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Sheer Delight 9: Into thin air
In the previous article, I divided into three the types of depictions of clothing and fabrics from the middle of the nineteenth century: social realism and Naturalism, where the reality of the clothes...
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Paintings of Paul Signac 9: The Golden Horn
In early 1906, as Paul Signac (1863-1935) was completing his large painting of the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde and the port of Marseilles, he was visited by the former Nabi Maurice Denis, and...
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King of Pastels: Paintings of Maurice Quentin de La Tour
The star French pastellist of the middle of the eighteenth century was undoubtedly Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788), whose works are readily seen in the Louvre and elsewhere. Little is known...
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Sargent’s Portraits 1: Three prim ladies and an orgy
Painting portraits can be highly profitable, but risks becoming tedious. I wonder if some of the great portraitists engaged in inner games to relieve the monotony of depicting yet another pretty face...
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Sargent’s Portraits 2: The New Woman and her surrogate dog
In yesterday’s article I wondered whether the mind of a great portrait painter ever wandered, leading them to make allusions to other paintings which would have shocked their sitters. Today I look at a...
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Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 1: Romeo and Juliet
One of the best-known tragic romances in any language, Shakespeare probably completed Romeo and Juliet in 1595, and it was first published two years later. Since then it has been widely performed,...
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Colour Notes 10: Colour-coding gender
Colour sometimes creeps into culture in curious ways. This article looks at the long-lived use of colour to code gender, a distinction reflected in eighteenth-century cosmetics, and in paintings of...
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Sheer Delight 10: Beyond reality with John Singer Sargent
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, three modern masters evolved traditional oil painting outside Impressionism: Joaquín Sorolla in Spain, Anders Zorn in Sweden, and the American John...
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Paintings of Paul Signac 10: War
After Paul Signac’s visit to Constantinople in 1907, the following February he travelled to Italy, where he toured Florence, Rome and other cities before returning to Venice in late March. He remained...
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Odd Man Out: pastels of Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (1834–1917) was the odd man out of the French Impressionists. In so many ways he ploughed his lonely furrow, so creating different art. His entry to painting followed a meeting with JAD...
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Bewitched: Paintings of witches 1
This coming week, in my series on paintings of Shakespeare’s plays, we reach the tragedy of Macbeth, famous for its scene involving three witches. So this weekend I look at some other paintings of...
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Bewitched: Paintings of witches 2
In the first of these two articles showing paintings of witches and their dark arts and crafts, I reached the early nineteenth century, a period in which these subjects had become popular in...
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Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 2: Macbeth
Shakespeare’s deepest insights into the human condition come in his tragedies, and there is none deeper than his Macbeth. He is thought to have completed this in time for its first performance in 1606,...
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Colour Notes 11: Alas ColorSync Utility!
At one time, ColorSync was a leading light in colour management, and the ColorSync Utility full of useful tools for working with and managing colour. Although that app is still included in those...
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Sheer Delight 11: Sorolla and Zorn
Having looked in the previous article at how the first of the three modern masters depicted clothing and fabrics, this article turns to the other two, Joaquín Sorolla from Spain and Anders Zorn from...
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Paintings of Paul Signac 11: The Twenties
For much of the First World War, Paul Signac (1863-1935) suffered from bouts of depression and painted little in oils. He spent much of his time during that period writing a monumental 1500-page...
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Mary Cassatt’s pastels
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), the best-known of the women Impressionists, was versatile in her media. In addition to painting in oils and pastels, she was an accomplished print-maker, a skill which she...
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Shipwrecks in paintings 1
The coming week’s play by Shakespeare will be The Tempest, which opens with a ship being wrecked on a remote island, so this weekend I look at a selection of paintings showing shipwrecks. Until the...
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Shipwrecks in paintings 2
Yesterday, in the first of these two articles showing paintings of shipwrecks, I had reached the middle of the nineteenth century, a time when travel by sea was slowly becoming less hazardous. I make...
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Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 3: The Tempest
In late 1610, as he was reaching the end of his career as a playwright, Shakespeare read three accounts of a shipwreck that inspired him to write what turned out to be his final unassisted play, The...
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