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Painting Reality: 5 Growth of the city
The original focus of Naturalism was the plight of the rural poor, but as it evolved and gathered momentum in the 1880s, Naturalist painters also looked at the growing problems of cities and those who...
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The Decameron: The hundred and first story
It’s generally held that Boccaccio’s Decameron consists of a hundred stories told ten each day for a total of ten days. But there’s a bonus, the hundred and first story which is buried in Filostrato’s...
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Spinning in paintings: 1 History
Of all the many and varied activities that women did and do, one of the most characteristic was spinning. Not only that, but it was socially acceptable for women of all ranks, from queens to...
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Spinning in paintings: 2 Meanings
In addition to its role as a staple and everyday activity of women, spinning has acquired some specific meanings which have been depicted in paintings. In this second and final article, I will look at...
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Jean Geoffroy: the world of the child
Children are most commonly the speciality of women painters, perhaps because they usually work better with child models than do men. One notable exception to this is one of very few artists who...
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The Decameron: The suffering of Griselda
The last story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, and the final article in this series, is the tenth of the tenth day, told by Dioneo. For the modern reader, it is a strange conclusion which praises submission...
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William Powell Frith 2: Moral series
With the success of his two earlier human panoramas showing Ramsgate Sands (1854) and The Derby Day (1856-58), William Powell Frith (1819–1909) set to work on his greatest painting, a similar human...
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Painting Goethe’s Faust: 1 Faust meets the black dog
Part One of Goethe’s Faust opens with a short dedication, which starts to build the air of history and mystery for the play. This is followed by a curious prologue which is a prolonged aside between...
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Painting Reality: 6 Science and technology
The height of Naturalist painting, between about 1880-1910, coincided with a period of prodigious scientific and technological advance. In almost every field touched by these, major changes transformed...
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Detail, the painterly, and the abstract: 1 A matter of scale
For millenia, painting was representational to some degree. Although modern theorists like to talk in degrees of abstraction, the artist’s intent was to represent in paint some form of visual reality,...
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Detail, the painterly, and the abstract: 2 Examples from the Masters
In the first article in this pair, I proposed the hypothesis that all representational paintings appear chaotic, even abstract if you must, if you zoom into them closely enough. But as you zoom out you...
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The Decameron: Index to stories and the finest paintings
Over the last couple of months, I have looked at those stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron which have been depicted in paintings. Although I haven’t searched out all the many cassone on which such scenes...
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Carl Larsson: 1 Finding the idyllic family
Next week I will be commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the death of one of the twentieth century’s most popular artists, the Swedish painter Carl Larsson (1853-1919). From 1895 onwards,...
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Painting Goethe’s Faust: 2 A pact with the devil
Faust and his student Wagner had been walking out in the Spring sunshine on Easter Day when they came across a large black dog, which followed them back into Faust’s study. Once there, Faust tries to...
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Painting Reality: 7 Decline
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Naturalist painting fell from favour. By the opening years of the new century, it was all but dead, and the few remaining Naturalists were shunned and scorned...
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Teacher of John Singer Sargent, Edvard Munch, and more: Léon Bonnat
Look through the biographies of the great nineteenth century French painters, often those from the USA and other nations, and you’ll see familiar names appearing as their teachers. These include Léon...
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The devil you know – in paintings 1
Many if not all religions are based on the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and in many cases these have become personified in terms of saints or angels, and devils. One of the puzzling aspects...
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The devil you know – in paintings 2
After Hieronymus Bosch, the artist who has developed the theme of devils more than any other was the visionary William Blake, who was influenced by Henry Fuseli. William Blake (1757–1827), Satan...
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Painting Goethe’s Faust: 3 Auerbach’s Tavern and lust
His pact made with Mephistopheles, Faust flies in company with the devil to Auerbach’s Tavern in Leipzig. Surprisingly, Auerbach’s Tavern was and is a real location, one of the oldest bars in the...
View ArticleOnline Cézanne catalogue raisonné now completed
The last few years have seen a surge in the development of online catalogues raisonnés, in which the complete works of an artist are meticulously documented. Over the last five years or so, Walter...
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