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Reading Visual Art: 207 Friezes A
In architecture, a frieze is a section of a building above the columns or walls and below the roof, commonly the location of decorative sculpture or a bas-relief. Leo von Klenze (1784-1864)...
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Reading Visual Art: 208 Friezes B
In two-dimensional visual art, particularly painting, the term frieze is used to describe an arrangement of figures that are flattened into a plane parallel to the plane of the picture, thus resembling...
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Urban Revolutionaries: 13 Holidays
Before the arrival of railways in the middle of the nineteenth century, travel was slow, and holidays were optional. Most of the working class in cities were grateful to get one day off each week, and...
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The bicentenary of James Collinson, least-known Pre-Raphaelite painter
Many artists are considered to have been part of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and even more adopted Pre-Raphaelite style, but there were only ever seven...
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Landscapes of Spain: The nineteenth century
On Christmas Eve 1734 Europe came close to losing many of its greatest paintings, when the Royal Alcázar of Madrid caught fire. At the time it housed much of the Spanish royal collection; although some...
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Landscapes of Spain: The twentieth century
From the opening to the public of the Museo Nacional del Prado in November 1819, it has drawn a steady succession of aspiring painters to Madrid to study the works of Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter...
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Changing Paintings: 70 Romulus and the founding of Rome
After the delightful tale of Vertumnus and Pomona, King Proca dies, and Ovid’s narrative rushes through the founding of Rome by Romulus, so bringing Book 14 of his Metamorphoses to a close. Ovid tells...
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Reading Visual Art: 209 Parrot A
Parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and the humble budgerigar (a small parakeet) have long been popular domestic pets in Europe, and haven’t escaped the attention of artists. According to Richard Verdi, who...
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Reading Visual Art: 210 Parrot B
Parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and the humble budgerigar (a small parakeet) have long been popular domestic pets in Europe, and are featured in many paintings. In this second look at a selection of...
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Interiors by Design: Cupboards and dressers
Some of our most popular furniture is primarily intended for storage and display. This article looks at paintings of cupboards, and their specialist relatives sideboards and (Welsh) dressers. Although...
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Urban Revolutionaries: 14 Epidemic
Since the dawn of civilisation in the cities of the Fertile Crescent in what’s now the Middle East, epidemics of infectious diseases have been a curse of those concentrations of people, as well as in...
View ArticleTemporary suspension of comments
Due to an attack by a comment spammer, I regret that I have suspended all commenting to posts here. I hope to resume them later, when the spammer has poked off to annoy someone else.
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A French landscape painter in Rome: Poussin
This weekend I look at two founding fathers of European landscape painting, both of them French expatriates in Italy. Today I trace the story of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who took three attempts to...
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A French landscape painter in Rome: Claude
Nicolas Poussin’s pure landscape paintings developed from settings of myths. The other French founding father of landscape painting, Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), drew from art imported from Northern...
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Changing Paintings: 71 Pythagoras and Numa
Ovid’s fifteenth and final book of his Metamorphoses continues his account of the early rulers of Rome, making its way steadily to reach the Emperor Augustus. Following the apotheosis of Romulus, the...
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Reading Visual Art: 211 Narrative modes A
Telling a story, narrative, in a painting is one of its most common purposes, and greatest challenges. A landscape painting shows a view at a moment in time, but doesn’t normally tell a story, as that...
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Reading Visual Art: 212 Narrative modes B
I have divided narrative forms in painting into the following categories: instantaneous, where the image is intended to show what was happening at a single moment in time, even though it’s likely to...
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Interiors by Design: Workshops
Workshops have long been a place of fascination, and make unconventional interiors. A great many painters have depicted their studios, but relatively few have gone behind the scenes to show what their...
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Urban Revolutionaries: 15 Angst
At times, life in the country was thoroughly miserable, but in the cities there was and is plenty of angst, the strain resulting from the stress of life. Wherever you looked there were people,...
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Spring meadows 1
By now, even the mountain meadows and those in the deep valleys of Norway are bursting into colour with Spring flowers. This weekend I’m going to unashamedly wallow in paintings of the splendour of...
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