Francis Cadell - Afternoon [1913]

Francis Cadell - Afternoon [1913], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Francis Cadell (Edinburgh, April 12, 1883 - December 6, 1937) was a Scottish painter associated with the Scottish Colourists. Cadell was a left-handed painter. While a student, the President of the Royal Scottish Academy tried to stop him painting with his left hand because 'No artist ever became great who did so.' Cadell swiftly replied 'Sir and did not the great Michelangelo paint with his left hand?' The President did not respond and left the room quickly. A fellow student asked Cadell how he had known that Michelangelo was left-handed. Cadell confessed 'I didn't know but nor did the president.' He is particularly noted for his portraits of glamorous women whom he painted in a loose, impressionistic manner, depicting his subject with vibrant waves of colour. He died in poverty in 1937 in his native Edinburgh.

George Henry & Edward Atkinson Hornel - Druids, Bringing in the Mistletoe [1890]

George Henry & Edward Atkinson Hornel - Druids, Bringing in the Mistletoe [1890] , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Here we see the rite of bringing in the sacred mistletoe, and showing a group of Druids or Celtic priests in richly decorated ceremonial robes and insignia proceeding down a steep hillside in solemn procession. The mistletoe, cut from the sacred oak by a golden sickle held by the chief druid, is ceremoniously received by subordinates in white raiment and borne home reverently on the backs of the white bulls.

Mistletoe is significant as a plant revered by the druids for its magical as well as medicinal properties. In the 1890s there was a revival of interest in Celtic art and folklore; the influence of this can be seen in the use of complex intertwining patterns on the priests' robes and also on the pattern work of the frame. Henry and Hornel were members of a group of artists called the Glasgow Boys who, at the end of the 19th century, revolutionized Scottish painting. This painting, dating from 1890, was the first on which the two artists collaborated and is their most daring composition.

[Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm]

Pio Joris - The Fortune Teller

Pio Joris - The Fortune Teller, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Pio Joris (Rome, June 8, 1843 - Rome, March 6, 1921) was an Italian painter.

[Oil on panel, 15.1 x 22.7 framed]

Fausto Zonaro - Hustle and Bustle on the Galata Bridge in Constantinople

Fausto Zonaro - Hustle and Bustle on the Galata Bridge in Constantinople, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Fausto Zonaro (Masi, Italy, September 18, 1854 - San Remo, Italy, July 19, 1929) attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona which was under the directorship of Napoleone Nani. In 1891 he undertook a long journey to Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, where he quickly succeeded in winning commissions from members of Constantinople’s circle of aristocrats. He probably painted the picture from nature during his stay in the Ottoman capital (1891-1904).

[Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 61.5 cm framed]

Evelyn de Morgan - Phosphorus and Hesperus

Evelyn de Morgan - Phosphorus and Hesperus, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Evelyn De Morgan (August 30, 1855 – May 2, 1919) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter. She was born Evelyn Pickering. Her uncle, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, was a great influence to her works. Evelyn often visited him in Florence where he lived. This also enabled her to study the great artists of the Renaissance; she was particularly fond of the works of Botticelli. This influenced her to move away from the classical subjects favoured by the Slade school and to make her own style. In 1887, she married the ceramicist William de Morgan. They lived together in London until he died in 1917. She died two years later in London and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey.

Henri Gervex - Nu a la Psyche [1910]

Henri Gervex - Nu a la Psyche [1910], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Henri Gervex (1852 - 1929) was a French painter who studied painting under Cabanel, Brisset and Fromentin. His early work belonged almost exclusively to the mythological genre which served as an excuse for the painting of the nude, not always in the best of taste; indeed, his painting entitled Rolla (1878) was rejected by the jury of the Salon for immorality. He afterwards devoted himself to representations of modern life.

[Pastel on paper laid down on canvas, 73 x 59.5 cm]

Edouard Manet - Four Apples [1882]

Edouard Manet - Four Apples [1882], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was sold by Sotheby's on November 4, 2009 for US $1,986,500.

[Oil on canvas, 19 x 24.5 cm]

Elioth Gruner - Frosty Morning [1915]

Elioth Gruner - Frosty Morning [1915], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Elioth Lauritz Leganyer Gruner (December 16, 1882 – October 17, 1939) was an Australian painter. Gruner was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, younger son of Elliott Grüner, a Norwegian-born bailiff, and his Irish wife Mary Ann, who died in 1922. Gruner was brought to Sydney before he was a year old and at an early age showed a desire to draw. Gruner spent much time in finding a suitable subject, and more still in carefully considering it before a brushstroke was made. Gruner became interested in the study of light again, and some excellent work of his latest period combined the qualities of his art and his passion. Gruner suffered from chronic nephritis and died at his home in Waverley.

Alfred Stevens - Storm at Honfleur [1890-91]

Alfred Stevens - Storm at Honfleur [1890-91], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

From 1880 Stevens made regular trips to the Normandy coast for the sake of his health; he suffered from a bronchial condition. The subject of this painting was recorded on a photograph in the artist's possession as 'Bad Weather at Honfleur'. The bold and spontaneous way in which this is painted suggests that, like many of his contemporaries, Stevens was influenced by the vibrant seascapes of Corot.

[Oil on canvas, 66 x 81 cm]

Adolf Friedrich Vollmer - Sea View [1837]

Adolf Friedrich Vollmer Sea View [1837], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adolf Friedrich Vollmer (1806 – 1875) was a German painter.

[Oil on canvas, 63 x 88 cm]

Jacob Jordaens - The Bean King [c.1638]

Jacob Jordaens - The Bean King [c.1638], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Learned in the traditions and legends of the ordinary people, Jacob Jordaens (Antwerp, May 19, 1593 - October 18, 1678) here depicted the festival of the Three Magi or Three Kings, which was celebrated in Flanders every year on January 6. According to old Netherlandish tradition, on this day a large pie was served at table with a single bean hidden somewhere in it. He who found the bean in his slice of pie was declared to be the Bean King.

In depicting the culmination of the bacchanalia, Jordaens manages to convey the atmosphere of uncontrolled emotion and hilarity, giving each character expressive gestures and facial features. In his interpretation, the everyday scene takes on a truly monumental character and can be read as an affirmation of life. The dynamic composition, the exaggerated volume of the forms, the warm golden-brown colouring and the broad painterly style mark out Jordaens as a follower of Rubens and one of the leading masters of the Flemish Baroque.

[Oil on canvas, 157 x 211 cm]

Oskar Conrad Kleineh - City Street with a Procession [1871]

Oskar Conrad Kleineh - City Street with a Procession [1871], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Oskar Conrad Kleineh (September 18, 1846 - November 16, 1919) was a Finnish painter. He visited the Finnish Art Society Drawing School (1863-1864) and then studied at the Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, and St. Petersburg between the years 1866-1878. Kleineh painted mainly in marine and coastal landscapes of the Gulf coast and islands, and sailing images, but also views of the city from across Europe. 

[Oil on canvas, 71 x 121 cm]

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Return of Spring [1886]

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Return of Spring [1886], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In Return of Spring, all the qualities that won Bouguereau acclaim are fully apparent. Plainly referring to Raphael’s famous Galatea, the waking nymph is clearly drawn and modelled to a porcelain-like finish. The three trios of cupids that whirl around her in a garland of flying flesh are exercises in anatomical virtuosity, showing essentially the same figure in a variety of poses. Bouguereau pronounced himself “really thrilled with this . . . painting; the attitude and expression of the young woman are, I think, exactly right.” Not everyone shared this view, and some critics accused the painter of “academic formalism, empty of blood and emotion” when the painting was first exhibited in 1886. It has aroused stronger emotions than that on two separate occasions in Omaha. In 1890 and again in 1976 it was attacked by individuals who clearly found the nudity altogether too realistic.

[Oil on canvas, 201.3 x 117.8 cm]

Paul Jean Gervais - Dura Lex Sed Lex [1905]

Paul Jean Gervais - Dura Lex Sed Lex [1905], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Paul Jean Gervais (1859 - 1936) was a French painter born in Toulouse. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Toulouse and then in Paris where he was a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerome and Gabriel Ferrier.

Alma Erdmann - The Letter

Alma Erdmann - The Letter, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Alma Erdmann (1872 - c.1930) was a German artist.

[Oil on canvas, 96 x 134 cm]

Edouard Dantan - Restoration

Edouard Dantan - Restoration, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

See artist label for further information.

[Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 51.75 inches]

Louis Ritman - Interior [1918]

Louis Ritman - Interior [1918], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The critical success that Louis Ritman enjoyed throughout his career can be attributed in large part to the sunny, impressionistic canvases that he executed in Giverny during the 1910s. Like many other American artists of his time, Ritman travelled from his home in Chicago to Paris as soon as he could afford to pay for the trip. After studying at the Academie Julian, he was accepted into the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. However, it was at one of the legendary cafes in Paris that he became acquainted with Frederick Frieseke, who introduced Ritman to the artistic scene in Giverny.

In 1911, the small French town of Giverny was full of American artists who flocked there to paint the quaint area that was adorned with willow trees along the Epte, thatched cottages, and country gardens. While many of his counterparts were assiduously emulating the work of Claude Monet, the artistic patriarch of Giverny, Ritman chose a more subtle approach when painting the gardens of Giverny. His works were closely associated with American intimism which was by contrast quiet, reserved, and above all, discreet, never outside the parameters of the genteel tradition.

[Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 81.3 cm]

Pierre Bonnard - Girl Playing with a Dog [1913]

Pierre Bonnard - Girl Playing with a Dog [1913], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Pierre Bonnard (3 October 1867 – 23 January 1947) was a French painter and printmaker, a founding member of Les Nabis. Bonnard is known for his intense use of colour, especially via areas built with small brush marks and close values. His often complex compositions, typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family members, are both narrative and autobiographical. His wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several self-portraits, landscapes, and many still lifes which usually depict flowers and fruit.

Bonnard did not paint from life but rather drew his subject, sometimes photographing it as well, and made notes on the colours. He then painted the canvas in his studio from his notes.

[Oil on canvas, 75 cm x 80 cm]

Dosso Dossi - A Bacchanal [c.1515-20]

Dosso Dossi - A Bacchanal [c.1515-20], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject may be taken from Ovid's Fasti and represent an episode during the Feast of Cybele. However, this is not certain and other bacchanalian subjects are possible.The painting is in very poor condition and the quality is hard to assess. It has sometimes been mistaken for the picture which Dosso Dossi is known to have made for the Camerino d'Alabastro in the Castello at Ferrara.

Giovanni di Luteri, known as Dosso Dossi (from his birthplace) was, with his brother Battista, the leading painter in Ferrara in the early 16th century. From 1514 he worked chiefly for the Ferrara court, ruled by Duke Alfonso and then by Duke Ercole d'Este, painting mythological and modern poetic subjects, as well as portraits, decorative frescoes and religious themes. 

[Oil on canvas, 140.9 x 168.2 cm]

Nicolas Poussin - A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term [1632-33]

Nicolas Poussin - A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term [1632-33], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Arcadian revellers drink and dance before a term (a pillar crowned with a torso and head of an ancient god), here either Pan or Priapus, both associated with fertility, rustic dance and drunkenness. In spite of the frantic activity of the dancing figures, some derived from Renaissance precedents, they have been carefully posed to form a structured, flowing design. The figures in this painting have more solidity than in some of Poussin's earlier pictures of Bacchic subjects. The treatment of the landscape here was inspired by Poussin's knowledge of 16th-century Venetian paintings in Roman collections.

[Oil on canvas, 98 x 142.8 cm]

Waldemar Lorentzon - Parisian Street Performers [1926]

Waldemar Lorentzon - Parisian Street Performers [1926], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Waldemar Lorentzon (Halland, June 10, 1899 - Halmstad, June 14, 1984) was a Swedish artist.

[Oil on linen, 101 x 74.5 cm]

J Dehoij - Willem van de Velde Sketching a Sea Battle [1845]

J Dehoij - Willem van de Velde Sketching a Sea Battle [1845], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Dutch marine artists Willem van de Velde and his son, also called Willem, responded to Charles II’s declaration of June 1672 inviting Dutch people to move to England. In Holland, based in Amsterdam, the father made drawings of shipping and battles for the Dutch government, while his son, who had trained as a painter painted similar subjects. Soon after arriving in London they began their first major commission for the king, designs for a set of tapestries of the recent battle of Solebay during the third Anglo-Dutch War. They were paid salaries by the king - the father for making drawings, the son for his paintings. Over the next thirty years assisted by their studio they painted pictures of ships, battles and the sea for the court, the aristocracy and naval officers. After their deaths they became the model for the British marine artists who worked mainly in London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

[Oil on canvas, 91 x 118 cm]

Gabriel Metsu - Two Men with a Sleeping Woman [c.1655-60]

Gabriel Metsu - Two Men with a Sleeping Woman [c.1655-60], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

An inn-keeper's slate, playing cards and a pipe are among the objects on the table. The setting is probably a tavern. The sleeping woman, the innkeeper's wife or a serving maid, has been drinking and smoking. Female drunkenness was a subject of both amusement and moral admonition in 17th-century Dutch genre paintings.

[Oil on oak, 37.1 x 32.4 cm]

Unknown Artist - The Visitation [c.1630]

Unknown Artist - The Visitation [c.1630], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The scene shows the visit made by the Virgin Mary to her elder cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with her son John the Baptist. This episode is described in the New Testament, and immediately follows the visit to Mary of the angel announcing her own miraculous conception of the Son of God.

This painting was at one time ascribed to Murillo, but the use of ultramarine pigment makes it unlikely to have been painted in Spain, and it may be by a French or north Italian artist. The composition is similar to that in Palma Vecchio's treatment of the same subject painted in the early 1520s (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum).

[Oil on canvas, 113.6 x 218 cm]

Jacques Francois Carabain - Town Street

Jacques Francois Carabain - Town Street, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jacques Francois Carabain (1834 - 1907) was a Dutch artist recognised for his paintings of street scenes. He was born in Amsterdam and died a naturalised Belgian in Brussels. Carabain was a student of Doyer and V. Bing at the Amsterdam School of Fine Art and continued his studies in Brussels. He also spent periods abroad in France, Italy, Germany and Austria before moving permanently to Belgium. His paintings were highly detailed studies of the places he visited often containing active street scenes busy with colourful people amongst accurately recorded buildings.

[Oil on canvas, 70 x 53 cm]

Everett Shinn - The Orchestra Pit, Old Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre [1906-07]

Everett Shinn - The Orchestra Pit, Old Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre [1906-07], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Popular commercial performance venues abounded in New York about 1900 and attracted the Ashcan artists' patronage and professional interest. Here, Shinn, who specialised in theatre images, portrays the popular vaudeville house that the impresario F. F. Proctor opened near Madison Square in 1900 and reopened after a major interior renovation in 1906. Shinn immerses the viewer in the scene, placing him in the front row, staring at the crimson velvet curtain that demarcates the pit and at the back of an anonymous musician. Having completed the seventh act in the bill, as the placard to the left of the stage announces, a dancer takes her bow. The image is a world apart, geographically, temperamentally, and stylistically, from mid-century painted stories of rural musical performances.

[Oil on canvas, 44.3 x 49.5 cm]

John Duncan - A Masque of Love [1921]

John Duncan - A Masque of Love [1921], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

John Duncan was born in Dundee, Scotland in the year 1866. His father was a cattleman, but John had always showed both a disinterest in the family business and a propensity for visual art, so much that by the age of 11 he was already a prolific student at the Dundee School of Art. Called a madman by some and a mystic by others, Duncan admitted to hearing "faerie music" whilst he painted. His dreamy, mystical nature led him to fall in love with a woman whom he believed to have discovered the Holy Grail in a well in Glastonbury and who later divorced him. He never remarried and died in 1945.

Maria Szantho - Female Nude

Maria Szantho - Female Nude, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Maria Szantho (Szeged, July 31, 1897 - Nagymagocs, March 11, 1998) was a Hungarian artist. She exhibited from the mid 1920’s at major art galleries such as the Műcsarnok in Budapest. She had a collected exhibition in Budapest in 1936. Her work is timeless. She specialised in portraying women posing nude against a landscape, also still lives and portraits. Her models are hedonistically portrayed, she used elements of impressionism and romance. 

[Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm framed]

Edward Hopper - House in Italian Quarter [1923]

Edward Hopper - House in Italian Quarter [1923], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Edward Hopper was born July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, 25 miles north of New York City, into a family of English, Dutch, French and Welsh ancestry. His maternal grandfather built the house (preserved today as a landmark and community art centre) where he and his sister, Marion, who was two years older, grew up. Hopper's father, Garrett Henry Hopper, was a dry goods merchant. His mother, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper, enjoyed drawing, and both his parents encouraged their son's artistic inclinations and preserved his early sketches of himself, his family and the local countryside. Gangling and self-effacing, Edward, who was over six feet tall at age 12, was teased by his classmates. His differentness probably reinforced solitary pursuits - he gravitated to the river, to sketching, to sailing and to painting. Even as a child, Hopper recalled, he noticed "that the light on the upper part of a house was different than that on the lower part. There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house."

[Watercolour, 50.5 x 60.6 cm]

Thomas Jones - A Wall in Naples [c.1782]

Thomas Jones - A Wall in Naples [c.1782], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject is a wall, pitted with scaffolding holes and apparently stained with the passage of water to the left of the balcony. It is one of a series of remarkable and original plein-air oil sketches on paper, produced by Jones while living in Naples. Like his other views, it has the appearance of an image observed and recorded from the window or roof of his lodgings. To entirely dispense with the usual compositional props of the conventional classical landscape was highly unusual. In doing so, Jones (1742 – 1803) introduced new possibilities for landscape depiction, which would be thoroughly explored and developed in the following century.

[Oil on paper laid on canvas, 11.4 x 16 cm]

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted - Looking out the Window [1908]

Peter Vilhelm Ilsted - Looking out the Window [1908], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Peter Ilsted (1861-1933) was a leading Danish artist and printmaker. Ilsted, Carl Holsoe, and Ilsted’s brother-in-law, Vilhelm Hammershoi, were the leading artists in early 20th century Denmark. All three artists were members of ‘The Free Exhibition’, a progressive art society created around 1890. They are famous for painting images of "Sunshine and Silent Rooms", all in subtle colours. Their works reflects the orderliness of a tranquil life - similar to the earlier works of Vermeer. Their art was later referred to as the ‘Copenhagen Interior School’. These interiors evoke at once a sense of calm, as well as a sense of mystery. The orderly room are often viewed from behind, causing one to wonder if the scenes are really tranquil or something else. James McNeill Whistler, Duret and important art critics were early admirers and collectors of Ilsted’s work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) held an important exhibition on the work of Ilsted, Hammershoi, and Vermeer in 2001.

[Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 59.7 cm]

Claude Monet - Woman in the Garden [1867]

Claude Monet - Woman in the Garden [1867], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is a very early Impressionist work by the group's leader, Claude Monet. The sunlight which floods the paintings of the Impressionists (who did most of their painting out of doors, directly from nature) here plays the central role. Monet spent his childhood in Le Havre, which he periodically visited. The Le Coteaux estate at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre belonged to Monet's cousin, Paul-Eugene Lecadre. Settling here in the summer of 1867, the artist painted several landscapes in the garden of the estate, of which Woman in the Garden of central importance. Dressed in the fashion of the day, the figure of a lady was posed by Lecadre's wife. This lonely silhouette introduces an elegaic, sorrowful note into the painting whilst the bright, light area of the dress plays in important role in the balancing the composition and in demonstrating the interrelationship of light and colour.

Oil on canvas, 82 x 101 cm]

Claude - Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula [1642]

Claude - Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula [1642], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

According to legend Saint Ursula was a British princess who made a pilgrimage to Rome with 11,000 virgin companions. She returned with them to Cologne, where they were all martyred. St Ursula is shown here, in yellow and holding a flag with her emblem, watching her companions embark on the return voyage. The girls carry bows and arrows, the instruments of their martyrdom. The building at the left is based on the Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio, Rome. The canvas was painted in 1641 for Fausto Poli, who was made a cardinal by Pope Urban VIII in 1643.

[Oil on canvas, 112.9 x 149 cm]

Eugene Boudin - Deauville Harbour [c.1888-90]

Eugene Boudin - Deauville Harbour [c.1888-90], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting seems to show the 'bassin à flot', part of the harbour which separates Deauville and Trouville. The 'port des yachts' is just visible beyond the bridge, and the tower to the left is a lighthouse.

[Oil on oak, 28.8 x 41.3 cm]

William Henry Holmes - In Holland

William Henry Holmes - In Holland, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Watercolour, 25.4 x 39.4 cm]

Winslow Homer - Boys in a Dory [1880]

Winslow Homer - Boys in a Dory [1880], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

From the late 1850s until his death, Winslow Homer (Boston, Massachusetts, 1836 - Prout's Neck, Maine, 1910) produced a body of work distinguished by its thoughtful expression and its independence from artistic conventions. A man of multiple talents, Homer excelled equally in the arts of illustration, oil painting, and watercolour. Many of his works, depictions of children at play and in school, of farm girls attending to their work, hunters and their prey, have become classic images of nineteenth-century American life. Others speak to more universal themes such as the primal relationship of man to nature.

[Watercolour and graphite on paper, 25.4 x 35.6 cm]

Lucas Cranach the Elder - Cupid Complaining to Venus [c.1525]

Lucas Cranach the Elder - Cupid Complaining to Venus [c.1525], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cupid complains to Venus of being stung by bees when stealing a honeycomb. This is to be taken as a moral commentary; as the inscription observes: 'life's pleasure is mixed with pain.' The subject derives (but the last two lines of the inscription do not) from Theocritus' Idyll 19 (The Honeycomb Stealer). Two Latin translations of 1522 and 1528 by German scholars are known. Johann Hess, a humanist, made, in his copy of one of them, the manuscript note Tabella Luce, which means Picture by Lucus, perhaps referring to this work by Cranach.

[Oil on wood, 81.3 x 54.6 cm]

Hieronymus Bosch - Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns) [c.1490-1500]

Hieronymus Bosch - Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns) [c.1490-1500], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Four torturers surround Christ, pressing towards him, while he looks out at us. Bosch's picture emphasises the contrast between the brutality of the tormentors and the mild, suffering Christ. Its emotional intensity is achieved in a variety of ways. The half-length figures create a sense of proximity, and the lack of recession in the painting makes it appear very claustrophobic. From the centre of the picture Christ seems to appeal to us to share in his suffering. 

The characterisations here are not just grotesque, but reflect specific ideas. Christ's torturers were often referred to as savage beasts, which may explain why the man at the top right appears to wear a spiked dog collar. The figure at the lower left has a crescent moon of Islam and yellow star of the Jews on his head-dress, which mark him as an opponent of Christianity.

[Oil on oak, 73.5 x 59.1 cm]

Francis W Edmonds - The New Bonnet [1858]

Francis W Edmonds - The New Bonnet [1858], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This work, the last the artist exhibited at the National Academy of Design, exemplifies his gently moralising approach to genre painting. In a setting influenced by the established formulas of seventeenth-century Dutch masters, Edmonds (1806 – 1863) contrasts the daughter’s extravagant purchase with the faults of her disapproving parents. The father’s bottle and glass and the mother’s mirror imply indulgence in drink and vanity, respectively. The poor delivery girl serves as an added moral gibe to the comfortable middle-class family. The elderly man in this painting may depict or be based on Edmonds’ brother, Judge John Worth Edmonds. The view through the door may represent Irving Place, where the judge lived until his death in 1872. The figure of the woman standing beside the old man is almost identical to a figure appearing in a number of works by Edmonds and may have been based on his mother.

[Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76.5 cm]

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince - The Necromancer [c.1775]

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince - The Necromancer [c.1775], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Three versions of this subject are known, including one in the Hermitage, St Petersburg. It is not known which of the three was the one exhibited at the Salon of 1775. Evidently a popular composition, it was also engraved in 1785. Le Prince was born in Metz, and became a pupil of Boucher in Paris; about 1758 he travelled via Holland to Russia, returning to Paris in 1763. In 1765 he became a member of the Academy. He painted some landscapes but was chiefly known for his genre scenes, often of Russian subject-matter.

[Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 63.5 cm]

Bernardo Bellotto - Square with the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden [1751]

Bernardo Bellotto - Square with the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden [1751], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

For further information please see artist label.

[Oil on canvas, 197 x 187 cm]

Canaletto - Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh [1754]

Canaletto - Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh [1754], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The inscription in Italian on the back of the original canvas states that the picture was painted in London in 1754 for the artist's patron Thomas Hollis, and that the view was unique in the artist's work. The Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, was erected as a public venue for various entertainments in 1741 and closed in 1803. Musical concerts were held and Mozart performed there in 1764.

[Oil on canvas, 47 x 75.6 cm]

Thomas Moran - Hot Springs of the Yellowstone [1872]

Thomas Moran - Hot Springs of the Yellowstone [1872], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1872, this vista of the American West would have seemed like a view from another planet. These strange rock terraces holding pools of brightly coloured water are hot springs in what is now Yellowstone National Park.

Most of what artist Thomas Moran painted is accurate. As the hot water bubbles to the surface, it cools and forms the layered terraces. The colour of the water depends on which minerals or algae are present. Where you see red or pink-coloured water, that’s iron oxide; yellow indicates sulphur; green, algae. The stretch of blue in the distance appears when the water gets hotter than 167 degrees. The super-hot water absorbs the red rays of the sun and reflects an intense blue.

The mist and rainbow framing the mountain are probably poetic additions. Moran thought certain “improvements” to nature helped viewers feel the wonder he experienced firsthand. Moran never forgot this trip West. After 1872, he always included a Y (for Yellowstone) in his signature.

[Oil on canvas, 41.1 x 76.2 cm]

Sir Alfred James Munnings - Gypsies on the Downs [1912]

Sir Alfred James Munnings - Gypsies on the Downs [1912], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Sir Alfred James Munnings, PRA, (October 8, 1878 – July 17, 1959) was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken enemy of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund, he earned several prestigious commissions after the Great War that made him wealthy. Alfred Munnings was in Mendham, Suffolk across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk. He was awarded a knighthood in 1944. He died at Castle House, Dedham, Essex. After his death, his wife turned their home in Dedham into a museum of his work. The village pub in Mendham is named after him.

[Oil on canvas, 15½ x 11½ inches]

Tony Minartz - Leaving the Moulin Rouge [1901-02]

Tony Minartz - Leaving the Moulin Rouge [1901-02] , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Antoine Guillaume (Tony) Minartz was born in Cannes in 1870. He was essentially self-taught, though he did benefit from advice and guidance from the Impressionist printmaker Paul Renouard. Minartz first comes to the attention of art history in 1896, when he exhibited with the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He showed with this and other Paris Salons up until 1914. What happened to him in the First World War is unknown, but after the war he seems to have ceased sending work to the Salons. He died in Cannes in 1944.

[Oil on canvas, 55.3 x 46.3 cm]

Studio of Canaletto - The Piazzetta from the Molo, Venice [c.1740]

The Piazzetta from the Molo, Venice [c.1740] Studio of Canaletto, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The view shows the piazzetta, the area between the Piazza San Marco and the waterfront, known as the Molo. On the right is the Doge's Palace and beyond it the basilica of San Marco. In the centre is the Torre dell'Orologio, the clock tower, and on the left the campanile of San Marco. The first building on the left is the Library. The column with the lion of St Mark which stands on the Molo has been omitted. The painting is considered a weak work by a member of Canaletto's studio, perhaps painted in about 1740. Numerous versions of the composition exist.

[Oil on canvas, 100.4 x 107.4 cm]

Perry Nichols - The Red Queen [1953]

Perry Nichols - The Red Queen [1953], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Perry Nichols was born in Dallas, Texas in 1911. He won a high school scholarship to study with Alexandre Hogue at Glen Rose, Texas. He studied with Frank Reaugh in Dallas and exhibited in the Allied Arts Show in the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, winning several awards and major prizes. Nichols also exhibited in the New York World's Fair, Chicago World's Fair and the Chicago Art Institute. He died in 1992.

[Oil on masonite, 76.83 x 60.96 cm]

Frank Myers Boggs - Le Pont Saint Michel

Frank Myers Boggs - Le Pont Saint Michel, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was sold by Sotheby's on October 7, 2008 for US $31,250.

[Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 65.5 cm]

Jules Rene Herve - Le Petit Palais, Paris

Jules Rene Herve - Le Petit Palais, Paris, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was sold by Sotheby's on February 12, 2009 for US $10,000. See artist's label for further details.

[Oil on canvas, 64.7 x 80.8 cm]

Louis-Charles-Auguste Couder - Death of Masaccio [c.1817]

Louis-Charles-Auguste Couder - Death of Masaccio [c.1817], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Louis-Charles-Auguste Couder or Auguste Couder (Paris, April 1, 1790 - Paris, July 21, 1873) was a French painter. He was a student of Jean-Baptiste Regnault and Jacques Louis David, and a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. He married Cornelia Stouf, daughter of sculptor Jean-Baptiste Stouf and is buried in Pere Lachaise.

[Oil on canvas, 45 x 38 cm]