Clik here to view.
Sunrise on Impressionism: 18 Frédéric Bazille
One name is missing entirely from the catalogue of the First Impressionist Exhibition, an artist who little more than three years earlier had been one of the most promising members of the new movement,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painted Stories in Britain 13: Enter the Pre-Raphaelites
With the barriers to development of British narrative painting removed, it wasn’t long before its first school arose. As in so many cases, it appears to have developed entirely unintentionally, among a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 14 Bring on the clowns
Clowns, fools and jesters might appear related species, but they come from quite different traditions, and have separate readings. While jesters and fools were intended to add a little light humour to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 15 Punch and Judy
By the late nineteenth century, the characters of the commedia dell’arte, including Pierrot, Harlequin and Pulcinella, had transferred from their original theatrical comedy to groups of travelling...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painting the vegetable garden 1
By this time of year, across Europe and North America, most flower gardens have been tidied up and tucked away for winter. It’s only in the vegetable garden that activity continues, with the last of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painting the vegetable garden 2
If the flower garden was the place for social gatherings and relationships, more everyday events occurred among the cabbages. Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), First Steps (c 1858), black Conté crayon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 27: All’s Well that Ends Well
Some of William Shakespeare’s plays didn’t become popular for over four centuries. One example is All’s Well That Ends Well, normally considered to be a ‘problem comedy’ because of its inversions of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunrise on Impressionism: 19 Edgar Degas
Of all the French Impressionists, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) was the odd one out. Not only did he consider himself a Realist rather than Impressionist, but he spent much of his career avoiding painting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painted Stories in Britain 14: British poetry and Arthurian legend
Before the middle of the nineteenth century, British narrative painting had a repertoire of themes that was only distinguished by the popularity of stories from the plays of William Shakespeare. That...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 16 Circe and sorceresses
There’s something special about mythical and legendary sorceresses, who combine their working of dark arts with skills of seduction, making them among the earliest femmes fatales. Their depictions are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 17 Medea as sorceress
The myth of Medea is long and complicated, and centres on her relationship with Jason, who with his Argonauts completed a quest to steal the Golden Fleece. Without Medea’s sorcery he couldn’t have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The President’s Park and the Titanic: paintings of Francis Davis Millet
Not far from the White House, in the President’s Park, Washington D.C., is a large fountain intended to provide drinking water for the horses used by the patrols of the park police. The Butts-Millet...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Titanic and the Taj Mahal: paintings of Colin Campbell Cooper
Colin Campbell Cooper (1856–1937), ten years junior to Francis Davis Millet, was already a successful painter by 1912, having established his reputation painting New York’s skyscrapers from about 1902...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Paintings of William Shakespeare’s Plays 28: The Comedy of Errors
For the leading British English playwright, many of William Shakespeare’s works relied on non-English sources and were set overseas. The Comedy of Errors, probably written in about 1594, is a good...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunrise on Impressionism: 20 Paul Cézanne
Many of those who showed their paintings in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874 were already prolific painters, and innovated during that early phase of the movement. Among the exceptions was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painted Stories in Britain 15: Human panoramas
At the same time as the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren were starting to paint narratives in their new style, the influence of William Hogarth was about to result in a transient but distinctively visual...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 18 Spinning
Spinning natural fibres into yarn, and weaving that into fabric, have such long traditions in most cultures that they have developed associations in stories. These activities have also become...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 19 Weaving
With the wool or other natural fibres spun into yarn in the first of these two articles, we move on to building that yarn into fabric, to assemble into clothing. As with spinning, there are several...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Coming home to a real fire in paintings 1
I grew up before most houses in the UK had the benefit of central heating, with boilers or furnaces to warm them through the winter. We still relied upon a fire in an open hearth, and the sight of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Coming home to a real fire in paintings 2
In the first of these two articles looking at paintings of fires, I showed a selection of works up to the late eighteenth century. Here I resume with an unusual pair of paintings. Virginie...
View Article