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....
This painting is one of the first representations of urban proletariat. Whereas peasants (Gleaners by Millet) or country workers (Stone Breakers by Courbet) had often been shown, city workers had seldom been painted. Unlike Courbet or Millet, Caillebotte does not incorporate any social, moralising or political message in his...
From the moment of his arrival in Arles, on 8 February 1888, Van Gogh was constantly preoccupied with the representation of “night effects”. In April 1888, he wrote to his brother Theo: “I need a starry night with cypresses or maybe above a field of ripe wheat.” In June, he confided to the painter Emile Bernard: “But...
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...
The enormous Studio is without doubt Courbet’s most mysterious composition. However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted”, he declared, “on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers. On the left is the other world of...
This painting is doubtless Renoir’s most important work of the mid 1870’s and was shown at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Though some of his friends appear in the picture, Renoir’s main aim was to convey the vivacious and joyful atmosphere of this popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre. The study of the moving...
This impressionist portrait of the artist in an apocalyptic Germany of 1946 is filled with sadness, anger, bewilderment and fear. The devastation to life, culture and environment brought by the Nazis left everything Huther saw in tatters. Probably painted earlier, and only released after the Nazi’s were out of power for fear...
Bernard Frize is a French painter who works in a variety of materials and utilizes a multitude of techniques. As an artist he explores the bare minimal essence of painting, devoid of conception and aesthetic, instead focusing on an industrial approach to making art. His work is highly process-oriented, often requiring...
This painting is part of the Regency Girls series. For this series Paul looks back at artists such as Thomas Gainsborough and tries to create a different take on classical pieces. Paul uses his signature brush marks and rich palette to give these traditional pieces a modern edge....
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)....
"To a greater degree than any earlier painter, Stubbs produced genuinely individual portraits of specific horses, paying intimate attention to details of their form. Minute blemishes, veins, and the muscles flexing just below the surface of the skin are all visible and reproduced with great care and realism. Whistlejacket had...