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Paintings of 1920: Landscapes 2
Looking through the paintings that I have for 1920, I’m surprised how many are landscapes, and with their rich variety and quality. It was perhaps a fortuitous year: the first after the Great War and...
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Nativity: Invention
This Christmas, I’m looking at that most traditional of Christian religious paintings, the Nativity, and how it has developed. Today I show some examples of its early progression from the late Middle...
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Nativity: Innovation
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of paintings of the Nativity have been made since the Renaissance, the majority of which have followed the conventions established during the late Middle Ages and...
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Christmas trees in paintings
Christmas traditions from Western societies have spread across the world. Visit Tokyo during its thoroughly secular and commercial version of the feast and you’ll see similar sights to those in Berlin,...
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Goddesses of the Week: Horai (Horae), the Seasons or Hours
To the crisp post-Enlightenment mind which abhors uncertainty, the Horai (Greek Ὧραι), known to the Romans and more generally as the Horae, are impossible. Their name is literally translated as...
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Paintings of 1920: Landscapes 3
In this final look at a selection of paintings which were completed in or around 1920, I include more landscapes in more modern styles from around the world. My first landscape artist is something of a...
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The best of 2020’s paintings and articles 1
Despite everything that’s happened, over the last year I’ve been able to research, write and publish here over 350 articles about paintings and art. In today’s and tomorrow’s articles, I’m going to...
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The best of 2020’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. When I was trying to improve my own painting, I quickly learned that there...
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Next year in paintings: Ford Madox Brown, Antoine Watteau, Fernand Khnopff
Happy New Year! This year has no anniversaries of the births or deaths of major painters which compare with last year, but there’s a steady succession of those who are less well-known than they...
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Debut: 1 Can you identify the artists?
This first weekend of the New Year, I thought you might enjoy a little quiz. The idea is very simple: identify the artists who painted each of these ten works. In order to make this more of a...
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Debut: 2 The answers, who painted what
Yesterday, I showed you ten early paintings from famous artists of the nineteenth century, and asked you to identify who painted them. Here are the answers. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851),...
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God of the Week: Janus
From its earliest days, Rome assimilated different cultures and religions, well beyond those of Greek traditions. There was a particularly strong Etruscan influence, not that the Romans ever wanted to...
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A History of Rome in Paintings: 21 The Forum
Between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills in the city of Rome was a roughly rectangular open space known as the Forum Romanum. Here was the heart of city life: a meeting place, somewhere to do...
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The Faerie Queene 20: Artegall released and Duessa brought to trial
In the last episode, Sir Artegall lost his duel with the Amazon Queen Radigund, was taken into bondage by her, and forced to do women’s work like spinning while wearing women’s clothes. Although the...
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Painting within Tent: introduction to a new series
We all need a bit of escapism, and you can’t get more escapist than joining an expedition to a distant corner of the globe. I start this new year with a new series in which I’m going to look at the...
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The Californian Coast of Granville Redmond
When Granville Redmond (1871–1935) was a child, like so many in the nineteenth century, he caught scarlet fever, which left him profoundly deaf. The Redmond family then moved to San Jose, California,...
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Life is Short: 1 Brilliant painters killed by tuberculosis
One of the great tragedies in art is the toll of those who were brilliant when young, but who died far too early and were never able to realise their full potential. This weekend I look at two groups:...
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Life is Short: 2 Painters killed in pandemics
Yesterday, I looked at the terrible toll of promising young artists who died in their prime from tuberculosis and its complications, from Paulus Potter in 1654 to Amedeo Modigliani in 1920. Other...
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Goddesses of the Week: The Charites or Graces
The three Charites (Greek Χάριτες, pronounced kʰáritɛs, and plural of Charis Χάρις) are three sister goddesses associated with all the better aspects of human nature, including beauty, charm,...
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A History of Rome in Paintings: 22 The Colosseum
The dominant ruin of classical times which still towers over the city of Rome is its Colosseum. The largest amphitheatre in the ancient world, it wasn’t known as the Colosseum until after it had...
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