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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, 85 – The Age of Augustus
With Julius Caesar transformed into a star following his assassination, Ovid ends the fifteenth and final book of his Metamorphoses with some remarks in praise of his current emperor, Augustus, and his...
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Ferdinand Hodler, View to Infinity, 1903-1906
In the first years of the twentieth century, Ferdinand Hodler‘s (1853–1918) international reputation became firmly established. He had moved studio within Geneva in 1902, where he started the first...
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Emil Orlík: the artist who didn’t start hodlering
Ferdinand Hodler was a member of artistic circles which extended well beyond Switzerland, to Vienna and Germany in particular. Among his most important associates were Gustav Klimt, Emil Orlík, Albin...
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Pigment: A white less toxic, Chinese white
The Greeks and Romans knew well how poisonous lead is to humans. The symptoms and signs of lead poisoning were first detailed in the second century BCE, and when the Romans built aqueducts they...
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Fire, Fire 1: Brandjes and Napoleon
Control of fire is one of the fundamental skills of being human, and loss of its control is one of the common disasters to affect human habitation. Ever since we domesticated fire, it has had a habit...
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Fire, Fire 2: London and Frederiksborg Castle are burning
With the Napoleonic Wars concluded, many hoped that Europe could look forward to a period of peace, and its peoples would be spared involvement in battles and their resulting fires. Instead, the...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, The best of the second half...
For the last seven months, I have worked through each of the stories in the second half of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, summarising their verbal narrative and showing some of the best paintings which tell...
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Changing Stories: Ovid’s Metamorphoses on canvas, The best of the second half...
This is the second of two articles summarising the very best stories and finest paintings from the second half of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The first, covering Nessus, Deianira and Hercules through to the...
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Ferdinand Hodler, Rhythmic Landscapes, 1906-1910
In the years before the First World War, Ferdinand Hodler still found time between commissioned murals and other major figurative works to develop his landscape paintings. Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918),...
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And When Did You Last See William Frederick Yeames?
William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918), who died a century ago today, is one of the many painters who is now known by a single work: in his case And when did you last see your Father? (1878). As a...
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Pigment: The first modern pigment, Prussian Blue
Until the advent of chemistry in the eighteenth century, the vast majority of pigments occurred in nature, even if the minerals or plant matter from which they were derived had to be specially...
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Down and out: Vagrants
There have always been people who are poorer than poor, and have nothing more than they stand in and carry. They made occasional appearances in paintings, but most artists carefully ignored them, until...
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Down and Out: Homeless
The paintings of vagrants in the first article in this two-part series are matched by depictions of those homeless families who lived entirely on city streets. Philippe-Auguste Jeanron (1808–1877),...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 0 Introduction to a new series
Literary sources were (and still are) crucial to a great many artists. Until the late twentieth century, most had been thoroughly educated in the Classics and the Bible. Most studios and workshops...
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Pierre Bonnard: Japonisme and the Nabis, 1888-1892
Until recently, Pierre Bonnard’s paintings have been covered by copyright, and inaccessible to the blogger. With the release of images of hundreds of his paintings and photographs into the public...
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Albin Egger-Lienz: early Naturalism, 1887-1903
One of the admittedly flawed measures of the ‘importance’ of an artist is the strength and extent of their influence. In Ferdinand Hodler’s case, this is difficult to assess because of our current...
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Ferdinand Hodler, Unanimity and Change, 1911-1914
In the period to 1910, Hodler’s style had loosened and his paintings, landscapes in particular, eliminated detail to present simplified and stylised images, in what Hodler considered “a magnified,...
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Pigment: The blue from over the sea, Ultramarine
Of all the pigments used in European and Western painting, Ultramarine Blue remains the queen. Originally made by crushing and grinding the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, its cost has exceeded that...
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Umbrellas: Stop the rain
Now that Spring has arrived in the UK, so has the season of the umbrella. We shelter under it when we’re being treated to a Spring shower, and enjoy its shade on those increasingly hot and sunny days....
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Umbrellas: Stop the sun
The umbrella may now be most often used to shelter from rain, but historically its most sustained purpose has been to shelter from sun. Yesterday’s modest collection of paintings of umbrellas in the...
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