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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 5 – The large prints, 1795
In 1794, William Blake had perfected his colour illuminated printing process, in publishing a series of illuminated books. By 1795, he was ready to use it to produce a limited run of twelve large...
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John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’: more allusion than fact?
Some remember John Singer Sargent for his portraits of the most affluent in society. For many, though, his most memorable painting is his vast canvas showing the horrors of the First World War, in the...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 6 – Tempera paintings, 1799-1800
By 1799, Blake and his wife must have been living in great poverty. His illustrations to Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, which could have been very lucrative, ceased publication after the first volume,...
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Into the Light: Odilon Redon’s unique eye, 1 – to 1894
This year has seen major international celebrations of the lives and work of Hieronymus Bosch, William Merritt Chase, and Thomas Eakins. I have barely seen mention, though, of another important...
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Brief Candles: Charles Laval was not Paul Gauguin
… Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. (William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene 5.) It is bad...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 7 – Tempera paintings 1800-1810
After 1800, William Blake continued to paint a limited number of works using glue tempera, although the great majority of his paintings remained in watercolour. The media and techniques overlap to an...
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Book review and exhibition: Australia’s Impressionists, ed. Riopelle
“Australia’s Impressionists” Edited by Christopher Riopelle Yale UP and The National Gallery Press, November 2016 (US: February 2017) Hardback, 26.7 x 24.8 cm (10.5 x 9.8 in), 128 pp., £16.95/$30.00...
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Into the Light: Odilon Redon’s unique eye, 2 – 1895-1904
In my first article commemorating the centenary of the death of Odilon Redon (1840–1916), I traced his early career in charcoal drawings, prints, and some landscape oil sketches. By 1895, he had...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 8 – Last tempera paintings
This article completes my selection of Blake’s late tempera paintings, and follows on from the last article on those between 1800-1810. There appears to have been a gap in Blake’s use of glue tempera...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 9 – Jacob’s Ladder and the...
It’s often hard to see paintings in their historical context. What might appear to us to be a fairly mundane depiction of a particular motif could have been viewed very differently at the time that it...
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Into the Light: Odilon Redon’s unique eye, 3 – 1905 on
By 1905, Odilon Redon (1840–1916) was one of the most renowned modern artists in France. Although classified a Symbolist, his style was unique and often visionary. Odilon Redon (1840–1916), Woman in a...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 1
It is not unusual to paint a narrative series, but as I have shown with such series by Thomas Cole and Hogarth, these tend to be relatively short compared with the images in, say, a graphic novel. The...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 2
This article concludes my account of the series of eighteen oil paintings which make up the first part of Louis Janmot‘s epic Poem of the Soul, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France. Louis Janmot...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 10 – Whirlwinds and cars
Of all William Blake’s visionary images, perhaps the most radical and distinctive is that of the whirlwind. Sometimes it is divine, other times decidely secular if not downright sinful. No other artist...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 3
This third article in the series covering Louis Janmot‘s (1814–1892) epic narrative series of paintings, Le Poème de l’âme (Poem of the Soul), shows the first half of the second group, drawn in...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 4
This fourth article completes the final drawings in the second part of Louis Janmot‘s (1814–1892) epic narrative series of paintings, Le Poème de l’âme (Poem of the Soul). The previous drawings traced...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 11 – A Revelation of beasts
We tend to think that William Blake’s most visionary and radical art was created later in his career, particularly as part of his illustrations to Dante, and that his biblical paintings around 1800...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 1 Gathering storm
Plenty of nineteenth century art was ‘difficult’, not just the works of William Blake (at the start) and Odilon Redon (at the end). This article, the first of a new series, looks at the distinctive...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 12 – Grand Designs
For all his extraordinary artistic vision, William Blake had a strong sense of design, developed during his apprenticeship as an engraver, and honed when he was self-publishing his illuminated books....
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 2 Distant rumbles
The finished paintings of Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) before 1864 showed promise, but despite his aim of radically changing history painting, they were hardly revolutionary. Nor did they have much...
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