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Urban Revolutionaries: 9 Poverty
The reality of urban life was that precious few who migrated from the country ever made their fortune in the city. For the great majority life was a constant battle to avoid poverty that, in the long...
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Paintings of the Franco-Prussian War: 1 Collapse
Painting in Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century was centred on Paris. A lot happened in other countries too – such as the Pre-Raphaelites – but the major movements of the time came...
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Paintings of the Franco-Prussian War: 2 The Siege of Paris
Following a series of disastrous defeats of the French Army, on 19 September 1870, Prussian forces had taken control of the country around Paris, and put the capital under siege. With the surrender of...
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Changing Paintings: 64 Scylla meets Glaucus
By the end of Book 13 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Aeneas is on the island of Sicily. Scylla has been combing Galatea’s hair, listening to her tell the tragic story of the death of her lover Acis. Ovid...
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Reading Visual Art: 202 Rabbit & Hare
As today is the first day of April, it’s a double danger: as the first of the month you should say rabbit or white rabbit when you first wake up, and it’s All Fools’ Day as well. I have no hoaxes for...
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Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 1 Pupil
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were three dominant painters who flirted with Impressionism but retained conventional styles: Anders Zorn from Sweden, Joaquín Sorolla from...
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Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 2 London
By 1880, just two years after he had completed his training under Carolus-Duran in Paris, John Singer Sargent was in the ascendant. His skills were in growing demand for the portraits of the rich and...
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Interiors by Design: Dressing table
Originally known as a toilet table, or simply a toilet, dressing tables or vanities featured near the beds of ladies from the late seventeenth century. They are a fusion of storage boxes used for...
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All aboard: a century of painting railways 1
The nineteenth century brought huge changes in technology and society. Some, like telegraphy, telephones and radio, haven’t featured in many paintings, and even the bicycle has largely escaped the...
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All aboard: a century of painting railways 2
In the first of these two articles tracing the first century of railways in paintings from the early 1840s, I had reached Claude Monet’s views of the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris before 1880. By this...
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