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Sea of Mists: Caspar David Friedrich to 1820
Nothing about Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the central artist in this group of German Romantic painters, is ever straightforward: he was born in Greifswald, near the Baltic coast of modern...
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A to Z of Landscapes: Bridges
One of the largest man-made structures, bridges have long been popular in landscape paintings, whether as the primary subject or an accessory. Even the most humble wooden or stone bridge has a...
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The Breaking Wave in Paintings 1
Nature has many wonderful forms, of which the near-breaking wave is one of the most fascinating. Unless you were an artist in central Europe who didn’t get out much, chances are that you’d have...
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The Breaking Wave in Paintings 2
In the first of these two articles looking at paintings of near-breaking waves, I showed how unusual they had been before European artists saw Hokusai’s Great Wave in about 1856. After that, Courbet...
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Changing Paintings: 8 Aglauros turned into stone
Having warned us of the consequences of gossip about others, Ovid turns in the later sections of Book 2 of his Metamorphoses to consider related sins. He leads into this with a short account of...
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Reading visual art: 116 Wicker basket A
Before everything turned plastic, we carried things around in baskets made from roughly woven materials derived from a range of dried plants, such as reed and willow: wicker or wickerwork baskets....
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Reading visual art: 117 Wicker basket B
In the first of these two articles looking at the roles of wicker baskets in paintings, I concentrated on narrative works, and introduced their use to carry meals, and in gathering food such as fruit....
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Sea of Mists: Caspar David Friedrich 1820-30
By 1820, Caspar David Friedrich had established himself as one of the leading visual artists of the German Romantic movement. His paintings were known to Goethe, and one of his patrons was Grand Duke...
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A to Z of Landscapes: Cloudscapes
In landscape painting, the letter C is for clouds and the cloudscapes they form. It was perhaps the late landscape paintings of Peter Paul Rubens that marked the start of their development. Peter Paul...
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Paintings of Mary Magdalene: Gospel times
The stories of three women dominate Christian religious art: the Virgin Mary, Eve, and Mary Magdalene. This weekend I look at paintings of the last of those, the other Mary, and the stories they tell....
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Paintings of Mary Magdalene: Penitent and legendary
In the first of these two articles considering paintings of Mary Magdalene, I showed a small selection of those depicting her in events that occurred during times covered by the Gospels, up to the Noli...
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Changing Paintings: 9 The abduction of Europa
After Mercury had turned Aglauros into stone for her obstruction and festering jealousy of her sister Herse, he flew back up to join Jupiter in the heavens, who instructed him to drive a herd of cattle...
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Reading visual art: 118 The box, Pandora
There’s just one frequently painted story that’s centred on a box, and is famous enough to have entered English and other languages: the myth of Pandora’s box. However, as far as paintings are...
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Reading visual art: 119 The box, others
In addition to paintings of Pandora’s box, as shown in yesterday’s article, boxes are not uncommon accessories in paintings that are far from being mythological. Although most are cuboids with corners,...
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Sea of Mists: Caspar David Friedrich 1830-40
By 1830, reception of Caspar David Friedrich’s art was declining, as was Romanticism more generally. With the death of Goethe in 1832 and the ascendancy of the Düsseldorf School of painting, Friedrich...
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A to Z of Landscapes: Dawn and Dusk
At the heart of landscape painting are colour, form and light. It’s only appropriate the letter D in our alphabet covers two of those three, at dawn and dusk, when the dominant greens of the land meet...
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Painting the circus: performance and spectacle
At about this time in early Spring, travelling circuses around the northern hemisphere start to break out of their winter quarters and migrate to cities to bring entertainment to the masses....
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Painting the circus: performers and melancholy
In yesterday’s article, I looked at the spectacle of the circus, as seen mainly during the late nineteenth century. Even in circuses that worked year-round in their own permanent buildings, performers...
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Changing Paintings: 10 Cadmus and the founding of Thebes
Having left the reader with Europa being abducted by the white bull that is Jupiter, when Ovid opens Book 3 of his Metamorphoses he just mentions in passing that the pair travelled to the island of...
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Reading visual art: 120 Rainbows narrative
Rainbows are among the most beautiful and ephemeral of atmospheric optical effects, and haven’t escaped the attention of painters. In this and the next article I look at their reading in two genres,...
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