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Rebirth: The rise of narrative painting
From the dawn of painting, humans have used images to tell stories. This article shows how the Renaissance in Florence and Italy took narrative painting to new levels of sophistication, as well as...
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Don Quixote 7: Armies of sheep and spectres of the night
In the previous episode, Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante, and Sancho Panza had been left battered and bruised after being beaten by muleteers. They made their way to an inn, which the knight believed...
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Painting Within Tent: Marianne North’s plants of the world 1
Few of the explorers and travellers that I have covered in this series have attracted the attention which their paintings deserve, so it’s refreshing to come across one who has: Marianne North...
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Painting Within Tent: Marianne North’s plants of the world 2
Following her visit to south-east Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago, the prolific traveller and botanical artist Marianne North (1830-1890) returned to Britain through the Indian Ocean, where she...
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Why paint a still life? 1 Warming up
The lowest-ranked of all the genres, still life paintings are also one of the most common. Few painters haven’t, at some time in their career, painted at least one still life. In the coming weeks, I’m...
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Why paint a still life? 2 Sales
In the first of these three articles looking at still life paintings by artists better-known for other genres, I looked at those of William Merritt Chase. In his early career, his still life paintings...
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Why paint a still life? 3 Therapy
In the two previous articles, I looked at the still life paintings of William Merritt Chase, who transformed them into performance art, and the wonderful floral still lifes that financed the career of...
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Rebirth: Composition
In the paintings of the Middle Ages, much was formulaic, including composition. Most were arrangements rather than compositions, and the demands made by narrative were also limited. As more...
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Don Quixote 8: The cloth mill and Mambrino’s helmet
In the previous episode, Don Quixote mistook driven flocks of sheep as armies about to join in battle. When he killed those sheep with his lance he was injured by the retaliating drovers, who knocked...
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Painting Within Tent: Thomas Baines, Artist and Storekeeper 1
When he celebrated his twenty-first birthday in 1841, few of those who knew Thomas Baines (1820–1875) in his native King’s Lynn in Norfolk, England, could have guessed where life would take him. He’d...
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Painting Within Tent: Thomas Baines, Artist and Storekeeper 2
In the first article about Thomas Baines’ (1820–1875) paintings of expeditions in Australia and Africa, I left with some of the lithographs made from his paintings around Victoria Falls, published when...
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Still Life History: 1 Birth of a new genre
Just over four centuries ago, a new genre in painting was born: still life. Almost immediately ranked the least significant of the genres, even below landscapes, it has since proved one of the most...
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Eating al fresco: paintings of outdoor meals 1
It’s now more than a year since we last had a meal out and ate it indoors. For much of that time (or so it seems), we’ve been in lockdown anyway. But when restrictions were eased for the latter half of...
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Eating al fresco: paintings of outdoor meals 2
In the first course yesterday, I showed some paintings of meals taken outdoors. For today’s dessert, I start with one of those memorable occasions that we hope never happens. Léon Frédéric (1856–1940),...
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Rebirth: Manuals and learning
One of the most important contributors to the Renaissance and its art was a German inventor who started transforming the distribution of knowledge throughout Europe: Johannes Gutenberg (c 1400-1468),...
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Don Quixote 9: The chain gang and the dead mule
In the previous episode, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza spent the night building their courage to investigate fearsome noises which turned out to be a waterfall and cloth mill. As they came away from...
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Painting Within Tent: Maria Sibylla Merian’s metamorphoses 1
This week’s expeditionary painter is one of the most remarkable in art history. Not only was Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) a fine artist, as you will see, but she was a leading entomologist who...
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Painting Within Tent: Maria Sibylla Merian’s metamorphoses 2
In the first article about Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), I left her sailing to Suriname in South America at the age of fifty-two, with her daughter and a mission to paint the insects of the Dutch...
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Still Life History: 2 Clara Peeters the pioneer
Before 1610, still life paintings were unusual, and artists who specialised in them were exceedingly rare. After 1620, they were all the rage, particularly in the ‘Low Countries’, modern Belgium and...
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So to bed: paintings of beds 1
Most of us spend at least a third of our lives in bed, where we’re likely to have been conceived, may well have been born, lived our childhood dreams, grew up, shared with lovers, read books, snored,...
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