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Orlando Furioso: Resuscitation and Angelica’s passion
The story of Angelica and Medoro is one of the most painted sections of ‘Orlando Furioso’. To allow for a reasonable selection of its paintings, I have therefore divided this account into two articles....
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Orlando Furioso: Carving their names on trees
Angelica came across the moribund body of Medoro, a young Saracen soldier, in a wood outside the besieged city of Paris. With the help of a passing shepherd, she stopped the bleeding and took the...
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The gentle surrealism of Paul Nash 1 Unit One
In many ways, the Surrealist movement of the early twentieth century can be seen as a development of Symbolism. Both were primarily driven by the literary world – the first Symbolist Manifesto didn’t...
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The gentle surrealism of Paul Nash 2 International Surrealist Exhibition
In the first of these two articles about the Surrealist paintings of Paul Nash, and his role in the movement in Britain, I looked at his work prior to 1936, and at his role in the formation of Unit...
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Myrrh in paintings: 1 Adonis born from a tree
One of the more opaque traditions of Christmas is the presentation of gifts by three eastern monarchs, supposedly the basis for all that is so commercial about the modern secular ‘feast’. Those three...
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Myrrh in paintings: 2 Adoration and penitence
In my first article about the curious painted history of myrrh, I concentrated on accounts of the classical myth in which the incestuous Myrrha was transformed into a myrrh tree before giving birth to...
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Paintings of 1919: War and Work
In 1919, the Great War continued to dominate much of art, with those painters who had been war artists completing major works for visual memorials to the millions who had died, and others recording the...
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Orlando Furioso: Out of the storm into captivity
Angelica had come across the moribund body of Medoro, stopped the bleeding from his wound, nursed him back to health, and fallen deeply in love with him. They married whilst they were still living...
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Novel Nativities old and modern
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a Nativity, or my selection of eleven for this year. Probably the most popular motif in European painting, you could look at eleven every day of the year and still not...
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Paintings of the flight to Egypt
Normally the last event in the European Nativity cycle is the flight to Egypt, as described in the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 2 verses 13-23. Once the three Magi had left Bethlehem to return to their...
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Paintings of 1919: Figures and Flowers
My final selection of paintings from 1919 is an eclectic mixture of figurative works, including a couple of self-portraits, and floral still lifes. As with the previous articles in this series, they...
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Foundling: Paintings of Moses in the bulrushes
There are a few themes which even the boldest of narrative painters has avoided committing to canvas. One which is particularly topical is the abandonment of babies, something mothers have felt...
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Foundling: Paintings of Romulus and Remus
In the first article of this pair about abandoned babies, I looked at the most popular story of a ‘foundling’, that of Moses. Although extensively painted from late classical times, none of those...
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The best of 2019’s paintings and articles 1
During the last year, I have researched, written and published here over 350 articles about art and paintings. In today’s and tomorrow’s articles, I’m going to take a look back at those and show some...
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The best of 2019’s paintings and articles 2
This article concludes my look back at some of my favourite paintings featured in articles published here over the last year. Having worked through Goethe’s powerful play Faust, I moved on to the...
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Next year in paintings: Raphael, Anders Zorn, Modigliani and more
Happy New Year! This year has relatively few significant anniversaries of the births or deaths of major painters, but some of them should be major events. Here’s a preview of those whom I intend...
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Far from home: Paintings of Frances Hodgkins 1
Travelling by sailing ship from New Zealand to Britain in the late nineteenth century typically took over three months, much of which was spent close to the ice of the Antarctic and rounding the...
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Far from home: Paintings of Frances Hodgkins 2
In the first of these two articles about the life and work of the New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), I showed examples of her paintings up to 1932, a period in which she struggled and...
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Paintings for our time: The Ship of Fools
Themes and titles of paintings are often opaque, leaving the viewer wondering how to read an image. This weekend I’m going to help you decode two potentially puzzling groups of paintings: today I...
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Paintings for our time: Death and the Maiden
In yesterday’s article, I looked at the origin of an unusual motif in painting, the Ship of Fools. As a theme in visual art, Death and the Maiden is considerably more common, but concerns a peculiar...
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