Originally this piece was called “Love and Pain”. It was only later that it picked up the name “Vampire” and interpretation of a man locked in a vampire’s embrace. Munch maintained it was nothing more than a woman kissing a man on the neck....
Part of a series of 10 portraits, a commissioned series for the psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget. The Salpêtrière asylum in Paris was like other institutions at the time, nowhere near the level of insight and care provided by modern mental health services. A history of mental illness in the artist’s own family likely made...
‘Look at the detail in this painting: the upholstery so carefully and sensitively realised; the window strap that is clearly made of leather and not some artificial material; the window fittings and the striped draught strips. The interior of the railway compartment is so beautifully drawn, with such clarity, that it is not...
Dominique Lang (1874-1919) was born in 1874 (the year of the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris) and is considered today to be Luxembourg’s most important Impressionist painter....
One of the most exciting modern artists I have stumbled across since starting these essays. Obi is a Nigerian artist with impressionist and expressionist tendencies with beautiful execution and style. Here we see she also plays with framing and separation, the photographer’s left hand on a camera is separate from the main...
Henri Matisse often painted the same subject in versions that range from relatively realistic to more abstract or schematic. At times the transition from realism to abstraction could be enacted in a single canvas, as is the case with The Italian Woman, the first of many portraits Matisse painted of a professional Italian model...
Though a leading voice in the Abstract Expressionist movement and one of their rare women artists to achieve critical and financial success in her lifetime, Joan Mitchell painted in a manner subtly distinct from her Abstract Expressionist peers. Hers was an idiosyncratic style defined by a varied use of color and with a...
This brilliant and free evocation of an unknown young woman in evening dress is at the antipodes of the worldly or official portrait practiced by the painters accustomed to the Salon....
When he painted The Saint-Lazare Station, Monet had just left Argenteuil to settle in Paris. After several years of painting in the countryside, he turned to urban landscapes. At a time when the critics Duranty and Zola exhorted artists to paint their own times, Monet tried to diversify his sources of inspiration and longed to...
Even though each panel is smaller than two pieces of paper, one above the other (22.25 x 7.75), the level of detail is incredible - as is the source image (if you have the time to navigate there and zoom in, prepare for amazement)....
Darker than most of Matisse’s works - usually vibrant with color and movement. The piece was affected by a depression because he couldn’t support his family. His wife had to get a job. Like many painters, Matisse would only find success posthumously....