Louis Aston Knight - Summer Afternoon, Normandy

Louis Aston Knight - Summer Afternoon, Normandy, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Born in Paris, on August 3, 1873 of American parents, Knight studied in his native city under Lefebvre, Robert-Fleury, and with his father, D. R. Knight. While in San Francisco in 1925, he stayed at the Palace Hotel and painted cityscapes and a view of the Palace of Fine Arts. He died in Paris in 1948.

[Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 116.84 cm]

Jean-Honore Fragonard - Stolen Kiss [c.1788]

Jean-Honore Fragonard - Stolen Kiss [c.1788], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (Grasse, April 5, 1732 – Paris, August 22, 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.

[Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm]

Georges Seurat - The Seine Seen From La Grande Jatte [1888]

Georges Seurat - The Seine Seen From La Grande Jatte [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This study formed the basis for a larger canvas now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Painted on a white surface, the colours are particularly light and brilliant. Seurat made several adjustments to the composition: the curve of the island was lowered at the bottom right and traces of a yacht are visible at the left.

[Oil on wood, 15.7 x 25 cm]

Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights [c.1480-1504]

Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights [c.1480-1504], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450–1516), housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. The triptych is painted in oil and comprises a square middle panel flanked by two rectangular wings that can close over the centre as shutters. These outer wings, when folded shut, display a grisaille painting of the earth during the Creation. The three scenes of the inner triptych are probably (but not necessarily) intended to be read chronologically from left to right. The left panel depicts God presenting Adam and Eve, while the central panel is a broad panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hell-scape and portrays the torments of damnation.

[Oil on wood, 220 cm x 389 cm]

Theodore Rousseau - Market-Place in Normandy [1830s]

Theodore Rousseau - Market-Place in Normandy [1830s], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Theodore Rousseau (Paris, April 15, 1812 – December 22, 1867) was a French painter of the Barbizon school. Rousseau's pictures are always grave in character, with an air of exquisite melancholy which is powerfully attractive to the lover of landscapes. They are well finished when they profess to be completed pictures, but Rousseau spent so long a time in working up his subjects that his absolutely completed works are comparatively few. He left many canvases with only parts of the picture realized.

He was elected president of the fine art jury for the 1867 Exposition; however, his disappointment at being passed over in the distribution of the higher awards told seriously on his health, and in August he was seized with paralysis. He slightly recovered, but was again attacked several times during the autumn. Finally, in November, he began to sink, and he died, in the presence of his lifelong friend, Jean-Francois Millet, on December 22, 1867. Millet, the peasant painter, for whom Rousseau had the highest regard, had been much with him during the last years of his life, and at his death Millet took charge of Rousseau's insane wife.

[Oil on panel, 29.5 x 38 cm]

Frederick Arthur Bridgman - After The Bath

Frederick Arthur Bridgman - After The Bath, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (November 10, 1847 – January 13, 1928) was an American artist. An American Southerner, born in Tuskeegee, Alabama, the son of a physician, Bridgman would become one of the United States' most well-known and well-regarded painters and become known as one of the world's most talented Orientalist painters. 

In 1867, Bridgman entered the studio of the noted academic painter Jean-Leon Gérôme (1824-1904), where he was deeply influenced by Gérôme's precise draftsmanship, smooth finishes, and concern for Middle-Eastern themes. Bridgman would even become known as "the American Gérôme.” No mere imitator, however, Bridgman would later adopt a more naturalistic aesthetic, emphasising bright colours and painterly brushwork.

Henri Lucien Doucet - After The Ball

Henri Lucien Doucet - After The Ball, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Henri Lucien Doucet (1856 – 1895) was a French figure and portrait painter, born in Paris, where he studied under Lefebvre and Boulanger, and in 1880 won the Prix de Rome. His pictures are usually piquant, sparkling representations of modern life, eminently Parisian in style, but the audacious realism of his earlier work is not maintained in his later, which is somewhat characterless. His portraits in pastel are also notable.

[Oil on canvas, 124 x 98 cm]

Charles Angrand - The Western Railway at its Exit from Paris [1886]

Charles Angrand - The Western Railway at its Exit from Paris [1886], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The industrial edge of the city is observed from a vantage point on its fortifications. Angrand was at the heart of the Paris avant-garde world of the 1880s, and formed a friendship with Van Gogh, with whom he tried to exchange pictures. Angrand’s thick brushwork had an impact on Van Gogh’s painting, as did his asymmetrical compositions, inspired by Japanese art.

Charles Angrand was born in Criquetot-sur-Ouville, Normandy in 1854. He studied at the Académie de Peinture et de Dessin in Rouen, before moving to Paris in 1882 where he worked as a schoolteacher. In 1896, Angrand returned to Normandy. He continued to contribute sporadically to the Salon des Indépendants up until his death in 1926. 

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm]

Garafalo - A Pagan Sacrifice [1526]

Garafalo - A Pagan Sacrifice [1526], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This work is an elaborated copy of a mysterious ancient rite described on a sculpture in the strange antiquarian romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Dream of Poliphilus) which was published in Venice in 1499.

Garofalo was probably trained by Boccaccini of Cremona, who was in Ferrara from 1497 to 1500. According to Vasari, Garofalo twice visited Rome, and knowledge of classical art and recent Roman painting is apparent in some of his work. Even so, and unlike Dosso, Garofalo appears cautious and old-fashioned in his style and technique. In this he resembles his lesser contemporaries in Ferrara, Ludovico Mazzolino, who also specialised in small-scale religious works, and Ortolano, with whose paintings those of Garofalo are sometimes confused.

[Oil on canvas, 128.3 x 185.4 cm]

Goya - The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid - [1814]

Goya - The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid - [1814], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, The Third of May 1808 is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention"

[Oil on canvas, 268 x 347 cm]

Johannes Bosboom - The Interior of the Bakenesserkerk, Haarlem [c.1870-75]

Johannes Bosboom - The Interior of the Bakenesserkerk, Haarlem [c.1870-75], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Johannes Bosboom (1817 – 1891) made a number of sketches and paintings of this church, which dates from the 15th century and was partly rebuilt in the 17th century. This painting shows the south aisle and figures in 17th-century costume. It is similar to a larger painting (Amsterdam, Historisch Museum, Fodor Collection) which is thought to have been painted in about 1860. Johannes Bosboom was born in The Hague. In 1831 he travelled in the Rhineland and afterwards visited France; by 1851 he was back in The Hague. He painted church interiors, town views and landscapes.

[Oil on mahogany, 24.7 x 34.1 cm]

Albrecht Durer - Self Portrait at Twenty-Six [1498]

Albrecht Durer - Self Portrait at Twenty-Six [1498], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Albrecht Durer was without doubt the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. Living in Nuremberg, half-way between the Netherlands and Italy, he found inspiration in the work of painters of both the major European artistic centres of his time. But rather than simply imitating what others were doing, Durer was very much an innovator. He is, for example, the first artist who is known to have painted a self-portrait and to have done a landscape painting of a specific scene.

[Oil on panel, 52 x 41 cm]

Roger van der Weyden - Descent from the Cross [c.1435]

Roger van der Weyden - Descent from the Cross [c.1435], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Little record of the details of Roger van der Weyden's life survive, and those that do are often open to interpretation. He left no self portraits. Many of his most important works were destroyed during the late 17th century. Roger van der Weyden (1399 or 1400 – June 18, 1464) is first mentioned in historical records in 1427 when, coming to painting relatively later in life, he studied under Campin during 1427-32, but soon outshone his master and later even influenced him. He moved to Brussels in 1435, where he quickly established his reputation for his technical skill and emotional use of line and colour.

[Oil on oak panel, 220 x 262 cm]

John Constable - Salisbury Cathedral and Leadenhall from the River Avon [1820]

John Constable - Salisbury Cathedral and Leadenhall from the River Avon [1820], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In the foreground, the River Avon; right, the Canonical House, Leadenhall, which Constable's friend, Archdeacon John Fisher, was granted for life in 1819; left, the grounds of King's House in front of the Cathedral spire. The painting was made when Constable stayed with Fisher.

Constable is famous for his landscapes, which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside, where he was born and lived. He made many open-air sketches, using these as a basis for his large exhibition paintings, which were worked up in the studio. His pictures are extremely popular today, but they were not particularly well received in England during his lifetime. He did, however, have considerable success in Paris.

This is a special posting for BlueNote97.

[Oil on canvas, 52.7 x 77 cm]

Edmond Georges Grandjean - View of the Champs-Elysees from the Place de L’Etoile in Paris [1878]

Edmond Georges Grandjean - View of the Champs-Elysees from the Place de L’Etoile in Paris [1878], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Edmond Georges Grandjean (1844 - 1908) was a French painter.

[Oil on canvas, 85.5 x 136.5 cm]

Jules Bernard - Visitors to the Museum in Grenoble

Jules Bernard - Visitors to the Museum in Grenoble, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jules Bernard (1849 – 1917) was a French painter.

John Constable - The Hay Wain [1821]

John Constable - The Hay Wain [1821], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Constable's painting is based on a site in Suffolk, near Flatford on the River Stour. The hay wain, a type of horse-drawn cart, stands in the water in the foreground. Across the meadow in the distance on the right, is a group of haymakers at work. The cottage shown on the left was rented by a farmer called Willy Lott and stands behind Flatford Mill. Today, the cottage and river path are still much as they were in Constable's time. Although the painting evokes a Suffolk scene, it was created in the artist's studio in London. Constable first made a number of open-air sketches of parts of the scene. He then made a full-size preparatory sketch in oil to establish the composition. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, the year it was painted, but failed to find a buyer. Yet when exhibited in France, with other paintings by Constable, the artist was awarded a Gold Medal by Charles X.

[Oil on canvas, 130.2 x 185.4 cm]

Frederick Carl Frieseke - In the Boudoir [c.1914]

Frederick Carl Frieseke - In the Boudoir [c.1914], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Frederick Carl Frieseke (April 7, 1874 – August 24, 1939) was an American Impressionist painter. He was born in Owosso, Michigan and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Frieseke and his family resided for fourteen years in Giverny, which was also home to Monet. He had a great influence on the Americans at the colony there, many of whom shared his Midwestern American background.

[Oil on canvas, 89.3 x 116.9 cm]

Jacob Collins - In The Atelier [2001]

Jacob Collins - In The Atelier [2001], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Jacob Collins is a leading figure in the contemporary revival of classical painting. He earned a BA in history from Columbia College, attended the New York Studio School, the New York Academy of Art, and the Art Students League. As a student, Collins also copied extensively in museums in America and Europe. His work has been widely exhibited in North America and Europe and is included in several American museums. Collins is the founder of the Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art, and the Hudson River Fellowship.

[Oil on canvas, 101.60 x 86.36 cm]

Robert Reid - A Summer Girl [c.1896]

Robert Reid - A Summer Girl [c.1896], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Robert Lewis Reid (July 29, 1862 – December 2, 1929) was an American Impressionist painter and muralist. Reid was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was also later an instructor. In 1884 he moved to New York City, studying at the Art Students League, and in 1885 he went to Paris to study at the Academie Julian.

Upon returning to New York in 1889, he worked as a portraitist and later became an instructor at the Art Students League and Cooper Union. Much of his work centered on the depiction of young women set among flowers. His work tended to be very decorative. In 1897, Reid was a member of the Ten American Painters, who seceded from the Society of American Artists. Around the turn of the century, Reid worked on several mural projects and when he returned to paintings, around 1905, his work was more naturalistic, even though his palette trended toward soft pastels. He died in Clifton Springs, New York.

[Oil on canvas, 92.71 x 83.19 cm]

Henri Fantin-Latour - A Studio on the Batignolles [c.1870]

Henri Fantin-Latour - A Studio on the Batignolles [c.1870], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Henri Fantin-Latour (January 14, 1836 - August 25, 1904) was a French painter and lithographer. Born Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour in Grenoble, Rhône-Alpes, France, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of his friends Parisian artists and writers. His work strongly influenced the symbolist movement of the late 19th Century. Whistler brought attention to Fantin in England.

Les Batignolles was the district where Manet and many of the future Impressionists lived. Fantin-Latour, a quiet observer of this period, has gathered around Manet, presented as the leader of the school, a number of young artists with innovative ideas: from left to right, we can recognise Otto Schölderer, a German painter who had come to France to get to know Courbet's followers, a sharp-faced Manet, sitting at his easel; Auguste Renoir, wearing a hat; Zacharie Astruc, a sculptor and journalist; Emile Zola, the spokesman of the new style of painting; Edmond Maître, a civil servant at the Town Hall; Frédéric Bazille, who was killed a few months later during the 1870 war, at the age of twenty-six; and lastly, Claude Monet.

[Oil on canvas, 204 x 273.5 cm]

Frederick Hall - Portrait of Barbara the Artist's Daughter

Portrait of Barbara the Artist's Daughter, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Frederick Hall (1860 – 1948) was an English artist of the Newlyn school. Born in Stillington in Yorkshire in 1860, he first arrived in Newlyn in 1884 and made the village his home from 1885 to 1897. He was very much part of the social circle of the artists at this time, as is evidenced by the caricatures he drew of them. Like most of the Newlyn School artists, Hall was influenced by the Continental art of the period, in particular the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848 – 1884). Hall’s Newlyn work was particularly influenced by both the social realist themes of Lepage’s painting, and by its square brush technique. After twelve years, Hall moved away from Newlyn to settle in Porlock. He went on to develop caricature as the main element of his art, achieving fame for his 1890 exhibition of silhouettes of members of the Devon and Somerset staghounds.

[Oil on canvas, 41 x 36 cm]

Charles Rossiter - Song of the Shirt

Charles Rossiter - Song of the Shirt, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Charles Rossiter (1827 – 1897) was a British painter.

[Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 51.4 cm]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - A Bather [c.1885-90]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - A Bather [c.1885-90], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Renoir's visit to Italy in 1881 stimulated an interest in subjects inspired by classical antiquity rather than taken from contemporary life. This resulted in series of nudes set in generalised landscape settings which he painted in the late 1880s and 1890s, of which this is an example.

[Oil on canvas, 39.4 x 29.2 cm]

Teodor Axentowicz - Wiosna [1900]

Teodor Axentowicz - Wiosna [1900], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Teodor Axentowicz (Brasov, Romania, May 13, 1859 – Krakow, August 26, 1938) was a Polish painter and university professor. A renowned artist of his times, he was also the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. As an artist, Axentowicz was famous for his portraits and subtle scenes of Hutsul life, set in the Carpathians.

Angelo Caroseli - Witchcraft Scene

Angelo Caroseli - Witchcraft Scene, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Angelo Caroselli (1585 – 1653) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in his native Rome. He painted in an eclectic style, including influences from Caravaggio and the Bamboccianti. He was the brother in law of Filippo Lauri.

Theodore M Wendel - Bridge at Ipswich [c.1905]

Theodore M Wendel - Bridge at Ipswich [c.1905], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In 1898, Theodore Wendel (1859 – 1932) moved to his wife's large family farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a rural, seaside town north of Boston. For the next fifteen years, he portrayed this typical New England village with the Impressionist colour and broken brush strokes he had learned from Monet at Giverny in 1886. Like many other Impressionists, he chose a bridge as the focus for his painting - the handsome granite, twin-arched Green Street Bridge, built in 1894 over the Ipswich River.

Wendel's canvas differs from French Impressionist paintings in its clarity and solidity, since American artists tended to use light and colour to define forms rather than to dissolve them. However, Wendel was very much like his French counterparts in his use of compositional devices borrowed from Japanese aesthetics. He employed a high horizon line, diagonals that divide the composition, truncated forms, the juxtaposition of architectonic manmade structures with soft natural growth, and enlivening red colour notes in his painting. The resulting arrangement is flattened and compressed, and the surface pattern is as interesting and important as the subject matter.

[Oil on canvas, 61.59 x 76.2 cm]

Jacob Jordaens - The Virgin and Child with Saint John and his Parents [c.1620]

Jacob Jordaens - The Virgin and Child with Saint John and his Parents [c.1620], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting probably dates from around 1620, and one other signed version is known to exist. The work exemplifies the vein of robust realism that Jordaens, in the wake of Rubens and Van Dyck, brought to the interpretation of religious subject matter. The theme is derived from the 'Meditations' of the so-called Pseudo-Bonaventura, a popular early renaissance text which recounts the visit of the infant John the Baptist with his parents, Saints Elizabeth and Zacharias, to the Virgin and Child. Accompanied by a lamb, Saint John releases a goldfinch. This bird was believed to have been splashed with the blood of Christ at the Crucifixion, so was seen as a symbol of the Passion. Visually, the high basket chair suggests a halo encircling the heads of the Virgin and Child, thus contributing a symbolic resonance to a painting which is otherwise filled with a vigorous sense of reality.

Jordaens (1593 – 1678) was a follower of Rubens, and the leading Flemish painter after the death of Rubens and Van Dyck. Although he continued to borrow from Rubens, his work from 1620 to 1635 is marked by greater realism and exuberance. His late works are both more restrained and cooler in colour.

[Oil on canvas, 114 x 153 cm]

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - At the Moulin Rouge [1892]

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - At the Moulin Rouge [1892], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge provides us with a personal and sympathetic insight into Parisian nightlife. This painting is an intriguing depiction of late nineteenth-century Parisian history, a period when cafe nightlife was alive with intrigue, vitality, and colour. The composition of this painting is quite striking also. In the right foreground, the singer and dancer May Milton seems to be plunging out of the painting, yet in the left foreground, the viewer is blocked by a railing from entering the scene. A group of five people are crowded in the centre. Toulouse-Lautrec places himself almost on the same plane with the seated group. As your eye travels to the foreground, the space becomes less defined and seems to open up.

[Oil on canvas, 123 x 141 cm]

Edgar Degas - At the Milliner's [1882]

Edgar Degas - At the Milliner's [1882], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Mary Cassatt was the model for the customer in this work and also for another in the milliner series (Museum of Modern Art, New York). She purportedly said that she posed for Degas (French, 1834 – 1917) "only once in a while when he finds the movement difficult and the model cannot seem to get his idea." This pastel was shown in the final Impressionist exhibition, in 1886.

[Pastel on grey paper]

Samuel van Hoogstraten - A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House [c.1655-60]

Samuel van Hoogstraten - A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House [c.1655-60], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The peepshow is a rectangular box; the interior is painted on three sides, as well as on the top and bottom. The sixth side is open; originally light would have entered the box from this side, perhaps through specially treated paper stretched across it. The box would have been placed close to a window or illumination provided by a candle. There are peep-holes in the two shorter sides which provide the illusion of three-dimensional views of the interior of a house. 

Hoogstraten's box is an unusually elaborate example, decorated on the exterior with allegorical paintings which correspond to chapters in a theoretical book that the artist was to write later. The long side illustrates love of wealth as a motivation for the artist, who appears with a putto holding a cornucopia. Love of art and of fame are the subjects of the paintings on the short sides, while the top is decorated with an allegory of physical love, representing Venus and Cupid in bed, painted in anamorphic (distorted perspective) projection. The box was probably painted in Dordrecht in the later 1650s. A number of such peepshows were made in Holland but only a few examples have survived. This is one of the finest.

Painter and writer, Hoogstraten is best remembered for his experiments in perspective. His perspective box, A Peepshow, is the best surviving example of this aspect of his art. Hoogstraten (1627 – 1678) was a native of Dordrecht, where he was first trained by his father. He moved to Amsterdam shortly after his father's death in December 1640 and received further training in the studio of Rembrandt, at the time when Carel Fabritius was also there.

[Oil and egg on wood, 58 x 88 x 60.5 cm]

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Charles Chaplin - Girl with a Nest [1869]

Charles Chaplin - Girl with a Nest [1869], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Charles Joshua Chaplin (June 8, 1825 – January 30, 1891) was a French painter and engraver. He was born in Les Andelys, Eure, France to an English father and a French mother. Although he spent the whole of his life in France, he only became naturalized in 1886. He died in Paris. Chaplin conducted art classes specifically for women at his studio. The American artist Mary Cassatt and the English artist Louise Jopling were among Chaplin's students.

[Oil on canvas, 93.5 x 56.5 cm]

Charles Chaplin - A Song Silenced

Charles Chaplin - A Song Silenced, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Adolph Menzel - Afternoon in the Tuileries Gardens [1867]

Adolph Menzel - Afternoon in the Tuileries Gardens [1867], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Adolph Menzel (Breslau, December 8, 1815 – Berlin, February 9, 1905) was the leading German artist of the second half of the 19th century. This painting of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris was executed by him in 1867 following a visit to the city to see that year's Universal Exposition. It was almost certainly inspired by Manet's Music in the Tuileries Gardens, painted just five years earlier. Both paintings share a fascination with the bustling social scene of the day in the Tuileries Gardens, adjacent to the Louvre in the heart of Paris, but are executed in strikingly different styles. Menzel's approach is both more realistic and filled with detail. He invites the viewer to move from incident to closely observed incident across the canvas. 

Menzel made several sketches in the Tuileries Gardens which he took back to Berlin with him although none of these actually anticipate the composition of the finished painting. Although painted in a more traditional, academic style, Menzel does pay a kind of homage to Manet by quoting from his painting. The standing man in top hat in the foreground just right of centre closely resembles a similar figure in Manet's painting. When he first exhibited the work, Menzel made the point of indicating that it was executed from memory.

[Oil on canvas, 49 x 70 cm]

Jan Vermeer - Officer and a Laughing Girl [c.1658]

Jan Vermeer - Officer and a Laughing Girl [c.1658], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting is being exhibited following a personal request from my wife. If any visitors to the gallery would like to make similar requests, I will do my best to fulfil your wishes.

Gandalf

Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street, Boston [c.1908]

Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street, Boston [c.1908], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

A painter especially known for street and waterfront scenes of Boston, Arthur Clifton Goodwin (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1864 - Boston, Massachusetts, 1929) did work that captured the subtle nuances of light and colour, creating a harmony between and the natural environment. His style reflected American Impressionism, although his subject matter was not typically rural. He preferred painting Boston and particularly scenes where the city met the natural landscape, such as piers, bridges, or the Boston statehouse.

[Oil on canvas, 48.58 x 66.04 cm]

Frederick Childe Hassam - Nude in Sunlit Wood [1905]

Frederick Childe Hassam - Nude in Sunlilt Wood [1905], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Frederick Childe Hassam (Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, October 17, 1859 – East Hampton, New York, August 27, 1935) was a prominent and prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. 

After a brief period of depression and drinking as part of an apparent mid-life crisis, the forty-five year old Hassam then committed himself to a healthier life style, including swimming. During this time he felt a spiritual and artistic rejuvenation and he painted some Neo-Classical subjects, including nudes in outdoor settings. His urban subjects began to diminish and he confessed that he was tiring of city life - as bustling subways, elevated trains, and motor buses supplanted the graciousness of the horse-drawn scenes he was so fond of capturing in earlier times.

[Oil on canvas, 54.61 x 72.39 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night [1888]

Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Night [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The Van Gogh Starry Night is a late work, but if little remains of an Impressionist character in its technique, there is still some in its nocturnal illumination, its truth, and its moving comprehension of nature as transcended by an exceptional temperament. This night Impressionism extends that of Whistler and of Degas. But the picture goes still further. In its blues and greens, its brilliance of golden stars, it contains the mystery of all creation.

Its awesome grandeur and turbulent starlight seem to reflect Van Gogh’s feelings that he was only an instrument in the creative process of the universe. In a letter to Théo he wrote: “That is the eternal question, is life all that there is of life or do we only know one hemisphere before our death? Speaking for myself I have no idea what the answer is but the sight of the stars always starts me thinking”.

Alfred Aaron Wolmark - The Window Seat

Alfred Aaron Wolmark - The Window Seat, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alfred Aaron Wolmark (Warsaw, 1877 – London, January 6, 1961) was a painter and decorative artist. Wolmark was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw. He emigrated to London and became a British citizen in 1894. Returning briefly to Poland in 1903, he painted works based on Jewish historical subjects. In 1911, under the influence of modern French painting, he executed a series of studies of Breton fisherfolk and harbour life.

Alice Kaira - Daylight [1954]

Alice Kaira - Daylight [1954], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alice Kaira (Helsinki, 1913 – Helsinki, July 14, 2006) was a Finnish painter. 

[Oil on canvas, 27 x 46 cm]

Guillaume Lethiere - Death of Cato of Utica [1795]

Guillaume Lethiere - Death of Cato of Utica [1795], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Guillaume Lethiere (January 10, 1760 – April 22, 1832) was a French neoclassical painter. This painting is a typical example of the painting of Neoclassicism, which was popular in the decade after the French Revolution of 1789. The subject was deliberately selected with a didactic purpose, to be an example of bravery and stoicism. This death-bed is treated with all the idealization inherent in the Neoclassical style, without any naturalistic details. The composition recalls a bas-relief, with the subject stretched along the foreground of the painting, while the modelling of forms and the hero's pose are borrowed from the Ancient Roman sculpture of The Dying Gaul, evidence of the deliberate imitation of Antique art.

[Oil on canvas, 149.5 x 226 cm]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 5: The Bagnio [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 5: The Bagnio [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This episode takes place in a bagnio, originally a word used to describe coffee houses which offered Turkish baths, but by 1740 it signified a place where rooms could be provided for the night with no questions asked. The Countess and the lawyer have retired there after the masquerade. The young Earl has followed them and is dying from a wound inflicted by Silvertongue, who escapes through the window, while the Countess pleads forgiveness.

The noise of the fight has awakened the master of the house who appears through the door to the right with the Watch. On the rear wall is a tapestry of the 'Judgement of Solomon', and a painting of a courtesan is over the door.

[Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 90.8 cm]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 6: The Lady's Death [c.1743]

William Hogarth - Marriage A-la-Mode: 6: The Lady's Death [c.1743], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The final scene takes place in the house of the Countess's father. She has taken poison on learning that her lover has been hanged for the murder of the Earl, reported in the broadsheet at her feet. Her crippled child embraces her and her father removes a ring from her finger as a suicide's possessions were forfeit. In the centre an apothecary remonstrates with the servant whom he accuses of obtaining the poison.

Through the window to the right is a view of Old London Bridge. A dog seizes his chance to make off with the frugal meal on the table. The paintings on the wall to the left are Dutch low-life scenes, indicating the taste of the alderman.

[Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm]