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Is there a Willow? Paintings of Ophelia to 1889
The great majority of narrative paintings refer to a well-known story, which the viewer is expected to recognise and recall when they try to read the painting. This is because stories refer to at least...
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Is there a Willow? Paintings of Ophelia from 1890
In the first of this pair of articles looking at paintings of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, I showed works from Benjamin West’s in the late eighteenth century, through the most famous...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 10 An overview of Purgatory
Before Dante takes us on from Purgatory to Paradise, I’d like to take a brief overview of the last nine articles in which he has taken us through Purgatory, looking at some of its finest paintings....
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Work in Progress: van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece
By the early fifteenth century, painting in oils was already technically mature in the northern Renaissance. The first truly great masterpiece to use pure oil technique, and still one of the most...
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The first Italian Master in oil: Antonello da Messina 3
By September 1476, the pioneering Italian oil painter Antonello da Messina (c 1430–1479) had returned from Venice to his home city of Messina on the island of Sicily. Information about his whereabouts...
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Visual Riddles: Beginnings 1850-60
For many centuries if not a couple of millenia, narrative painting relied on depicting stories which the viewer already knew. Because painting a single synchronous image can only show one moment in...
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Victor Hugo, the unknown painter
Did you know that Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the great French writer of the nineteenth century and author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was also an artist? He drew and painted not...
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Soul in Flight: paintings of butterflies to 1860
Through the summer in the temperate and higher latitudes, butterflies are commonplace in the country, in some places forming swirling clouds of paper-thin wings. Although a great many paintings feature...
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Soul in Flight: paintings of butterflies after 1860
In the first of these two articles looking at paintings of butterflies, I showed some examples spanning around 1435 to almost 1860. This article concludes by looking at paintings of the late nineteenth...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 1 The moon and broken vows
The least-known of the three books which make up Dante’s Divine Comedy, to his contemporary readers Paradise was its most important. Having given gruesome detail of what would await them in Inferno,...
View ArticleHow to get news on Apple’s latest updates, and updates to my apps
Following popular demand, I have added a system which automatically checks for updates when you open many of my free apps. This apparently works satisfactorily, judging by the lack of complaints about...
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Work in Progress: Pierre Bonnard’s Coffee and The Bowl of Milk
At first sight, twentieth century oil paintings like those of Pierre Bonnard seem lightweight and technically simple compared with the carefully-crafted paintings of the preceding centuries. They look...
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Visual Riddles: Across continents
In the first article in this series, I looked at some of the first major narrative paintings to appear in the middle of the nineteenth century which depicted unresolved stories. Although most of those...
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Pure Landscapes: Camille Pissarro, to 1870
There were two ‘pure’ landscape painters among the core of the French Impressionists: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) who seldom painted in other genres, and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899) who almost never...
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Pure Landscapes: Alfred Sisley to 1870
Yesterday I looked at the start of Camille Pissarro’s career with a selection of his paintings prior to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Today I turn to look at Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), who was nine...
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Footnote: Feet and footwear in paintings 1
Everyone looks at faces in paintings, and we seldom look at the feet at the other end of the body. Today and tomorrow I’m going to show a selection of paintings in which reading the feet is valuable...
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Footnote: Feet and footwear in paintings 2
In the first of this pair of articles looking at feet and footwear in paintings, I showed some historical and mythical works which rely on feet in telling their story. To conclude, this article...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 2 Fame and love
From their visit to the shell of Paradise in the heavens which contains the moon, Dante and Beatrice ascend rapidly to the next shell containing the planet Mercury, where they meet the spirits of those...
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Work in Progress: Lucas Cranach’s Martyrdom of St Catherine
Many superb paintings from both the northern and southern Renaissance were the product of months of planning and preparation, and the collaborative effort of the master and many other highly-skilled...
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Visual Riddles: Fame
By 1873, a number of significant artists had painted narrative works which didn’t resolve. They were by no means confined to Britain, but included some in Germany, France, and the USA. These coincided...
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