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The Story in Paintings: The judgement of Solomon
Many of the stories shown in paintings are complex if not rambling, and choosing the best scene is often tricky. The Old Testament story of the Judgement of Solomon is different: although it involves...
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The Story in Paintings: Léon Cogniet and Delacroix’s Abduction of Rebecca
Most narrative painters make their mark by their paintings, but a few are both brilliant in painting stories, and highly influential teachers. Léon Cogniet (1794–1880) is probably the best example of...
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How well did I forecast?
On New Year’s Day this year, I posted what I described as “my irreverent look forward to what we can expect this year, 2016”. Now that we are over half way through the year, I thought I’d better fess...
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The Story in Paintings: Domenico Morelli
There was a great deal more to Italian painting in the 1800s than just the Macchiaioli. As with most European art outside Impressionism, we have lost sight of the history of painting in that century if...
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Hieronymus Bosch: Visions of the Hereafter (Venice)
Four panels show with sublime simplicity the routes to Heaven and Hell. Their mystery is how they were configured, and whether there were other objects, such as a central carved panel, involved. The...
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James Tissot’s late narrative paintings: the Bible series, 1
As I recounted in my biography of James Tissot (1836–1902), within days of his lover’s death in late 1882, he returned to Paris, and soon embarked on painting a series of large canvases on The Woman of...
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James Tissot’s late narrative paintings: the Bible series, 2
In the previous article, I explained how James Tissot’s (1836–1902) extraordinary series of paintings of Biblical stories came about, how he created them, and considered whether they are ‘mere’...
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Someone is likely to be profiting from your public domain content
When a creative – photographer, painter, writer, musician, whatever – puts their work into the public domain, and allows its free use, they’d be more than miffed to discover someone selling their work...
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Hieronymus Bosch: The Haywain (Prado)
Probably one of his last major paintings, this allegorical triptych takes an unusual theme, which it presents in rich and rollicking detail. It is perhaps his last great masterpiece to have survived....
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The Story in Paintings: Pierre Guérin, the Prix de Rome, and the Death of Cato
In the nineteenth century, the revolution in painting brought by the Impressionists targeted the Salon, the annual state-run and heavily-juried exhibition. As the bastion of conservatism and often...
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Alchemy: a brief history of oil painting, 1 – Overview
The great majority of paintings which form the fabric of art history were painted using oil paints. In its day, egg tempera was used for many masterpieces, but once oil painting became established...
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Industrial copyright abuse
Copyright was invented and implemented to protect creative people and their work. Although large industries now exist on the strength of copyright, and vociferously campaign in what they claim is the...
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The Story in Paintings: The Road to Damascus and the Conversion of Saint Paul
I recently praised Domenico Morelli’s superior composition in his The Conversion of Saint Paul (1876). This article explores earlier paintings of this popular story from the New Testament, to see how...
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Hieronymus Bosch: the life of a great Master
We may have come to know a great deal about Bosch’s imagination and his imagery, but we know precious little about the man. It is thought that he was born in about 1450, and, although we know that he...
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Fixing another X-Rite ColorMunki problem
If you have one of X-Rite’s ColorMunki Photo or Design devices, you may have experienced problems with monitor profiles which prove too dark, following calibration using the device. According to...
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Into the Light: Enrique Simonet, Death and the countryside, up to 1900
Think of painting in Spain around 1900, and we tend to envisage the vast golden canvases of Sorolla’s eternal summer. Glorious though they are, he was by no means the only famous painter active in...
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Five hundred years of Bosch: the wisdom of his owls
Exactly five hundred years ago today, in Saint John’s Church in the North Brabant city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (now generally known as Den Bosch in the Netherlands), the widow, family, and friends of...
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Into the Light: Enrique Simonet, Death and the countryside, after 1900
In my first article about the Spanish painter Enrique Simonet Lombardo (1866–1927), I showed examples from his career prior to 1900. This article resumes the story of his paintings during the twentieth...
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Alchemy: 2 – the origin of oil painting
Oil painting – ancient or modern – requires the bringing together of four components in a successful technique: a drying oil, pigments, a ground able to take the paint, solvents/diluents. The last of...
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Storyspace 3.2 and Storyspace Reader for OS X
While the rest of us have been loafing on the beach on holiday, Eastgate Systems has been busy working on Storyspace 3.2, which it has now released here. This is a landmark release, not so much because...
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