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A History of Rome in Paintings: Overview and Contents
According to legend, the ultimate founder of Rome was the Trojan Aeneas, who fled that city when it was sacked and destroyed by the Greeks. He settled in central Italy, where he founded the city of...
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The Faerie Queene 24: Disdain, cannibals and bucolic love
In the last episode, Prince Arthur, accompanied by the woodsman, visited Sir Turpine’s castle, where they were denied hospitality. Arthur disposed of Turpine’s armed guard, and chased the knight into...
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From world view to panorama: 2 Popular panoramas
In the first of these two articles looking at landscape paintings of ‘big’ views, I showed early examples of ‘World Views’ and how panoramas became popular in the eighteenth century. Although they had...
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Goddess of the Week: Chloris (Flora), transformation
She originally wasn’t even a goddess, just a nymph, but somehow Chloris (Greek Χλωρίς) has not only become one of the more complex of the classical deities, but the subject of at least two of the most...
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Goddess of the Week: Chloris (Flora), Spring
With two major paintings showing complex if not enigmatic accounts of Chloris/Flora, she has become one of the most painted classical deities, out of all proportion to her tiny role in the pantheon,...
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The Faerie Queene 25: Pastorella captured and the Beast subdued
In the last episode, Sir Calidore had taken a break from his pursuit of the Blatant Beast, and fell in love with a beautiful shepherdess, Pastorella. Unfortunately, Coridon, a young shepherd, whose...
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In Memoriam William Blake Richmond, an Aesthetic
One hundred years ago today, on 11 February 1921, the eminent British artist William Blake Richmond (1842–1921) died in London. Unless you’ve seen his portraits of Pre-Raphaelites and other prominent...
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Painting Within Tent: Naval surgeon and artist, John Linton Palmer
Life as a ship’s surgeon on board a warship normally afforded plenty of time and opportunity for activities such as painting and drawing. During the nineteenth century, in particular, this enabled some...
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Full Steam Ahead: 1 Paintings of the steam revolution
If there’s one thing that characterises the nineteenth century around the world, it’s steam power. Unlike many other technological advances, its impact on life was so pervasive that the revolution...
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Full Steam Ahead: 2 Part of the revolution in art
JMW Turner wasn’t by any means the first painter to inspire awe with views of new technologies like steam power. In that, he was following paintings of the industrial revolution by the likes of Joseph...
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Full Steam Ahead: 3 Everyday life
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, steam power had become so essential to modern life that it was assimilated into the everyday. Paul Cézanne’s family estate in Aix-en-Provence was...
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Goddess of the Week: Cybele (Magna Mater), Mother of the Gods
You hear precious little about the goddess Cybele (Greek Κυβέλη) because, until 205 BCE, she was regarded by both Greeks and Romans as an exotic import from Phrygia, where she had attracted a national...
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The Faerie Queene 26: Of Mutability
The last episode completed The Legend of Sir Calidore, or Of Courtesy, so reaching the end of the sixth book of The Faerie Queene. That is the last book which was published in 1596. A decade after...
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Painting Within Tent: John Turnbull Thomson painted all he surveyed
Surveyors and civil engineers were often explorers. Take James Nicolson who first estimated that Mount Everest was around 9,200 metres (30,000 feet) high, and would have been more precise had he not...
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Rebirth: 1 Was there art before the Renaissance?
Like all the arts, painting undergoes constant change. But there are two periods in particular which I find the most fascinating: the Renaissance, and the nineteenth century. In this new series of...
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Paintings of the Four Elements: 1 to 1600
As every schoolchild knows, in the ancient world there were four elements: earth, air, water and fire. It isn’t of course anywhere near as simple as that, with proto-sciences claiming four, five, or...
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In Memoriam: George Dunlop Leslie, one of the St John’s Wood Clique
At the start of the nineteenth century, Saint John’s Wood, some two and a half miles to the north-west of central London, was still quite rural. By the end of the century, it had grown villas, becoming...
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Paintings of the Four Elements: 2 after 1600
In the first of these two articles showing paintings of the four elements, I traced the theme from the wonderfully idiosyncratic images of Giuseppe Arcimboldo to the end of the sixteenth century. I’m...
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Goddess of the Week: Iris, the rainbow
Hermes (Mercury) wasn’t the only messenger of the gods. In that task he was aided by the personification of the rainbow, Iris (Greek Ἶρις), who was also known to the Romans under the same name. One of...
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The Faerie Queene: Contents and summary of books 1-3
This is the first of two articles which provide a succinct summary of the plot of Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene. This contains a selection of the finest paintings of its scenes, and...
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