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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 9 – The abduction of Europa
The final myth in Book 2 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is told very briefly – in less than thirty lines of Latin – and ends part way through the story. This is the famous rape of Europa, although here Ovid...
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Other Gardens: The Vegetable Patch on Canvas
Flower gardens have long been favourite motifs for painters. Long before the Impressionists, artists have painted flowers for their exuberant colour and varied textures. But flower gardens have, over...
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President’s Park, the Titanic, and a Name on a Tree: The story of Oenone
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...
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Paul Nash: from ancient to surreal, 4 – 1939-1942
Shortly before the Second World War began in 1939, while Paul Nash was at the height of his surrealism, the Nashes moved from London to Oxford. He was then appointed to a full-time war artist post for...
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Nikolai Astrup: Dark Sunlight 4 – 1920-24
By 1920, Nikolai Astrup had met with considerable critical success and acclaim, but it had not brought him financial security, better health, or stability. The huge changes in art taking place outside...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 10 – Cadmus and the...
Ovid concluded Book 2 of his Metamorphoses with the story of the abduction of Europa, up to the point where Jupiter, then a white bull, shot off over the sea with Europa on his back. Book 3 opens where...
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Paul Nash: from ancient to surreal, 5 – 1943-1945
When Paul Nash was staying with Hilda Harrison in her house on Boar’s Hill, near Oxford, he could see a landscape which had come to obsess him from childhood: two hills (technically the Sinodun Hills)...
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Nikolai Astrup: Dark Sunlight 5 – 1925-28 and prints
By 1925, Nikolai Astrup had recovered from his depression and frustrations of five years earlier, and was painting and making prints avidly in the family’s smallholding at Sandalstrand, on the southern...
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Painting the Impossible: Smell
We can associate visual images with predominantly non-visual experiences. One of my most memorable associations of this kind occurs in Antonioni’s 1966 movie Blow-Up, in which I hear the soft roar of...
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The Over-Exposed Warrior, the Suicide Pact, and the Almond Tree
The Pre-Raphaelites were nothing if not intense and passionate. Although at times their paintings may today seem far from radical, their art often courted controversy, and their courting was all too...
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Two Roads to Magical Landscapes: Paul Nash and Nikolai Astrup
Over the last three weeks, I have posted series of articles outlining the careers and work of two landscape painters of the early twentieth century: the Norwegian Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928), and the...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 11 – Actaeon’s fatal mistake
Cadmus founded the city of Thebes, and in his series of stories about that city, Ovid moves on to consider the fate of its founder’s grandson, Actaeon. Unusually, Ovid prefaces this story with a short...
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Jules Breton’s Eternal Harvest: 1 1850-1859
There were two major French artists who specialised in painting ordinary people in the countryside in the middle of the nineteenth century: Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Jules Breton...
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Franz von Stuck’s Thoroughly Modern Histories: 1 1887-1891
Along with Lovis Corinth and others, Franz von Stuck (1863–1928) was one of the co-founders of the Munich Secession, and a career-long painter of myth and narrative. If Corinth is little-known outside...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 12 – Semele and Jupiter’s...
After telling the tragic fate of Actaeon, the grandson of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, Ovid describes the next disaster to strike the house of Thebes, in the bizarre myth of Semele, Cadmus’ daughter. The...
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Painting the Impossible: Gone with the Wind – land and sea
One not uncommon English phrase to express futility and difficulty is to say that it’s like painting the wind. As we are now at that time of year when the wind tends to blow strongest, I thought it...
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Painting the Impossible: Gone with the Wind – people
Skilled artists, with the aid of trees, smoke, waves, clouds, skies, and some other features of nature, can paint the wind very effectively. Add some people, and this is what happens. Katsushika...
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The Largest Salon, the Wicked Stepmother, and a Fatal Lie
The Paris Salon of 1880 was the largest ever, with nearly 7,300 works on display. Despite the impression that we now have, they were quite an eclectic selection, including paintings by Manet, Monet,...
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Jules Breton’s Eternal Harvest: 2 1860-1869
The Salon of 1859 brought Jules Breton a first-class medal for his Calling in the Gleaners, and in the same year the couple’s only daughter was born. Over the following decade, he concentrated on less...
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Should Macs start a Night Shift?
For some, the only new feature in macOS Sierra 10.12.4 is the arrival of Apple’s Night Shift on Macs. Although it is not the only new feature by any means, if you aren’t interested in cricket and don’t...
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