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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, 1909-1911
Just before the outbreak of the First World War, Lovis Corinth was at the peak of his career, and with his wife Charlotte and their two young children, was enjoying everything that Berlin had to offer....
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 11 Mythical animals and cities
During the late 1880s, Gustave Moreau had largely recovered from the death of his mother. Although he still did not submit his work for major public exhibitions, in 1886 the Goupil Gallery mounted a...
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The Story in Paintings: How sculpture changed Ganymede’s story
Conventional wisdom is that narrative in the traditional visual arts, including painting and sculpture, is limited, perhaps even marginal when compared to that in verbal (spoken or written) arts. I was...
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Into the Light: Osman Hamdi Bey
When researching my recent article about tortoises in painting, I came across the work of Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), a polymath who was an administrator, intellectual, archaeologist, museum curator,...
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The Salome Story: first full release version for Storyspace and Tinderbox
I am delighted to offer my first proper release version of The Salome Story hypertext, which examines the different narratives involving Herod, Herodias, Salome, and John the Baptist, and looks at how...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, self-portraits and 1912
In December 1911, when he was 53 and at the peak of his career, Lovis Corinth suffered a major stroke. When he regained consciousness, he did not even recognise his wife Charlotte, and his left arm and...
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How’s your Personal Digital Archive?
How many images are there in your photo library? What are your plans to manage that library over the next 20+ years? Do you keep a separate archive of important images, video clips, and other documents...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, 1913-1914
By the beginning of 1913, Lovis Corinth had essentially overcome any consequences of his stroke at the end of 1911. His painting style had moved on – not because of any residual physical limitations –...
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Landscapes of the Ancients: Samuel Palmer, Rome and Wales
Samuel Palmer’s paintings during his Shoreham period were views of an enchanted countryside, as visionary in their way as William Blake’s work. When he returned to live and work in London, in 1835, he...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 12 For the museum
By the summer of 1890, both the women in Gustave Moreau’s life – first his mother, then his partner/mistress/muse – had died. But contrary to some claims, he did not become a recluse, nor did he stop...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 13 Jupiter and Semele
Gustave Moreau started work on his last major painting by 1889, and seems to have concentrated on it most in 1894-95. The story at the heart of it is one of the strangest in classical myth, and has not...
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Fire, surgery, and surrogate pregnancy: an unpaintable story?
Many classical myths must have seemed far-fetched even to the ancient Greeks and Romans. There is none so extraordinary as that told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses of the love affair between Jupiter and...
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Sargent’s Furies: a rare but powerful story
At the end of the First World War, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) had commitments on both sides of the Atlantic. He had been working on murals in the Boston and Cambridge areas of Massachusetts, but...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 0 – index and introduction
There are two major literary sources which have inspired more European and North American paintings than any others: the Bible, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although most of us are at least fairly...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 1 – Lycaon, cannibalism,...
The first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses starts, just like the Bible and several other major compilations of ancient writing, with the creation of the world. You may be tempted to view Metamorphoses as...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 14 Overview and index
In the last thirteen articles I have tried to give an account of the life and work of Gustave Moreau (1826–1898). Early in his career, Moreau made a conscious decision to be a history painter, and to...
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Landscapes of the Ancients: Samuel Palmer, etchings and sunsets
By the early 1850s, just after the death of JMW Turner, Samuel Palmer’s paintings had lost his earlier vision, and he was accomplishing more in his etchings than in paint. Samuel Palmer (1805–1881),...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, 1915-1919
On 28 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia. Germany then invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, and the First World War had started. Lovis Corinth and his family had only just come to...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 2 – Deucalion, the flood,...
In Ovid’s account of the creation, Jupiter, the king of the gods, wants to destroy mankind because of its unacceptable behaviour, and to create a new, better type of human. At first he intends doing...
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The Story in Paintings: Remembering a great general?
Few of us get to write our own obituary, or to determine how we might be remembered in paintings. If you’re a major statesman and general, who commands many thousands of words on Wikipedia, you might...
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