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Painting Within Tent: Philip Georg von Reck in Georgia
Many of the early accounts and painted records we have of the New World of the Americas were made not by explorers as such, but by its first settlers. Among them was a baron of Hanover in Germany,...
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Rebirth: Changing to oils
Slow-drying oil paint was an essential foundation for the increasingly realist painting of the Renaissance. Although many Renaissance masterpieces used traditional egg tempera, its rapid drying...
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The gold-digger who painted Australia: 2 From the sublime to the distressed
By the early 1860s, the former gold prospector Eugene von Guérard (1811-1901) was making quite a name for himself and his highly detailed landscape paintings of Australia. He started to change...
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Gloves in paintings: 1 Meaning
In figurative paintings, there are three parts of the body which are usually unconcealed: the eyes, other parts of the face, and the hands. Look at hundreds or thousands of figures in paintings, and...
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Gloves in paintings: 2 Fashion
In the first of these two articles looking at gloves and handwear in paintings, I showed examples in which they had particular significance in the reading of that painting, from grey mittens worn in...
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The Last History Painter: In memoriam Jean-Paul Laurens 1
Jean-Paul Laurens (1838–1921) was one of the last traditional history painters in Europe, alongside the likes of Gérôme and Rochegrosse. Like them, he continued to paint large canvases in strict Salon...
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The Last History Painter: In memoriam Jean-Paul Laurens 2
A hundred years ago today, 23 March 1921, the last traditional history painter in Europe, Jean-Paul Laurens, died. In the first article of these two commemorating his death, I showed a selection of his...
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Don Quixote: 2 Those books are to be burnt
In the previous episode, having decided in his madness to become a knight, Don Quixote had left his home on his first sally. Realising that he hadn’t been dubbed a knight yet, he found an inn at sunset...
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Painting Within Tent: The Prince in Brazil
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867) had a lot going for him. Born into a noble family who ruled lands on the bank of the River Rhine in Germany, he had an excellent education. In the course...
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Rebirth: How patrons shaped the Renaissance
Another reason that Gothic paintings may seem monotonous to the modern eye is that they have a single dominant genre: religious. No realism was necessary, because everyone knew the story, and its...
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A history of history painting after 1800: to 1869
There are two types of history painting: the term can be applied to historia, which basically means any painting telling a story, or in a much narrower sense to paintings of historical events, which...
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A history of history painting after 1800: 1870 on
In the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, history painting – in its narrow sense of the depiction of historical events – had gone from strength to strength, innovating from David to Manet....
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God of the Week: A guide and contents
There are always some more gods, but this article draws a close to my series of articles looking at different deities in paintings. In this and next week’s articles I provide a succinct summary and...
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Don Quixote 3: Windmills
In the previous episode, Don Quixote had tried ineffectively to stop a youth being beaten, and picked a fight with a party of merchants from Toledo. Just as he was charging one of them, his horse...
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Painting Within Tent: Sydney Parkinson’s posthumous masterpieces
You’ll undoubtedly have heard of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in HMS Endeavour from 1768 to 1771. If you’re botanically inclined, you’re also likely to be aware of the magnificent...
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The bicentenary of Rhys Terfel Talog
Today I celebrate the bicentenary of an artist who remains almost completely unknown, but is now thought to have played a major role in the development of both Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. He’s...
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Rhys Terfel Talog: the April Fool
I am, of course, feeling a little sheepish today about yesterday’s article, giving an account of a recently rediscovered Welsh artist named Rhys Terfel Talog. It was completely and utterly false, a...
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The Passion Complete: Telling the whole story 1
To mark and celebrate Easter, this year I’m focussing on paintings which attempt to give a complete account of the Gospel narratives of the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. These are relatively...
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The Passion Complete: Telling the whole story 2
In the first of these two articles looking at complete accounts of the Gospel narratives of the Passion, I showed two early examples of how they were told in individual cells or paintings within a...
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Goddess of the Week: A guide and contents
This article draws a close to my series of articles looking at different deities in paintings. Here I provide a succinct summary and links to individual articles in the series. Goddesses are listed by...
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