William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 3 The Inspection [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 3 The Inspection [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The third scene takes place in the room of a French doctor. The Viscount is seated with his child mistress beside him, apparently having contracted venereal disease, as indicated by the black spot on his neck, Hogarth's symbol for those taking the mercurial pills which were the only known treatment for this ailment. He holds towards the doctor a box of pills; other boxes on the chair and in his mistress's hand suggest he is seeking an alternative remedy. An older woman holds a clasp knife; she appears to be the young girl's mother.

The machines to the right, identified in the inscription on the open book, are for setting a broken shoulder, and drawing corks. A skeleton embraces a model in the cupboard behind the Viscount.

[Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 4 The Toilette [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 4 The Toilette [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

After the death of the old Earl the wife is now the Countess, with a coronet above her bed and over the dressing table, where she sits. She has also become a mother, and a child's teething coral hangs from her chair. The lawyer Silvertongue invites her to a masquerade like the one to which he points, depicted on the screen. A group of visitors on the left listen to an opera singer, possibly a castrato, accompanied by a flautist.

An African page on the right unpacks a collection of curiosities bought at auction, including a figure of Actaeon. The paintings on the right wall show 'Lot and his Daughters' and 'Jupiter and Io.' On the left wall is a portrait of the lawyer and 'Rape of Ganymede.'

[Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 90.8 cm]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode 2: The Tete a Tete [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 2: The Tete a Tete [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In this, the second in the series of paintings, the marriage of the Viscount and the merchant's daughter is quickly proving a disaster. The tired wife, who appears to have given a card party the previous evening, is at breakfast in the couple's expensive house which is now in disorder. The Viscount returns exhausted from a night spent away from home, probably at a brothel: the dog sniffs a lady's cap in his pocket. Their steward, carrying bills and a receipt, leaves the room to the left, his hand raised in despair at the disorder.

The decoration of the room again comments on the action. The picture over the mantlepiece shows Cupid among ruins. In front of it is a bust with a broken nose, symbolising impotence.

[Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode 1: The Marriage Settlement [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 1: The Marriage Settlement [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This was the first of Hogarth's satirical moralising series of engravings that took the upper echelons of society as its subject. The paintings were models from which the engravings would be made. The engravings reverse the compositions. 

The story starts in the mansion of the Earl Squander who is arranging to marry his son to the daughter of a wealthy but mean city merchant. It ends with the murder of the son and the suicide of the daughter. In the first scene the aged Earl (far right) is shown with his family tree and the crutches he needs because of his gout. The new house which he is having built is visible through the window. The merchant, who is plainly dressed, holds the marriage contract, while his daughter behind him listens to a young lawyer, Silvertongue. The Earl's son, the Viscount, admires his face in a mirror. Two dogs, chained together in the bottom left corner, perhaps symbolise the marriage.

Hogarth's details, especially the paintings on the walls, comment on the action. A grand portrait in the French manner on the rear wall confronts a Medusa head, denoting horror, on the side wall.

[Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm]

Isaak Brodsky - Lenin in Smoiny, 1917 [1930]

Isaak Brodsky - Lenin in Smoiny, 1917 [1930], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky (Sofiyevka, Ukraine, January 6, 1884 – Leningrad, August 14, 1939) was a Soviet painter whose work provided a blueprint for the art movement of socialist realism. He is known for his iconic portrayals of Lenin and idealised, carefully crafted paintings dedicated to the events of the Russian Civil War and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Lighting the Pipe [c.1895]

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Lighting the Pipe [c.1895], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Please click artist label for further information.

Jacques Emile Blanche - Fillette (Lucie Esnault au Pysche)

Jacques Emile Blanche - Fillette (Lucie Esnault au Pysche), originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jacques-Émile Blanche (February 1, 1861 – September 30, 1942) was a French painter born in Paris. He acquired a great reputation as a portrait painter; his art is derived from French and English sources, refined, sometimes super-elegant, but full of character.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Woman on the Beach [1887]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Woman on the Beach [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Please click artist label for further information.

[Oil on paper pasted on canvas, 75.3 x 74.5 cm]

Jacob Maris - A Young Woman Nursing a Baby [1868]

Jacob Maris - A Young Woman Nursing a Baby [1868], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The woman in this painting is said to be Maris's wife Catharina Hendrika Horn, whom he married in 1867. Their first child was born in April 1868 (and died in March 1869). This work was painted when Maris was living in Paris. The woman's right breast was originally uncovered and was painted over later, probably not by Maris. A pencil study for the picture, squared for transfer, was in the possession of the Maris family in about 1908.

Jacob Hendrick Maris (1837 – 1899) was born in The Hague, and was the elder brother of Matthijs and Willem Maris. He studied in The Hague and Antwerp. From 1866 to 1871 he was in Paris; then he settled in The Hague. He died in Carlsbad.

[Oil on mahogany, 29.1 x 22.8 cm]

Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Fighting Temeraire [1839]

Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Fighting Temeraire [1839], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The 98-gun ship Temeraire played a distinguished role in Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, after which she was known as the Fighting Temeraire. The ship remained in service until 1838 when she was decommissioned and towed from Sheerness to Rotherhithe to be broken up. The painting was thought to represent the decline of Britain's naval power. The Temeraire is shown travelling east, away from the sunset, even though Rotherhithe is west of Sheerness, but Turner's main concern was to evoke a sense of loss, rather than to give an exact recording of the event. The spectacularly colourful setting of the sun draws a parallel with the passing of the old warship. By contrast the new steam-powered tug is smaller and more prosaic.

Turner was in his sixties when he painted The Fighting Temeraire. It shows his mastery of painting techniques to suggest sea and sky. Paint laid on thickly is used to render the sun's rays striking the clouds. By contrast, the ship's rigging is meticulously painted.

[Oil on canvas, 90.7 x 121.6 cm]

Eduardo Chillida Belzunce - A Still Life from the Artist's Studio

Eduardo Chillida Belzunce - A Still Life from the Artist's Studio, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Eduardo Chillida Belzunce was born in San Sebastian, Spain on March 15, 1964. In 1985 Eduardo had a terrible motorbike accident that left him in a coma for a month and a half. Against all medical odds, Eduardo managed to make it out of this dark tunnel, recovered his speech, began to walk again and eventually, with great difficulty, managed to begin to lead a normal life again. Due to the paralysis he suffered in one half of his body he was obliged to learn to use his left hand to continue painting.

See: http://www.eduardochillidabelzunce.com/ingles/?Presentation

[Oil on canvas, 90 x 115.5 cm]

William H Johnson - A View Down Akersgate, Oslo [c.1935]

William H Johnson - A View Down Akersgate, Oslo [c.1935], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This view shows two imposing churches in the centre of Oslo: the copper-domed Trinity Church and Saint Olav’s Church in the background. Hints of blossoms evoke a change of season, and William H. Johnson (Florence, South Carolina, 1901 - Central Islip, New York, 1970) painted intense, expressionistic hues in the buildings and streets, perhaps to capture the emotional undercurrents of a grey, late-winter day.

[Oil on burlap, 64.2 x 79.4 cm]

Henry Scott Tuke - The Look Out

Henry Scott Tuke - The Look Out, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Henry Scott Tuke (June 12, 1858 – March 13, 1929), was a British visual artist; primarily a painter, but also a photographer. His most notable work was in the Impressionist style, and he is probably best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men. Although Tuke's paintings of nude youths undoubtedly appealed to his gay friends and art-buyers, they are never explicitly sexual. The models' genitals are almost never shown, they are almost never in physical contact with each other, and there is never any suggestion of overt sexuality. Most of the paintings have the nude models standing or crouching on the beach facing out to sea, so only the back view is displayed.

Gavino Crispo - They Will Not Understand [2009]

Gavino Crispo - They Will Not Understand [2009], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Gavino Crispo (born in Cicciano, Italy, 1952) currently lives and works in Latina, Italy.

[Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm]

Edgard Wiethase - Young Woman in the Rose Garden

Edgard Wiethase - Young Woman in the Rose Garden, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Edgard Wiethase (1881 – 1965) was a Realist painter and water colourist of landscapes, rural scenes, interiors, portraits, and still lifes. He received his artistic training at the Academy of Antwerp and the NHISKA under the tutorship of the famous animal painter Frans Van Leemputten. He was a member of the artistic group "Als Ik Kan" in 1903. Wiethase moved eventually to the outskirts of Brussels. His works have a certain stylistic connection with the technique used to paint frescos and his later works can be recognized by their particularly bright colours.

[Oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm]

Edward Hopper - Summer Interior [1909]

Edward Hopper - Summer Interior [1909], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Hopper made three trips to Paris from 1906 to 1910. Summer Interior gives an idea of what he was capable of in those early years. Trying to guess the artist, you might think the painting was by Pierre Bonnard or Édouard Vuillard. There's a tactile quality missing from a lot of Hopper's later works, in the sheet pulled down from the bed and the woman's toes just touching the thickly painted shaft of light, like another sheet, on the green floor. The abstract yellow and reddish-brown stripes to the right are presumably a Venetian blind, called a jalousie in French. Some theme of sexual jealousy may be at work in this freeze frame from an unknown narrative.

[Oil on canvas, 61 x 73.7 cm]

Edouard Vuillard - The Earthenware Pot [1895]

Edouard Vuillard - The Earthenware Pot [1895], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This richly decorative canvas is one of five paintings known collectively as 'The Album' and now dispersed. All depict flower-filled interiors in which women converse, read and sew. The avant-garde publisher Thadée Natanson commissioned the works for his Paris apartment.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 116 cm]

Diti Almog - Bedroom [2004]

Diti Almog - Bedroom [2004], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Diti Almog (born Haifa, 1960) is an Israeli artist. He studied from 1982 to 1986 at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem.

[Oil on panel, 61 x 70.5 cm]

Giampaolo Ghisetti - Dance

Giampaolo Ghisetti - Dance, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Giampaolo Ghisetti (born Venice, 1944) is an Italian painter and sculptor.

[Oil on canvas]

Everett Shinn - The White Ballet [1904]

Everett Shinn - The White Ballet [1904], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Everett Shinn (Woodstown, New Jersey, 1876 - New York City, 1953) and many of his contemporaries spent their early years as newspaper illustrators, learning, as he said, to "observe...and get the job done." For The White Ballet, he used his reportorial eye and the compositional devices of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec to capture what he called "the uptown life." Cropped views of the orchestra pit and the stage collapse the distance between the spectators and the show, and dramatic lighting puts the viewer in the thick of the action. At the turn of the twentieth century, theatres of all kinds thrived in America's cities, providing public arenas where the rich and the wage-earners alike could see and be seen. Shinn embraced the spectacle of urban life, and once said that although he often looked to "night courts, dives, docks and dance halls" for his subjects, the lives of the well-to-do and the "sweep of furs and swish of wild boas" provided his most exciting themes.

[Oil on canvas, 74.9 x 93.3 cm]

Jules Rene Herve - The Tuileries Garden, Paris

Jules Rene Herve - The Tuileries Garden, Paris, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jules Rene Herve (1887 – 1981) was born in Langres, in the eastern part of France. Due to the start of World War I, Herve was forced to put his artistic career on hold and joined the army. When the war ended, Herve continued his career as a full time artist, and in 1924 he received a traveling scholarship from the French government and as a result traveled all through Europe. Herve preferred to be away from other artists and remained out of the public eye.

Camille Pissarro - The Boulevard Montmartre at Night [1897]

Camille Pissarro - The Boulevard Montmartre at Night [1897], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Towards the end of his life Pissarro increasingly turned to the representation of town scenes in Paris, Rouen, Dieppe, Le Havre and London, mainly painted from the windows of hotels and apartments. In February 1897 he took a room in Paris at the Hôtel de Russie on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Drouot, and produced a series of paintings of the Boulevard Montmartre at different times of the day. Pissarro may have been influenced by the series of paintings on which Monet was engaged at this time, and by the earlier urban scenes of Manet. This painting is the only night scene from this series, and is a masterful rendition of the play of lights on dark and wet streets. Pissarro neither signed nor exhibited it during his lifetime.

[Oil on canvas, 53.3 x 64.8 cm]

Lamberto Melina - Humana Hera [2010]

Lamberto Melina - Humana Hera [2010], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Lamberto Melina (born Premosello, Italy, 1969) is an Italian artist currently living and working in Brescia, Italy.

[Oil on canvas, 140 x 70 cm]

Lamberto Melina - Humana XXII [2009]

Lamberto Melina - Humana XXII [2009], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

[Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm]

Alice Pike Barney - Woman and Peacock

Alice Pike Barney - Woman and Peacock, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alice Pike Barney (born Alice Pike, January 14, 1857 – 1931) was an American painter. She was active in Washington, D.C. and worked to make Washington into a centre of the arts. In 1911, at age 53, Barney married 23-year-old Christian Hemmick; their engagement resulted in worldwide press attention. They had divorced by 1920.

[Oil on canvas, 73.0 x 117.9 cm]

Romaine Brooks - Le Piano [1910]

Romaine Brooks - Le Piano [1910], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Please click artist label for information.

[Oil on canvas, 116.2 x 164.8 cm]

Cesar Boëtius van Everdingen - Young Woman Warming her Hands over a Brazier [c.1650]

Cesar Boëtius van Everdingen - Young Woman Warming her Hands over a Brazier [c.1650], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

A young woman is warming herself by a brazier, a pot containing glowing coals. Her dress forms a screen above the fire trapping and spreading the heat. She is clearly engrossed in what she is doing and her eyes are cast downwards. The painter, Caesar van Everdingen, probably did not intend a portrait of a particular person in this picture. In this work, painted around 1650, he has represented an idea: winter. The woman is a personification of winter. The artist has placed his monogram at the bottom, in the middle of the table's edge.

[Oil on canvas, 97 x 81 cm]

Jacob van Loo - Young Woman Going To Bed

Jacob van Loo - Young Woman Going To Bed, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jacob van Loo (Sluis, 1614 – Paris, November 26, 1670) was a Flemish painter who is considered one of the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century. Van Loo is known for his conversational groupings, his use of a subtle colour palette and his nudes. He was the founder of the Van Loo family of painters. In 1660, Van Loo fled Amsterdam after fatally stabbing someone during an altercation at an inn. He was sentenced to death in absentia which forever prevented his return to Holland. Van Loo settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the Academie de peinture et de sculpture.

[Oil on canvas, 187 x 143.5 cm]

Canaletto - The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, Venice [c.1740]

Canaletto - The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, Venice [c.1740], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The painting shows a view towards the Doge's Palace on the right, with Santa Maria della Salute and the entrance to the Grand Canal on the left. The annual ceremony of the Wedding of the Sea is about to take place. The official procession is making its way from the Doge's Palace to the state barge, the Bucintoro, and the Doge's ceremonial umbrella is just visible in the crowd. The Doge will drop a gold ring from the barge to symbolise the marriage of Venice to the sea. The arms of the Doge Alvise Pisani, who ruled from 1735-41 are visible on the Bucintoro. These details and stylistic considerations give the approximate date for the work. 

[Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 182.8 cm]

Francois Flameng - Portrait of Princess Z N Yusupova [1894]

Francois Flameng - Portrait of Princess Z N Yusupova [1894], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

[Oil on canvas, 125.5 x 94 cm]

Stanhope Alexander Forbes - Old Newlyn [1884]

Stanhope Alexander Forbes - Old Newlyn [1884], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Stanhope Alexander Forbes (November 18, 1857 – March 2, 1947) was an artist and member of the influential Newlyn school of painters. Forbes was born in Dublin. He studied art at the Lambeth School of Art, then in Paris under Leon Bonnat. Forbes went to Brittany in 1881 with fellow artist La Thangue. In France he came into contact with the new en plein air painters. He moved to Newlyn in Cornwall in 1884, and soon became a leading figure in the growing colony of artists. Well into the 1930s, he was still often to be seen painting en plein air, surrounded by curious local children. He died in 1947, a few months short of his ninetieth birthday.

Rubens Santoro - Canale della Guerra, Venice

Rubens Santoro - Canale della Guerra, Venice, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Rubens Santoro was an Italian painter of genre and marine scenes. He was born in Mongrassano on October 25, 1859 and studied under Giovanni Battista at the Naples Academy and the Domenico Morelli. 
Upon completing his studies, Santoro travelled around Southern Europe, visiting Naples, Turin, Venice and Rome, painting as he went. In his later years he also travelled to the north of Europe, visiting London and Paris. Santoro was a respected and skilled painter, particularly well-known today for his views of Venice. He spent his later years in Turin, where he died in 1942.

Berthe Morisot - The Artist's Daughter Julie, with her Nanny [c.1884]

Berthe Morisot - The Artist's Daughter Julie, with her Nanny [c.1884], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The work of Berthe Morisot (French, 1841-1895), like that of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, was generally either praised or reviled during her lifetime for being unfinished, indeterminate, and hurried. Morisot's Impressions, like Renoir's, forced the viewer to think less about the represented subjects than about the transformation of them on canvas. This composition is a gloriously painted drawing in which each line is a colour sensation. The sheer abandonment of her gesture and its increasingly non-representational role in her paintings put Morisot at the forefront of Impressionist experimentation.

[Oil on canvas, 23 x 28 inches]

Arthur Navez - The Blue Hat [1917]

Arthur Navez - The Blue Hat [1917], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Arthur Navez (1881 – 1931) was a Belgian painter.

Edgar Degas - Young Spartans Exercising [c.1860]

Edgar Degas - Young Spartans Exercising [c.1860], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Plutarch writes of Lycurgus, the legislator of ancient Sparta, ordering Spartan girls to engage in wrestling contests; here they urge the boys to fight. An early work, probably begun about 1860. The painting was reworked several times, and numerous related drawings and studies survive, for example a study in oils in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although listed in the catalogue for the 1880 Impressionist exhibition, it was not shown and remained in the artist's studio until his death.

[Oil on canvas, 109.5 x 155 cm]

Maurice Denis - Bacchus and Ariadne [1907]

Maurice Denis - Bacchus and Ariadne [1907], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Maurice Denis (Granville, November 25, 1870 – Paris, November 1943) was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art. Denis was among the first artists to insist on the flatness of the picture plane - one of the great starting points for modernism, as practiced in the visual arts. In his famous proposal for the definition of painting, offered in 1890, he stated: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order." In 1898, he produced a theory of creation that found the source for art in the character of the painter: "That which creates a work of art is the power and the will of the artist."

[Oil on canvas, 81 x 116 cm]

Louis de Saeger - Beach Scene

Louis de Saeger - Beach Scene, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Louis de Saeger (1908 – 1991) was a Belgian painter of landscapes, village and city views. He portrayed mostly the river Schelde. He passed his youth at the picturesque village of Vlassenbroek. He received his artistic training from his contemporaries Pieter Gorus, Jacques Maes and Felix Gogo. He also studied at the Academy of Ghent under Oscar Coddron and Alphonse Cuyper. De Saeger painted mostly in Vlassenbroek, Ghent and the Belgian coast.

Anton Raphael Mengs - Self-Portrait [1774-75]

Anton Raphael Mengs - Self-Portrait [1774-75], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Anton Raphael Mengs (March 12, 1728 – June 29, 1779) was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting. He died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.

[Pastel, 55 x 42 cm]

Anton Raphael Mengs - Self-Portrait [c.1775]

Anton Raphael Mengs - Self-Portrait [c.1775], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Winner of numerous honours, member of many European academies and head of both the Roman Academy of St Luke and the Madrid San Fernando Academy, in his self-portrait Anton Raphael Mengs (March 12, 1728 – June 29, 1779) avoids any sense of officialdom and status, seeking above all to show the creative individual. He depicts himself with the attributes of an artist - the folder of drawings, the brush and the careless bohemian attire. The spread hand, shown in complicated foreshortening, seems to be turned towards an unseen interlocutor, with whom the artist is in dialogue. This self-portrait reveals Mengs to be an excellent portraitist and reminds us that the artist was the leader of the Neoclassicists in Rome, the theoretician of the new style and author of works on aesthetics. The painting repeats a self-portrait which Mengs painted in 1774 for the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

[Oil on panel, 102 x 77 cm]

Edouard Cortes - Arc de Triomphe, Paris Winter

Edouard Cortes - Arc de Triomphe, Paris Winter, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Edouard Cortes (1882 - 1969), of French and Spanish ancestry, was born in Lagny-sur-Marne, a few miles east of Paris. His paintings express the romance, energy and charm of old Paris through his masterful application of bold brush strokes and intriguing colours. His works display the profound knowledge he held of perspective and composition. The viewer's eye is most often caught by fascinating details - the play of lights on wet pavement, shadows on streets and glowing windows and street lamps.

Claude Monet - The Seine at Bougival [1869]

Claude Monet - The Seine at Bougival [1869], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Monet's subject is the foot of the bridge at Bougival connecting the left bank of the Seine to the Île de Croissy. In the late 1800s the site's scenic location and lush greenery made it a popular area for cafés and inns frequented by throngs of weekend visitors during the summer. Monet moved to Bougival in 1869 with Camille Doncieux, his future wife, and their son, Jean, who are depicted crossing the bridge. 

This canvas is considered one of the outstanding achievements of Monet's early career, when he first became interested in plein air or out-of-doors painting. In choosing his subject, Monet decided not to paint the typical scene at Bougival, with its streets swarming with vacationers. Rather, he focused on the structure of the composition and the reflective and unifying quality of the light. Already evident are the key components of the Impressionist style: bold patches of colour, form as a function of colour, the development of two-dimensional space, and the exploration of light as it simultaneously reveals and disintegrates form. Monet's immediate response to nature is captured in an image which conveys fluttering leaves, flickering shadows on the bridge and the glistening surface of the Seine. The scene shimmers with movement.

Jean Béraud - In The Studio

Jean Béraud - In The Studio, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jean Béraud (Saint Petersburg, January 12, 1849 – Paris, October 4, 1935) was a French Impressionist painter and commercial artist noted for his paintings of Parisian life. Towards the end of the 19th century, Béraud dedicated less time to his own painting but worked on numerous exhibition committees, including the Salon de la Société Nationale. Béraud never married and had no children. He died in Paris on October 4, 1935, and is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery beside his mother.

Joseph-Francois Ducq - Interior of an Artist's Studio with Couple Examining Engravings

Joseph-Francois Ducq - Interior of an Artist's Studio with Couple Examining Engravings, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Joseph-François Ducq was a Belgian painter. Ducq was born in Ledegem in 1762. After finishing his studies in Bruges he left to Paris with Joseph-Benoît Suvée. In 1792 Ducq returned to Bruges during the revolution. He stayed in Rome from 1807 to 1813 and became there the official painter at the court of Eugène de Beauharnais, the viceroy of Italy. He died in Bruges in 1829. Only a few of Ducq's paintings have survived and a few hundread of his studies.

Seymour Joseph Guy - Story of Golden Locks [c.1870]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Story of Golden Locks [c.1870], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Guy (American, 1824 – 1910) made a career of painting popular sentimental narratives with preadolescent girls as the protagonists. In this canvas, a girl reads the titular story to two little boys, presumably her brothers. Her menacing shadow on the attic bedroom's wall and the boys' wide eyes suggest that she is recounting the story's most frightening moment. Fairy tales were appreciated for their moral content at this time, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears was valued as warning children not to wander off on their own. Later interpreters of the tale, including the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, have read in it a girl's fraught search for identity as she makes the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Guy's girl presents this very paradox - she creates a foreboding mood as she exudes calm and purity, which foretells her future success as a mother. Her doll is tucked into the box on the chair, which implies that she is ready to put away childhood games and assume an adult role.

[Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 71.1 cm]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Making A Train [1867]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Making A Train [1867], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In the same attic room that Guy (American, 1824 – 1910) portrayed in Story of Golden Locks, a girl turns her bedtime preparations into a flight of fancy as she imagines herself in the womanly splendour of a long gown. The narrative reflects the new belief that play and leisure were good for children, rather than wicked, and confirms feminine stereotypes at a time when womanhood seemed to be under attack by militant feminists. Reformers of the day, who worried about dirty and delinquent street children, may have appreciated the depiction of a clean, healthy, white girl in a modest home. The red, white, and blue triad, in the quilt and in the girl's dress, chemise, and headband, signals the subject's national implications. The commingling of sexual allure and girlish innocence was prevalent in Guy's era, as seen in photographs by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron.

[Oil on canvas, 46 x 61.3 cm]

Alfred Morgan - An Omnibus Ride to Piccadilly (Mr Gladstone Travelling with Ordinary Passengers) [1885]

Alfred Morgan - An Omnibus Ride to Piccadilly (Mr Gladstone Travelling with Ordinary Passengers) [1885], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alfred Morgan was an English painter. He exhibited from 1862 to 1904, at the Royal Academy from 1864 until 1904, British Institution, Suffolk Street, Grosvenor Gallery and elsewhere. His son Alfred Kedington Morgan was a painter.

William Ewart Gladstone (Liverpool, December 29, 1809 – Hawarden, May 19, 1898) was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four times. The Gladstone bag, a light travelling bag, was named after him.

Gilbert Stuart - Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick [1790-91]

Gilbert Stuart - Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick [1790-91], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Seeking to enliven their portraits, some painters reiterated their sitters' real-life parlour behaviour and polite accomplishments. Responding to a commission from Dublin's distinguished Foster family, Stuart (American, 1755 – 1828) enlisted the pastime of embroidery to help tell a story. He puts on display the teenaged Anna Dorothea, a marriageable aristocratic girl in want of a good match, perhaps even love, and lets her expert sewing skills carry the narrative. He shows her working on a tambour frame, which indicates that she has graduated from mere samplers to significant projects suitable for framing or use in upholstery. In contrast, he portrays her cousin Charlotte Anna Dick in profile, as befits a younger not-yet-marriage-age lass who serves merely as an accomplice to Anna Dorothea's dual tasks of embroidering and of finding a husband.

[Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 94 cm]

Ilya Repin - The Volga Barge Haulers [1873]

Ilya Repin - The Volga Barge Haulers [1873], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (Chuhuiv, Russian Empire, August 5, 1844, – Kuokkala, Finland, September 29, 1930) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model progressive and realist to be imitated by Socialist Realist artists in the USSR.

Johannes Vermeer - The Little Street [c.1658]

Johannes Vermeer - The Little Street [c.1658], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In a cobblestone street are two houses with a gate opening onto the passageway between them. A woman sits in an open doorway, busy sewing; two children are playing on the stoop. Soapy water is washing down a small runnel between the paving stones - probably the woman in the passageway has just scrubbed her part of the stoop. Vermeer has recorded this everyday scene with apparent casualness. Although world-famous, not much is known about Vermeer's Little Street. In fact the original location has never been identified, and indeed may never have existed. But more significant is the atmosphere of the picture. The women are diligently employed while the children are absorbed at play. The scene emanates tranquillity and security.

In this picture the sky is cloudy and the colours are muted. Besides brown and red there are touches of blue in the sky, the garments of the woman who is furthest away, and the plant at the left. When first painted the ivy was greener, but the yellow pigment in the paint has faded. Nevertheless, the painting appears fresh, thanks to the white plasterwork. Against this, the figures stand out in pleasing contrast. At the left is Vermeer's signature - also on a white wall. The figures appear convincingly real, even though, like the bricks or the cobblestones, they are not rendered in detail.

[Oil on canvas, 54.3 x 44 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Portrait of a Restaurant Owner [1887]

Vincent van Gogh - Portrait of a Restaurant Owner [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Van Gogh painstakingly built up this portrait in subtle colours rendered with fine brushstrokes. While the background and the man’s clothes are subdued, the face consists of stripes painted in all manner of colours. 
The man depicted here is possibly Lucien Martin, the owner of a restaurant where Van Gogh and his friends showed their work in November 1887. Vincent’s paintings were often shown at Parisian cafés, restaurants and art dealers. However, they failed to sell. 

[Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 54.5 cm]