John Constable - Weymouth Bay, Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill [1816-17]

John Constable - Weymouth Bay, Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill [1816-17], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

A view looking west, showing the small Jordan River flowing over the sands, and Jordan Hill and Furzy Cliff behind. In October 1816 Constable went to Osmington near Weymouth for his honeymoon; the idea for the painting probably dates from this period. A larger version called Osmington Shore was exhibited by him at the British Institution in 1819.

[Oil on canvas, 53 x 75 cm]

Daniel Garber - In The Springtime [1954]

Daniel Garber - In The Springtime [1954], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Daniel Garber (North Manchester, Indiana, April 11, 1880 – Cuttalossa, Pennsylvania, July 5, 1958) was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his large impressionist scenes of the New Hope area, in which he often depicted the Delaware River. He also painted figurative interior works and excelled at etching. In addition to his painting career, Garber taught art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for over forty years. This painting was sold by Sotheby's on May 23, 2007 for $384,000.

[Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 71.1 cm]

Konstantin Korovin - By The Window

Konstantin Korovin - By The Window, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting was sold by Sotheby's on November 3, 2008 for $902,500.

[Oil on canvas, 66 x 88 cm]

Konstantin Korovin - At The Window [1923]

Konstantin Korovin - At The Window [1923], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Konstantin Korovin (Moscow, November 23, 1861 – Paris, September 11, 1939) was a leading Russian Impressionist painter. This painting was sold by Sotheby's on November 2, 2009 for $1,178,500.

[Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 76 cm]

Zoltan Sepeshy - City of Churches [c.1959]

Zoltan Sepeshy - City of Churches [c.1959], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Zoltan Sepeshy (Kassa, Hungary, 1898 - Royal Oak, Michigan, 1974) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Budapest and in Vienna and Paris. He was appointed as an instructor at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts and later at the Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He was a major painter of the American Scene and depicted the small towns and harbours around Lake Michigan.

[Gouache and oil on canvas, 76.2 x 92.0 cm

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Cows in a Marshy Landscape [c.1860-70]

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Cows in a Marshy Landscape [c.1860-70], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

No site has been identified for this painting which was probably painted in the studio. The pastoral subject was one that Corot returned to time and again in his later years. The trees on the left are painted in silvery tones which are typical of his late style.

[Oil on canvas, 24.1 x 34.9 cm]

Constant Wauters - Fair [1850]

Constant Wauters - Fair [1850], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Constant Wauters (1826 - 1853) was a Belgian painter.

[Oil on panel, 48 x 58 cm]

Camille Pissarro - Fair in Dieppe, Sunny Morning [1901]

Camille Pissarro - Fair in Dieppe, Sunny Morning [1901], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In 1901, Camille Pissarro settled in Dieppe in a small hotel room across from the Church of Saint-Jacques, a remarkable Gothic structure and the square, which from time immemorial had been used as a market. The series created in Dieppe in 1901 consists of seven canvases in which the artist discovered a way not only to convey the impression of busy town life, but to create an unusually integrated rhythmic structure through a flawlessly calculated interplay of geometric details.

[Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 81.5 cm]

Alfred Henry Maurer - The Rendezvous [1904-05]

Alfred Henry Maurer - The Rendezvous [1904-05], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alfred Henry Maurer (New York City, April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early 20th century. At age thirty-six, in Paris, deviating from what everyone (including himself) called acceptable painting styles, Maurer changed his methods sharply and from that point on painted only in the cubist and fauvist manner, subsequently risking his international reputation. He took his own life by hanging following his father's death. This painting was sold at Sotheby's on May 21, 2009 for $398,500.

[Oil on canvas, 92 x 81.3 cm]

John Everett Millais - Ophelia [1851-52]

John Everett Millais - Ophelia [1851-52], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This is the drowning Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Picking flowers she slips and falls into a stream. Mad with grief after her father’s murder by Hamlet, her lover, she allows herself to die. The flowers she holds are symbolic: the poppy means death, daisies innocence and pansies love in vain. The painting was regarded in its day as one of the most accurate and elaborate studies of nature ever made. The background was painted from life by the Hogsmill river in Surrey. Elizabeth Siddal posed for Ophelia in a bath of water kept warm by lamps underneath.

[Oil on canvas, 762 x 1118 mm]

Charles Conder - The Fatal Colours [1888]

Charles Conder - The Fatal Colours [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Charles Edward Conder (Tottenham, London, October 24, 1868 – Holloway Sanatorium, London, February 9, 1909) was an English-born painter, lithographer, and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art. This painting was sold by Sotheby's on August 25, 2008 for Australian $702,000.

[Oil on wood panel, 36 x 20.5 cm]

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert - Urban Landscape [1856]

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert - Urban Landscape [1856], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert (Brussels, September 22, 1816 – Mainz, December 5. 1907) was a Belgian painter of Dutch landscapes. Leickert specialised in winter scenes, sometimes romanticising the sky in pale blues and bright pinks. He painted almost all his works in the Netherlands, from 1841-1848 in The Hague, and from 1849-1883 in Amsterdam. In 1856, he became a member of the Royal Academy of Amsterdam. At the age of 71 he moved to Mainz, Germany where he later died in 1907.

[Oil on canvas, 87 x 118.5 cm]

Winslow Homer - The Cotton Pickers [1876]

Winslow Homer - The Cotton Pickers [1876], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In 1876, Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910) was one of the few artists who painted African-Americans with sympathy and respect. The Cotton Pickers, from 1876, shows two young women returning home from a day’s work in the fields. These two women stand tall and proud, despite their tiring labour. Picking cotton was an exhausting and sometimes painful job. The cotton seems soft. But the fluffy boll hides the prickly seedpod underneath. Notice how it catches at the woman’s apron. This kind of realism, based on accurate observation, is a hallmark of Homer’s art.

Here, his realism serves a deeper, more symbolic function. Ten years after the Civil War’s end, not much had changed in the lives of former slaves. Look into the face of the woman on the right. She looks off into the distance as if toward a better future - one that’s still far away. Homer’s friend and fellow painter Hopkinson Smith found in this painting what he called “the whole story of Southern Slavery.”

[Oil on canvas, 61.12 x 96.84 cm]

Alfred James Munnings - Ascot [1933]

Alfred James Munnings - Ascot [1933], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Sir Alfred James Munnings (Mendham, Suffolk, October 8, 1878 – Castle House, Dedham, Essex, July 17, 1959) was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken enemy of Modernism. The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He was awarded a knighthood in 1944. 

[This painting was sold by Sotheby's on April 23, 2010 for $578,500]

[Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm]

Hans Purrmann - Nude [1910-30]

Hans Purrmann - Nude [1910-30], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Hans Marsilius Purrmann (April 10, 1880 – April 17, 1966) was a German artist. He was born in Speyer where he also grew up. He completed an apprenticeship as a scene painter and interior decorator, and subsequently studied in Karlsruhe and Muich before going to Paris in 1906. It was here he became a student and later a friend of Henri Matisse with whom he set up a painting school. After 1916 Purrmann lived in Berlin and Langenargen (Lake Constance), moving from there in 1935 to run the German art foundation at the Villa Romana in Florence. He lived there until 1943, then in Montagnola (Switzerland). He died in Basel. Typical of Purrmann's style are colourful, sensitively painted landscapes, still lifes and portraits. 

[Oil on canvas, 93 x 73 cm]

Eugene Galien-Laloue - Flower Market, Place de la Madelaine

Eugene Galien-Laloue - Flower Market, Place de la Madelaine, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Eugène Galien-Laloue (1854 - 1941) was a French artist of French-Italian parents, born in Paris on December 11, 1854. He was a populariser of street scenes, usually painted in autumn or winter. His paintings of the early 1900s accurately represent the era in which he lived: a happy, bustling Paris with horse-drawn carriages, trolley cars and its first omnibuses. A typical Galien-Laloue painting depicts sidewalks and avenues crowded with people or tourists mingling before the capital's monuments.

[Oil on canvas, 9.5 x 13 inches]

Jozef Israëls - Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man [c.1861]

Jozef Israëls - Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man [c.1861], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting was probably painted in Amsterdam, and is based on sketches made by the artist on the coast at Zandvoort. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1861 and at the Royal Academy, London in the following year. The composition of the painting shows the influence of crowd scenes by Daumier, while its mood of sympathy for the trials of peasant life is redolent of Millet. Against a darkened sky the body of the drowned fisherman is carried along the foreshore by his companions. The figures seem small in relation to the expanse of sea and land, and those in the foreground, presumably the man's wife and children, appear weighed down with grief.

The best-known 19th-century Dutch painter of scenes of peasant life, Israëls was born at Groningen and trained first with Jan Adam Kruseman and then at the Amsterdam Academy under Jan Willem Pieneman. He also received training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, returning to Holland in 1847. His earliest works were romantic historical paintings, but after staying at Zandvoort in 1855 he concentrated on peasant scenes, usually with fishermen, which recall works by his contemporaries in France. In his later years Israëls lived in The Hague and became internationally famous, exhibiting in Paris and London as well as in Holland.

[Oil on canvas, 129 x 244 cm]

William Merritt Chase - Hide And Seek [1888]

William Merritt Chase - Hide And Seek [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In this work, Chase focuses on a familiar late nineteenth-century theme of children at play. Usually noted for his lavish and exotic interiors, in Hide and Seek Chase emphasised economy of object and understatement of colour; creating a composition that is at once radical and mysterious. Only four objects are included - a chair, a picture or mirror frame, an oriental curtain, and the door jamb or curtain behind which a young girl is hiding while she watches her playmate. We are drawn by the rapt attention of this child while at the same time, our eye moves to the second child, delicately positioned on the diagonal, illuminated by a sliver of light coming from behind the curtain.

The influence of photography can be seen in the unusual cropping in the lower left corner and the surprising expanse of space that dominates this picture. Abandoning a traditional compositional scheme in favour of one that suggests the accidental moment, Chase adopted for himself photography's intimacy and immediacy of expression.

[Oil on canvas, 27⅝ x 35⅞ inches]

John Everett Millais - Hearts Are Trumps [1872]

John Everett Millais - Hearts Are Trumps [1872], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In its style, which recalls the works of the eighteenth-century painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in its flattering depiction of the fashionable sitters, this picture expresses a gentle and nostalgic vision of family life. Elizabeth, Diana and Mary, daughters of Walter Armstrong of Scotland and London, were in their twenties when Millais painted them. Mary holds most of the trumps and looks towards the viewer. Delicately, the card game hints at sisterly competition in husband-finding.

[Oil on canvas, 1657 x 2197 mm]

William Thon - Twilight in Rome [1961]

William Thon - Twilight in Rome [1961], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

William Thon (New York City, 1906 - Port Clyde, Maine, 2000) had no formal art training apart from thirty days at the Art Students League. He discovered his individual style through trial and error. He began painting in oil in a fairly realistic mode, but during his stay at the American Academy in Rome he discovered watercolour as a serious medium and began to loosen his style some. His work became more abstract, although the sources were still recognizable. Perhaps the major breakthrough for his painting came with the discovery of an abandoned quarry near his home in Maine. 

[Oil on fibreboard, 73.6 x 119.4 cm]

Richard Caton Woodville - War News from Mexico [1848]

Richard Caton Woodville - War News from Mexico [1848], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

America's war with Mexico (1846–48) was as divisive as it was national, and citizens fiercely debated its propriety and outcome. The war, quickly won by a small American force defeating the much larger Mexican army, was permeated by racial differences. Woodville's (American, 1825 – 1855) commentary is set on the porch of the apparently emblematic American Hotel. The eagle's head and half of "American" on the hotel's signboard are cut off, subtly signalling that not all is well. The man at the centre holds a newspaper and reads the exciting news to a group of listeners. Representatives of two groups are excluded from the principal gathering: the non-voting black man and his child on the steps and the old woman who cranes her head through the window to listen. 

[Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 63.5 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Exterior of a Restaurant at Asnieres [1887]

Vincent van Gogh - Exterior of a Restaurant at Asnieres [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

[Oil on canvas, 18.5 x 27 cm]

Cecilia Beaux - Dorothea in the Woods [1897]

Cecilia Beaux - Dorothea in the Woods [1897], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Cecilia Beaux (May 1, 1855 – September 7, 1942) was an American society portraitist, in the nature of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France. Her sympathetic renderings of American ruling class made her one of the most successful portrait painters of her era.

[Oil on canvas, 135.26 x 101.6 cm]

Sandro Botticelli - Venus and Mars [c.1485]

Sandro Botticelli - Venus and Mars [c.1485], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Mars, God of War, was one of the lovers of Venus, Goddess of Love. Here Mars is asleep and unarmed, while Venus is awake and alert. The meaning of the picture is that love conquers war, or love conquers all. This work was probably a piece of bedroom furniture, perhaps a bed-head or piece of wainscoting, most probably the spalliera or backboard from a chest or day bed. The wasps (vespe in Italian) at the top right suggest a link with the Vespucci family, though they may be no more than a symbol of the stings of love. 

A lost classical painting of the marriage of Alexander and Roxana was described by the 2nd-century Greek writer, Lucian. It showed cupids playing with Alexander's spear and armour. Botticelli's satyrs may refer to this. Mars is sleeping the 'little death' which comes after making love, and not even a trumpet in his ear will wake him. The little satyrs have stolen his lance - a joke to show that he is now disarmed.

[Tempera and oil on paper, 69.2 x 173.4 cm]

Romaine Brooks - Azalées Blanches (White Azaleas) [1910]

Romaine Brooks - Azalées Blanches (White Azaleas) [1910], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Romaine Brooks (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970), born Beatrice Romaine Goddard, was an American painter who specialised in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the colour grey. Although she lived until 1970, she painted very little after 1925. Her subjects ranged from anonymous models to titled aristocrats, but she is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work.

[Oil on canvas, 151.1 x 271.7 cm]

William Logsdail - Saint Martin-in-the-Fields [1888]

William Logsdail - Saint Martin-in-the-Fields [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Logsdail (1859 – 1944) painted this picture from a vehicle stationed for weeks at the kerb-side in Trafalgar Square, his feet covered with straw to protect them from the cold. It is the most famous of his series of London scenes. This view highlights the plight of child street sellers, and would also have reminded contemporary audiences of the Bloody Sunday riots which had taken place in Trafalgar Square a few months before. During the demonstration thousands of people, demanding the right to free speech, were brutally attacked by armed police and troops.

[Oil on canvas, 1435 x 1181 mm]

William Holman Hunt - The Awakening Conscience [1853]

William Holman Hunt - The Awakening Conscience [1853], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Initially the painting would appear to be one of a momentary disagreement between husband and wife, or brother and sister, but the title and a host of symbols within the painting make it clear that this is a mistress and her lover. The woman's clasped hands provide a focal point and the position of her left hand emphasises the absence of a wedding ring. 

The model for the girl was Annie Miller, who sat for many of the Pre-Raphaelites and to whom Hunt was engaged until 1859. The look on the girl's face in the modern painting is not the look of pain and horror that viewers saw when the painting was first exhibited, and which shocked and repulsed many of the contemporary critics. The painting was bought by Thomas Fairbairn, a Manchester industrialist and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, but he found himself unable to bear looking on the woman's expression day-to-day, so persuaded Hunt to soften it.

[Oil on canvas, 762 x 559 mm]

William Strang - The Temptation [1899]

William Strang - The Temptation [1899], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This is the first in a series of ten paintings on the biblical story of Adam and Eve. They were commissioned by the brewer Laurence Hodson as a frieze for his library at Compton Hall, near Wolverhampton. The bold designs show William Strang’s admiration for the French Symbolist artist Puvis de Chavannes, and also the German painter Hans Thoma. The Eve cycle in turn influenced other British artists. It was much admired when it was first exhibited, particularly by the artist Walter Sickert and by the younger generation of London art students.

[Oil on canvas, 1220 x 1372 mm]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Umbrellas [c.1881-86]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Umbrellas [c.1881-86], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Renoir's Umbrellas shows a bustling Paris street in the rain. The composition of the painting does not focus on the centre of the picture which is a tangle of hands. It even cuts off figures at either edge like a photographic snapshot. This kind of unconventional arrangement was something that several of the Impressionists, including Renoir and Degas, enjoyed experimenting with. The work is particularly intriguing in that it shows the artist at two separate points in his career, the second of which was a moment of crisis as he fundamentally reconsidered his painting style. 

When he began The Umbrellas in 1880-81, Renoir was still using the typically loose brushwork and bright, pure colours of the Impressionist movement - the sort of technique he employed in The Skiff. During the early 1880s, he became increasingly disillusioned with the Impressionist technique. He began to look back to more traditional art: the drawings of Ingres and the 'purity and grandeur' of classical art. Returning to The Umbrellas, he repainted the figure on the left in a crisper style, using a more muted palette. The rapid changes in women's fashions allow us to date the second stage of the painting to 1885-86.

[Oil on canvas, 180.3 x 114.9 cm]

Follower of Rembrandt - A Young Man and a Girl Playing Cards [c.1645-50]

Follower of Rembrandt - A Young Man and a Girl Playing Cards [c.1645-50], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting was in England and attributed to Rembrandt as early as 1775. Subsequently it has been thought to be by Nicolas Maes, who was in Rembrandt's studio in the years around 1650. This is not, however, entirely persuasive and, more recently, the work has been attributed to another Dordrecht painter, Cornelis Bisschop (1630-1674), who knew Maes's work well and imitated it. However, no signed painting by Bisschop displays the broad handling which is so characteristic of this picture and this interesting attribution must, for the time being, remain speculative.

[Oil on canvas, 123.5 x 104 cm]

James Tissot - Young Woman in a Boat [1870]

James Tissot - Young Woman in a Boat [1870], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Tissot is famous for his exquisite paintings of beautiful English women and most people think he was English. In fact Jacques-Joseph Tissot was born in Nantes, then a thriving port on the Loire estuary in western France. He adopted the name James as an anglicised form when living in England. His friends were Manet and Degas, with whom he shared a teacher in the painting school in Paris. 

[Oil on canvas]

William Etty - The Birth of Venus

William Etty - The Birth of Venus, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

William Etty (York, March 10, 1787 – November 13, 1849) was an English painter best known for his paintings of nudes. Etty painted very unequally. His work at its best possesses great charm of colour, especially in the glowing, but thoroughly realistic, flesh tints. The composition is good, but his drawing is sometimes faulty, and his work usually lacks life and originality. He often endeavoured to inculcate moral lessons by his pictures.

[Oil on canvas, 51 x 65 cm]

Louis, Antoine & Matthieu Le Nains - Peasant Family at the Well

Louis, Antoine & Matthieu Le Nains - Peasant Family at the Well, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

All three Le Nains brothers were founding members of the French Royal Academy (1648), who developed a distinctive mode of genre painting related to the Bamboccianti in Italy, but with a Virgilian or Horatian admiration for the peasantry that was itself part of seventeenth-century Classicism. Although successful in their time, the Le Nans were later dismissed as going against official academic doctrine. 

Confusion surrounds the oeuvre of the Le Nains, and the Peasant Family at a Well suffered the fate of many, being dismissed as the work of a copyist. Recent conservation reveals a work of considerable quality, comparable with works agreed to be by the Le Nains, and with pentimenti showing that it cannot be a copy.

[Oil on canvas, 87.5 x 108 cm]

Daniel Greene - Afternoon in North Salem

Daniel Greene - Afternoon in North Salem, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

See: http://www.danielgreeneartist.com/

[Oil on linen, 60 x 60 inches]

Georges Seurat - The Rainbow [1883]

Georges Seurat - The Rainbow [1883], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This is one of a number of oil studies for the artist's Bathers at Asnières of 1884. Several of these studies were painted near Asnières in north-west Paris, and the design of this study is close to the finished painting. The picture retains the quality of an open-air sketch, but the detail is carefully delineated with small touches of paint.

[Oil on wood, 15.5 x 24.5 cm]

Fitz Henry Lane - Boston Harbour, Sunset [1850-55]

Fitz Henry Lane - Boston Harbour, Sunset [1850-55], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Fitz Henry Lane (Gloucester, Massachusetts, December 19, 1804 – Duncan's Point, Massachusetts, August 14, 1865) was an American painter and printmaker of a style that would later be called Luinism, for its use of pervasive light. Beginning in the early 1840s Lane would declare himself publicly to be a marine painter while simultaneously continuing his career as a lithographer. He quickly attained an eager and enthusiastic patronage from several of the leading merchants and mariners in Boston, New York, and his native Gloucester. Lane’s career would ultimately find him painting harbour and ship portraits, along with the occasional purely pastoral scene, up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States.

[Oil on canvas, 60.96 x 99.7 cm]

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg - View of the Forum in Rome [1814]

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg - View of the Forum in Rome [1814], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This is one of the most famous views in Rome, looking along the Forum towards the Palazzo dei Senatorio on the Capitol. The three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux frame the composition on the left; in the middle distance are the remains of the Temples of Saturn and Vespasian. In 1814 the Forum was still used as a field for grazing cattle and many prominent monuments (such as the Arch of Septimius Severus on the right) had yet to be fully excavated. 

Eckersberg was the most successful and influential painter in Denmark in the first half of the 19th century. After a three-year stay in Rome (1813-16) he returned to Copenhagen to become a professor at the Academy, a post he held until his death. During his long career he painted numerous portraits, landscapes and marine subjects, as well as a range of historical and mythological subjects.

[Oil on canvas, 32 x 41 cm]

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze - Mrs Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields on the Approach of the British [1852]

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze - Mrs Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields on the Approach of the British [1852], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Artist Emanuel Leutze (1816 – 1868) specialised in dramatic scenes from American history. He froze the characters in this painting at the most powerful moment of their story. With the pointing hands, Leutze directs our eyes around the canvas to make sure we take in every detail we need to know. It’s September, 1777. The British army is on the march toward Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler’s farm, outside Saratoga, New York. Everyone is about to leave, but before they do, Mrs. Schuyler decides to torch her fields, preventing the British from harvesting her crop for themselves. She’s the woman in the centre, wearing the straw hat. With one hand, she sets her wheat field on fire.

No one knows whether Mrs. Schuyler really did burn her wheat fields. But the British did burn her house down during the Battle of Saratoga. It was rebuilt after the battle, and is now part of the Saratoga National Historical Park.

[Oil on canvas, 81.28 x 101.6 cm]

Pierre-Charles Poussin - Pardon Day in Brittany [1851]

Pierre-Charles Poussin - Pardon Day in Brittany [1851], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The subject is associated with the feast held in honour of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours at Guingamp, which takes place on the first Sunday in July and the preceding Saturday. Pierre-Charles Poussin (1819 – 1904) was born in Paris, and taught by Léon Cogniet. He exhibited at the Salon from 1842.

[Oil on canvas, 146 x 327 cm]

Claude Monet - In the Woods at Giverny: Blanche Hoschedé at Her Easel with Suzanne Hoschedé Reading [1887]

Claude Monet - In the Woods at Giverny: Blanche Hoschedé at Her Easel with Suzanne Hoschedé Reading [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

[Oil on canvas, 91.44 x 97.79 cm]

Childe Hassam - The Victorian Chair [1906]

Childe Hassam - The Victorian Chair [1906], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

[Oil on wood, 76.3 x 63.5 cm]

Thomas Eakins - Wrestlers [1899]

Thomas Eakins - Wrestlers [1899], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

A young wrestler has just pinned his opponent to the ground. Their arms and legs are so thoroughly locked together, its hard to figure out whose limbs are whose. Painter Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 – 1916) captures the detail of every muscle and vein, the men’s pale skin, and their sunburned necks. Behind the wrestlers, on the left, someone works out on a rowing machine. On the right, a fully clothed referee stands next to another, almost nude, athlete. The white trunks the athletes wear were typical gym attire in the 1890s.

A sportswriter friend helped Eakins find these two models. One was a champion wrestler, the other, a boxer. Eakins was a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, in Philadelphia. He taught his students human anatomy with a medical thoroughness, going so far as to bring in cadavers for them to dissect. But when he removed a male model’s loincloth in front of female students, he was asked to resign.

[Oil on canvas, 122.87 x 152.4 cm]

Giovanni Battista Langetti - Samson [c.1660]

Giovanni Battista Langetti - Samson [c.1660], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Giovanni Battista Langetti (Genoa, 1635 - Venice, October 22, 1676) was an Italian late-Baroque painter. He painted many historical busts for private patrons in the Venetian territory and in Lombardy. He died at Venice in 1676.

[Oil on canvas, 115 x 202 cm]

Jacob Maris - A Windmill and Houses Beside Water: Stormy Sky [c.1880-90]

Jacob Maris - A Windmill and Houses Beside Water: Stormy Sky [c.1880-90], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Maris excelled at such small, quick evocations of the flat Dutch landscape and the massive, grey cloud formations that scud across the huge expanse of sky. In this painting, only a windmill breaks the line of the horizon. 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 canvas, 48.3 x 59.5 cm]

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agnes Protected by an Angel [c.1620]

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agnes Protected by an Angel [c.1620], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Alessandro Turchi (Verona, 1578 – Rome, January 22, 1649) was an Italian painter.

[Oil on polished marble, 42.55 x 33.02 cm]

Simon Vouet - Virginia da Vezzo, the Artist's Wife, as the Magdalen [c.1627]

Simon Vouet - Virginia da Vezzo, the Artist's Wife, as the Magdalen [c.1627], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The ointment jar the subject holds in her right hand identifies Simon Vouet’s elegant, sensual courtesan as Mary Magdalene, who washed and anointed Christ’s feet as an act of repentance. Taking his wife, the painter Virginia da Vezzo, as his model, Vouet (French, 1590 – 1649) used painterly and compositional bravura to describe her unrestrained auburn hair as it flows over her broad, curvaceous shoulders and half-exposed bosom. Her subtle smile and sideways gaze create an unusually provocative, seductive image.

[Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 78.74 cm]

Pyotr Nilus - Autumn [1893]

Pyotr Nilus - Autumn [1893], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Pyotr Alexandrovich Nilus (Podolia, February 21, 1869 – Paris, May 23, 1943) was a Russian impressionist painter and writer. In 1920 he emigrated to Paris where he worked until his death in 1943. Pyotr Nilus was friend with Aleksandr Kuprin and Ivan Bunin. For the first years in Paris they lived in the same house. They led an intensive correspondence; more than one hundred letters of Pyotr Nilus to Bunin were published.

Guido Reni - Bacchus and Ariadne [c.1619-20]

Guido Reni - Bacchus and Ariadne [c.1619-20], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Guido Reni (Bologna, November 4, 1575 – Bologna, August 18, 1642) was an Italian painter of high Baroque style. He is buried with in the Rosary Chapel of the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna.

[Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 86.4 cm]

Georges de la Tour - The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame [c.1638-40]

Georges de la Tour - The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame [c.1638-40], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting by the French artist Georges de la Tour (1593 – 1652) was made around 1638-40. De la Tour’s style reflects Caravaggio, an artist who used light in a very innovative way. He represented the light itself in the picture, and here de la Tour does the same thing. In this painting, the Magdalen is seated looking at a candle, and you see the shadows cast by that flame onto the figure and the environment. That which seems to us a very simple idea was a great innovation in the early part of the 17th century. Many artists following the example of Caravaggio in Italy did this, and the style was also adopted in other parts of Europe. De La Tour’s work is very rare. There are perhaps only 50 paintings known to be by him in the world.

[Oil on canvas, 117 x 91.76 cm]

Martinus Rørbye - Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested [1844]

Martinus Rørbye - Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested [1844], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Martinus Christian Wesseltoft Rørbye (Drammen, May 19, 1803 – Copenhagen, March 29, 1848) was a Danish painter, known both for genre works and landscapes. He was a central figure of the Golden Age of Danish painting during the first half of the 19th century. He is remembered for his genre paintings, his landscapes and his architectural paintings, as well as for the many sketches he made during his numerous travels. He painted numerous scenes of life in Copenhagen, as well as large compositions showing Italian and Turkish landscapes and scenes of folk life. He painted few portraits.

[Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 31.12 x 49.53 cm]