was in his for­ties he had lost a sig­nif­i­cant part of his cen­tral vision.

Paint­ing was a strug­gle. The unbear­able­ness of bright light forced Degas to work indoors, and even­tu­al­ly he had to ask his mod­els for help iden­ti­fy­ing col­ors. By the time he was 57 he could no longer read. “How awful it is not being able to see clear­ly any­more,” Degas said late in his life. “I have to give up draw­ing and paint­ing and for years now con­tent myself with sculp­ture.… But if my eye­sight con­tin­ues to dim I won’t even be able to mod­el any more. What will I do with my days then?”

In 1912 Degas had to give up art alto­geth­er, and he filled his days by tak­ing long walks around Paris. When the young actor Sacha Gui­t­ry approached the retired artist about appear­ing in his film Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land” (we fea­tured Gui­t­ry’s footage of a severe­ly arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Wednes­day and Claude Mon­et in his gar­den at Giverny yes­ter­day), Degas flat­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate. Unde­terred, Gui­t­ry became a sort of pio­neer­ing paparazzi: He set up his cam­era near Degas’s home on the Boule­vard de Clichy and wait­ed in ambush for the 81-year-old man to pass by on one of his reg­u­lar walks.

The result­ing film is brief, but fas­ci­nat­ing. The great painter strolls along with a female helper, a bowler hat on his head and a fold­ed over­coat under one arm, using an umbrel­la as a walk­ing stick. When he gets clos­er to the cam­era we can see that Degas is wear­ing the tint­ed glass­es he cus­tom­ar­i­ly used to shield what was left of his eye­sight from the harsh day­light. When the old man reach­es the edge of the frame, the wom­an’s hand takes hold of his arm, and then he’s gone.

By the late six­ties, the Amer­i­can Bell Tele­phone Com­pa­ny, col­lo­qui­al­ly known across Amer­i­ca as “Ma Bell,” need­ed some spiff­ing up. Per­haps a vast, long-estab­lished tele­phone ser­vice monop­oly does­n’t spring to mind as the ide­al design client, but Saul Bass, the artist behind the title sequences for films like The Man with the Gold­en Arm, Spar­ta­cus, and Psy­cho, thought dif­fer­ent­ly. If you rec­og­nize Bass’ name, you prob­a­bly know he cre­at­ed the Bell logo used by the com­pa­ny from 1969 to its Jus­tice Depart­ment-man­dat­ed divesti­ture in 1984. But the work cut out for Bass and his asso­ciates went well beyond fig­ur­ing out how best to stream­line and mod­ern­ize an old-timey bell-in-a-cir­cle graph­ic. As you can see above, they had to pro­duce an entire half-hour film pitch­ing their ideas for the cor­po­ra­tion’s com­plete aes­thet­ic redesign. They did­n’t just make a new logo; they prac­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ed a new world, encom­pass­ing signs, booths, vehi­cles, equip­ment, pub­li­ca­tions, uni­forms, and exec­u­tive cuf­flinks.

Bass pre­sent­ed all this to Bell in 1969, the year after Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001 offered a vision of a near-future sim­i­lar­ly uni­fied by con­sis­tent, mod­ern design. It marked the last era when you could pro­pose such a top-down aes­thet­ic pro­gram and not appear total­i­tar­i­an — and, con­sid­er­ing the earth-toned styl­is­tic excess­es the sev­en­ties would short­ly bring, it was the last era when you would have want­ed to. View­ers of cer­tain gen­er­a­tions will remem­ber vivid­ly the real-life ver­sions of Bass’ pro­posed phone book, van, and hard­hat designs. Oth­er pro­pos­als seem slight­ly out­landish and, from the per­spec­tive of 2012, more than a lit­tle retro. Observe, for instance, the unre­al­ized uni­form designs for women work­ing at Bel­l’s ser­vice cen­ters: “More flat­ter­ing than any­thing offered by the air­lines [ … ] Ma Bell has gone Mod!” But the stock of retro-futur­ism has reached an all-time high in recent years, and Bass’ design work, as goofy as cer­tain pieces of it may now seem, has retained a strik­ing qual­i­ty over the decades. He cer­tain­ly impressed the right peo­ple at Bell: after the breakup, the new AT&T hired him to make them a logo of their own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Yes­ter­day we showed you some star­tling footage of an elder­ly, arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir, paint­ing with hor­ri­bly deformed hands. Today we offer a more idyl­lic image of a French Impres­sion­ist painter in his gold­en years: Claude Mon­et on a sun­ny day in his beau­ti­ful gar­den at Giverny.

Once again, the footage was pro­duced by Sacha Gui­t­ry for his project Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land.” It was shot in the sum­mer of 1915, when Mon­et was 74 years old. It was not the best time in Mon­et’s life. His sec­ond wife and eldest son had both died in the pre­vi­ous few years, and his eye­sight was get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly worse due to cataracts. But despite the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal set­backs, Mon­et would soon rebound, mak­ing the last decade of his life (he died in 1926 at the age of 86) an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive peri­od in which he paint­ed many of his most famous stud­ies of water lilies.

At the begin­ning of the film clip we see Gui­t­ry and Mon­et talk­ing with each oth­er. Then Mon­et paints on a large can­vas beside a lily pond. It’s a shame the cam­era does­n’t show the paint­ing Mon­et is work­ing on, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the great artist all clad in white, a cig­a­rette dan­gling from his lips, paint­ing in his love­ly gar­den.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Rare Film of Sculp­tor Auguste Rodin Work­ing at His Stu­dio in Paris (1915)

Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

You may nev­er look at a paint­ing by Pierre-August Renoir in quite the same way again after see­ing this three-minute film. It did­n’t show in his art­work, but Renoir suf­fered from severe rheuma­toid arthri­tis dur­ing the last three decades of his life. He worked in con­stant pain, right up until the day he died.

In this rare footage from 1915 we see the 74-year-old mas­ter seat­ed at his easel, apply­ing paint to a can­vas while his youngest son Claude, 14, stands by to arrange the palette and place the brush in his father’s per­ma­nent­ly clenched hand. By the time the film was made Renoir could no longer walk, even with crutch­es. He depend­ed on oth­ers to move him around in a wheel­chair. His assis­tants would scroll large can­vas­es across a cus­tom-made easel, so that the seat­ed painter could reach dif­fer­ent areas with his lim­it­ed arm move­ments.

But there were times when the pain was so bad he was essen­tial­ly par­a­lyzed. In the book Renoir, My Father, the painter’s famous film­mak­er son Jean describes the shock his father’s wast­ed fig­ure and gnarled hands gave to peo­ple who knew him only from his beau­ti­ful art:

His hands were ter­ri­bly deformed. His rheuma­tism had made the joints stiff and caused the thumbs to turn inward towards the palms, and his fin­gers to bend towards the wrists. Vis­i­tors who were unpre­pared for this could not take their eyes off his defor­mi­ty. Though they did not dare to men­tion it, their reac­tion would be expressed by some such phrase as “It isn’t pos­si­ble! With hands like that, how can he paint those pic­tures? There’s some mys­tery some­where.”

The film of Renoir was made by 30-year-old Sacha Gui­t­ry, who appears mid­way through the film sit­ting down and talk­ing with the artist. Gui­t­ry was the son of the famous actor and the­atre direc­tor Lucien Gui­t­ry, and would go on to even greater fame than his father as an actor, film­mak­er and play­wright. When a group of Ger­man intel­lec­tu­als issued a man­i­festo after the out­break of World War I brag­ging about the supe­ri­or­i­ty of Ger­man cul­ture, Gui­t­ry was infu­ri­at­ed. As an act of patri­o­tism he decid­ed to make a film of France’s great men and women of the arts. It would be released as Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land.” Gui­t­ry and Renoir were already friends, so when the young man embarked on his project he trav­elled to Renoir’s home at Cagnes-sur-Mer, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. The date was short­ly after June 15, 1915, when Renoir’s wife Aline died. In Sacha Gui­t­ry: The Last Boule­vardier, writer James Hard­ing describes the scene:

The choice of time was unfor­tu­nate. That very day Renoir’s wife was to be buried. Sacha went to the old man who sat hud­dled arthrit­i­cal­ly in his wheel chair and mur­mured: ‘It must be ter­ri­bly painful, Mon­sieur Renoir, and you have my deep­est sym­pa­thy.’ ‘Painful?’ he replied, shift­ing his racked limbs, ‘you bet my foot is painful!’ They pushed him in his chair up to a can­vas, and, while Sacha leaned watch­ing over his shoul­der, Renoir jabbed at the pic­ture with brush­es attached to hands which had cap­tured so much beau­ty but which now were shriv­elled like birds’ claws. The flat­ter­ing reminder that he was being filmed for pos­ter­i­ty had no effect on the man who, on being award­ed the cra­vat of a Com­man­deur of the Légion d’Hon­neur, had said: ‘How can you expect me to wear a cra­vat when I nev­er wear a col­lar?’

Renoir died four years after the film was made, on Decem­ber 3, 1919. He lived long enough to see some of his paint­ings installed in the Lou­vre. When a young Hen­ri Matisse asked the suf­fer­ing old man why he kept paint­ing, Renoir is said to have replied, “The pain pass­es, but the beau­ty remains.”

David Hock­ney turns 75 today, and he’s still going strong. Hav­ing lived most­ly in Amer­i­ca since the mid-1960s, Hock­ney moved back to Eng­land a decade ago and has spent a great deal of time paint­ing land­scapes in his native York­shire.

In the footage above, filmed by Bruno Woll­heim for the 2009 doc­u­men­tary A Big­ger Pic­ture and set to music by Anna Rus­batch, Hock­ney is shown work­ing en plein air in one of his favorite places: a qui­et stretch of coun­try road lined with trees that he calls “the tun­nel,” near the vil­lage of Kil­ham, in the York­shire Wolds. “Late Novem­ber Tun­nel, 2006” is an oil paint­ing made on two can­vas­es fused togeth­er. It’s one of a series of stud­ies Hock­ney has made of the same place at dif­fer­ent times of the day and year. The series, like sev­er­al oth­ers Hock­ney has made around East­ern York­shire, calls to mind Claude Mon­et’s famous four-sea­son stud­ies at Giverny. After years liv­ing in the Mediter­ranean cli­mate of Los Ange­les, writes Mar­tin Gay­ford in the Win­ter 2011 issue of RA Mag­a­zine:

Hock­ney found the spec­ta­cle of the chang­ing sea­sons fas­ci­nat­ing, and decid­ed to start work­ing on the land­scape of the York­shire Wolds, near his house in Bridling­ton (a com­fort­able base which was once a small hotel). In a way it was a return to his roots, a land­scape of mem­o­ry. He had grown up in Brad­ford on the oth­er side of York­shire, but as a teenag­er he had worked in the fields in the York­shire Wolds dur­ing school hol­i­days. And he would vis­it his late moth­er and sis­ter who lived in Bridling­ton. Hock­ney began this phase of his work by mak­ing draw­ings and water­colours, then paint­ing oils in the open air–like nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry painters such as Mon­et and Constable–standing beside the road in all weath­ers.

“Late Novem­ber Tun­nel, 2006” and oth­er paint­ings from the series, includ­ing lat­er works cre­at­ed by Hock­ney on iPhones and iPads, were includ­ed in a major exhib­it ear­li­er this year at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts. The exhib­it has moved on to the Guggen­heim Muse­um in Bil­bao, Spain. The cat­a­logue, David Hock­ney: A Big­ger Pic­ture, is avail­able from Abrams.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Hock­ney’s iPad Art Goes on Dis­play

Down­load David Hock­ney’s Play­ful Draw­ings for the iPhone and iPad