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Painting the Distant Past: Charlemagne 1
Next week, I start a new narrative series telling the story of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in paintings. I’ll be providing a full introduction to this major work of European literature, one of its...
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Painting the Distant Past: Charlemagne 2
In yesterday’s article, I told of Charlemagne’s early rise to power, and his military successes in southern Europe. He found the going rather harder in the north. Charles’ series of campaigns against...
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Visual Riddles: Summary and contents
Over the last couple of months, I have been tracing the history of paintings which show enigmatic stories, narrative which isn’t resolved, what are often referred to as problem pictures. This article...
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Orlando Furioso: Introduction
Until around 150 years ago, one of the most widely read books in Europe was an epic poem by the Italian Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso – literally translated as Raging Roland/Orlando. If you enjoy...
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Orlando Furioso: Lovers and hippogriffs
Ariosto continues the story of Orlando Furioso from the end of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando in Love, but it stands alone. In that earlier epic, Angelica, beautiful daughter of the king of Cathay,...
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Pure Landscapes: Camille Pissarro, 1900-03
Pissarro’s eye problems were demanding more medical attention, but as he entered the twentieth century, there seemed no holding back his painting. His series of cityscapes made from behind the windows...
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Pure Landscapes: Pissarro and Sisley
Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley had much in common, yet were also very different. They were the two ‘purest’ landscape painters of the core French Impressionists, and over the last few weeks I have,...
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Symbols in painting before Symbolism 1400-1800
From the dawn of painting, humans have tried expressing in visual form abstractions which are not visual, using symbols. During the Middle Ages, many paintings were constructed more of symbols than...
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Symbols in painting before Symbolism 1800-1860
In the first article of this pair, I introduced the use of symbols in visual art, and illustrated that with some examples from the Renaissance to the start of the nineteenth century. The principles of...
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Work in Progress: Rembrandt’s Bathsheba
One of the great aspirations of generations of painters has been to paint like the Old Masters, and in many cases that means like Rembrandt. At the time that he painted them, his late works were often...
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Orlando Furioso: Sorcery and Scotland
At the end of the second canto of Ariosto’s Orland Furioso, Pinabello and Bradamante have left in their quest for Ruggiero, the knight who loves the latter, who has been taken prisoner in a remote...
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Auguste Renoir 1: 1860-67
On the third of December, it will be exactly a century since the death of one of the core French Impressionists, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). During the twentieth century, Renoir’s art faded into...
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The Symbolist Landscape: Giovanni Segantini 1
One of the most famous, and most collected, Symbolists of the end of the nineteenth century was Giovanni Segantini (1858–1899), who has something of a unique place in the history of painting. From...
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The Symbolist Landscape: Giovanni Segantini 2
In the first article about the Symbolist painting of Giovanni Segantini (1858–1899), I showed a selection of his paintings up to his first two overtly Symbolist works. In the early 1890s, his...
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Autumn Trees 1
Now is the time for all landscape artists to head for the woods and forests, in the northern hemisphere at least: autumn/fall is upon us, and the leaves are turning, setting those trees alight with...
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Autumn Trees 2
In the first article of this pair, I showed a selection of some of the finest paintings of autumn trees from the middle of the nineteenth century up to 1894. Here I continue until around 1918. Enjoy...
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Work in Progress: Vermeer’s Milkmaid
The paintings of Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) were quickly forgotten after his death, and his art fell into obscurity. Since their rediscovery from 1860, they have become increasingly popular,...
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Orlando Furioso: More deception and the talking myrtle
At the end of the fourth canto, Rinaldo was in Scotland, travelling through a wood with an esquire on a knightly adventure to rescue the King of Scotland’s daughter, who has wrongly been sentenced to...
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Auguste Renoir 2: 1868-75
The winter of 1867-68 was so bitterly cold that the River Seine in Paris was frozen over for eleven days in succession. Renoir and Bazille moved out of their shared studio at the end of 1867, and moved...
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The Fading Dreams of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes 1
In my quest to gain better understanding of Symbolism in painting in the late nineteenth century, today and tomorrow I’m going to look at a selection of paintings by an artist who is often considered...
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