“Intimisms,” a new group exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, looks at the legacy of the Intimists, a group of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists—Jean-Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard among them—remembered for the rich closeness and empathy of their portraiture. The French writer and critic Camille Mauclair defined intimism as “psychologic poetry in painting … a revelation of the soul through the things painted, the magnetic suggestion of what lies behind them through the description of the outer appearance, the intimate meaning of the spectacles of life … the daily tragedy and mystery of ordinary existence, and the latent poetry in things.” The artists in this exhibition aim to further that tradition.

Gahee Park, Night Talk, 2016, oil on canvas, 85″ x 65″.

John McAllister, blazing oceans murmur of a cloud, 2015, oil on canvas over panel, 72″ x 168″.

Lucian Freud, Small Figure, 1983–84, oil on canvas, 8 7/8″ x 13″.

Louis Eilshemius, Untitled (Nude at Bath), c. 1917, oil on paperboard mounted to Masonite, 25 1/4″ x 19 1/8″.

Alice Neel, John Lucca, 1960s, oil on canvas, 44″ x 32″.

Joan Brown, Twenty to Nine, 1972, oil enamel on Masonite, 90″ x 48″.

Sylvia Sleigh, Max with Angels, 1999, oil on canvas, 52″ x 20″.

Ridley Howard, Line Rose, 2016, oil on linen, 6″ x 6″.

Ridley Howard, Midnight, 2016, oil on linen, 6″ x 6″.

Ridley Howard, Peach Sunrise, 2016, oil on linen, 9″ x 12″.

Henry Taylor, Fawn Rogers, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 42″ x 35 1/2″.

Anna Glantz, Blind Ace, 2016, oil on canvas, 56″ x 46″.

Aliza Nisenbaum, MOIA’s NYC Womens Cabinet, 2016, oil on linen, 68″ x 85″.

Patricia Treib, M.A. Reading, 2015, watercolor and gouache on paper, 12 1/2″ x 9 1/2″.

Jennifer Packer, April, 2016, oil on canvas, 28″ x 16″.