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Amedeo Modigliani: 1 1907-1914
A century ago this month, on 24 January 1920, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) died of tuberculous meningitis, at the time a fearsome and untreatable consequence of tuberculosis. He was only thirty-five...
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Orlando Furioso: Treachery, reunion, and madness
In the last episode of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, just before Christmas, we left the woman knight Marfisa and her colleagues, who had just escaped the fearsome tribe of women who had held them captive,...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1842-55
The most significant movement in British painting history in the nineteenth century was the Pre-Raphaelite, but few of the most important British painters of that century were members of the...
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Carlos Schwabe: 1 Flowers of Evil and the Rosicrucian
Many of those most strongly associated with Symbolism seem now to have been long since forgotten, artists like Carlos Schwabe, also spelt Carloz, (1866–1926), whose work I’m going to look at in this...
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Carlos Schwabe: 2 Artist of the Soul
In the first article looking at the paintings of Carlos Schwabe (1866–1926), I showed examples up to about 1895-96, ending with four taken from the illustrated edition of Baudelaire’s poems Les Fleurs...
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Martyrs’ Mountain: Paintings of Montmartre 1
If you’ve ever been to Paris, I’m sure that you’ll have visited its eighteenth arondissement, Montmartre: the hill that rises out of densely-packed streets, capped by the huge domed edifice of the...
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Martyrs’ Mountain: Paintings of Montmartre 2
By the late 1880s, as shown in the first of these two articles, the hill of Montmartre on the edge of the city of Paris was being transformed with the construction of the huge domed edifice of the...
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Amedeo Modigliani: 2 1915-1916
Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) largely abandoned sculpture and returned to painting portraits. He had tried to enlist in the army, but was declared unfit...
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Orlando Furioso: Punishment, and an imposter caught out
Orlando has discovered that his beloved Angelica – who disliked him intensely – had married Medoro, and is driven to madness as a result. He tore his armour and clothes off, abandoned his precious...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1855-60
By the mid-1850s, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) must have been getting increasingly frustrated. He’d tried several different genres and themes, from traditional history painting, literary narratives,...
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Desert, skulls and steelworks: Paintings of Eugen Bracht 1
In the late nineteenth century, the German landscape painter Eugen Bracht (1842–1921) was as well known as Arnold Böcklin, and Bracht’s Symbolist masterpiece was so popular that he painted at least six...
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Desert, skulls and steelworks: Paintings of Eugen Bracht 2
In 1889, the German landscape artist Eugen Bracht (1842–1921) had painted a celebrated Symbolist masterpiece in his Shore of Oblivion, which the Kaiser himself rated so highly that he had his copy hung...
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Lusty Old Goats: Satyrs in paintings
This weekend I’m looking at the bad boys and girls of mythology – satyrs and sirens. As everyone who has seen paintings of them knows, satyrs sneak up on sleeping nymphs and rape/seduce/abduct them,...
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Delightfully Deadly: Sirens in paintings
In the first article of this pair looking at bad boys and girls in mythological paintings, I showed a few of the many paintings of satyrs from their early popularity in the Renaissance onwards. Today I...
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Amedeo Modigliani: 3 1917-1919
In 1916, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) had been commissioned by his dealer Zborowski to paint a series of nudes. The artist moved into his dealer’s apartment in Montparnasse, where he painted models...
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Orlando Furioso: Discord among the Saracens
After Ruggiero had rescued Bradamante’s brother Ricciardetto from being burned at the stake, and heard his account of how he came so close to death by posing as his sister, the two knights rode to...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1861-90
In 1861, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) became a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and from then until that firm’s dissolution in 1874, he appears to have been mainly concerned...
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Profound Tranquility: the paintings of Alphonse Osbert
My Symbolist painter of the week is Alphonse Osbert (1857–1939), who in his day was in the avant garde, and painted some of the best exanples of pure Symbolist art from the height of the movement....
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In Memoriam Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne
A century ago today, on 24 January 1920, Amedeo Modigliani died in hospital in Paris from tuberculous meningitis. Just two days later, his partner Jeanne Hébuterne threw herself from a fifth floor...
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Painting in the Rain 1: 1587-1890
It’s that time of year, with ‘February Fill-Dyke’ fast approaching, that we’re getting used to rain. And more rain. Drizzle, showers, downpours, mizzle, stair-rods – over the winter we get the lot,...
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