Fernand Piet - Market in Brest [c.1899]

Fernand Piet - Market in Brest [c.1899], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Fernand Piet (1869 – 1942) was a French painter.

[Oil on canvas, 64.7 x 80 cm]

Gigo Gabashvili - The Market

Gigo Gabashvili - The Market, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Gigo Gabashvili, who also painted under the pseudonym Gigo Gabaev, is widely considered to be the founder of the new Critical Realism School of painting in Georgian art. He was born in Tiflis in 1862 and like many other aspiring Georgian artists in the nineteenth century, went to St. Petersburg to study at the prestigious Academy of Arts. His first entry attempt in 1883 was unsuccessful, and he returned to Tiflis where he became Frants Roubaud’s assistant. As Roubaud’s assistant, Gabashvili travelled extensively gathering materials and studies for a series of paintings depicting scenes from the recent Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. With a glowing recommendation from his mentor, Gabashvili was accepted into the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, in 1886, where he won several accolades. He died in Tsikhisdziri, Adjara in 1936.

[Oil on board, 32.5 x 40.5 cm]

Johan Barthold Jongkind - River Scene [1860-80]

Johan Barthold Jongkind - River Scene [1860-80], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This view is traditionally described as a depiction of the river Seine, but the specific site has not been identified. The painting once included a large ship on the right, which may have been part of a previous picture.

Jongkind was born in Latrop (Holland). He was influenced by Isabey. He lived partly in Holland, and partly in France. He specialised in landscapes. He was a friend of Boudin and influenced the young Monet.

[Oil on canvas, 52.1 x 80 cm]

Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral Facade and Tour d’Albane, Morning Effect [1894]

Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral Facade and Tour d’Albane, Morning Effect [1894], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Monet’s series paintings of the 1890s, multiple variations of a single motif conceived, executed, and exhibited as a group, are among his most inventive and remarkable works. In the winter of 1892 the artist spent several months studying and painting the façade of Rouen Cathedral in his native Normandy. From rooms facing the cathedral across a square, Monet concentrated on the analysis of light and its effects on the forms of the façade, changing from one canvas to another as the day progressed. Later he extensively reworked the thirty paintings of the cathedral series in his studio at Giverny. Their encrusted surfaces of dry, thickly layered paint evoke the rough texture of weathered stone, absorbing and reflecting light like the walls of the cathedral itself.

[Oil on canvas, 106.1 x 73.9 cm]

Robert Henri - Cumulus Clouds, East River [1901-02]

Robert Henri - Cumulus Clouds, East River [1901-02], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Robert Henri (Cincinnati, Ohio, June 25, 1865 – New York City, July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art. He began teaching at the New York School of Art in 1902, where his students included Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows and Stuart Davis. In 1905, Henri's wife Linda, long in poor health, died. In the spring of 1929 Henri was chosen as one of the top three living American artists by the Arts Council of New York. Henri died of cancer in the summer of 1929. He was honoured with a memorial exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1931.

[Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm]

Paul Cornoyer - Afternoon Madison Square [1910]

Paul Cornoyer - Afternoon Madison Square [1910], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Paul Cornoyer was born in 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied there at the School of Fine Arts in 1881. His first works were in a Barbizon mode, and his first exhibit was in 1887. In 1889, he went to Paris for further training, studying at the Academie Julien, and returned to St. Louis in 1894. By the early 1890s, his work was more lyrical and tonal, and he applied this style to subjects such as cityscapes and landscapes. He died in East Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1923.

[Oil on canvas, 121.92 x 152.4 cm]

Willem van Herp the Elder - Saint Anthony of Padua Distributing Bread [c.1662]

Willem van Herp the Elder - Saint Anthony of Padua Distributing Bread [c.1662], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The friars on the left are Franciscan and the one in the centre has a Glory, and may be intended to depict Saint Anthony of Padua. The poor on the right, who receive bread from the Franciscans, include two pilgrims. In 1662 van Herp was paid 95 guilders for a painting of Saint Anthony of Padua distributing bread. This may have been the picture; the documented picture was subsequently sent to Spain by the Antwerp dealer, Musson. Van Herp (c.1614 - 1677) was probably born in Antwerp, where he spent his entire working life. He was a painter of narratives.

[Oil on copper, 80 x 114.3 cm]

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agatha Attended by Saint Peter and an Angel in Prison [c.1640-45]

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agatha Attended by Saint Peter and an Angel in Prison [c.1640-45], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

According to an early Christian legend, when a 3rd-century Roman official of Sicily desired the Christian woman Agatha, and she refused to yield to his advances, he had her tortured, and even ordered her breasts cut off. At night in prison, she was visited by a vision of Saint Peter and an angel, and her breasts were miraculously restored. The grey stone of the prison wall was created by letting the slate show through, and it forms a background for the night scene, illuminated by a torch. As opposed to canvas and wood, slate gave a painting almost unlimited durability and the same kind of permanence as sculpture.

[Oil on slate, 34.7 x 49.5 cm]

Erik Mogens Christian Vantore - Coastal Landscape Through A Window

Erik Mogens Christian Vantore - Coastal Landscape Through A Window, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Son of the notable artist Hans Christian Hansen, Erik Mogens Vantore was born in Copenhagen in 1895. He first studied at Copenhagen’s Charlottenberg Art Academy, to which he was admitted at the unusually young age of 14. Vantore furthered his studies in Paris where he was influenced by the Post-Impressionists, particularly by Gauguin and the Nabis. After his return to Denmark, he continued to exhibit successfully in Paris while exhibiting annually at Copenhagen’s Charlottenberg Museum. Vantore achieved both academic and commercial success in his lifetime and his paintings may be found in the permanent collections of museums worldwide. His style is characterised by bravura brushwork, a saturated palette, innovative perspective and a compositional structure that impart freshness and vivacity to his carefully-observed subjects. He died in1977.

[Oil on canvas, 24.5 x 19 inches]

Theo van Rysselberghe - Coastal Scene [c.1892]

Theo van Rysselberghe - Coastal Scene [c.1892], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Van Rysselberghe adopted the pointillist style, creating a composition using countless tiny dots of complementary colours, after seeing the work of Georges Seurat. He formed a close friendship with Seurat's follower, Paul Signac, and in the early 1890s produced a series of deceptively simple, light-filled and densely worked seascapes as van Rysselberghe and Signac travelled and painted together. A distinctive feature of his work is the clusters of white dots sprinkled across the picture surface, as here, which give his paintings an animated, almost dancing quality. The dots also often form swirling decorative patterns, as in this work.

[Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm]

Jacob Storck - View of a Harbour

Jacob Storck - View of a Harbour, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jacob Storck (1641 - c.1688) was a Dutch Baroque Era painter.

[Oil on panel, 65.3 x 98 cm]

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885]

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1885, Seurat went to paint the sea, staying for several weeks at Grandcamp, a Normandy village on the coast of La Manche. Fort Samson was a fifteen-minute walk from Grandcamp. In placing the line of the horizon in this painting a little higher than the middle, Seurat attains a correlation between the earth and the sky that best expresses a feeling of tranquility. The motifs of Seurat's landscapes did not seem fundamentally new in comparison with the old Impressionists. But the differences in both mood and the application of paint, are enormous. While Monet and Renoir painted with brushstrokes which could be large or small, aimed at any direction, existing separately or merging with neighbouring strokes, the methods proposed by Seurat presupposed greater homogeneity and orderliness. His painting immediately begun to be called both divisionist, since it was based on separated brushstrokes, or pointillist, because the strokes were individual dots of paint. Most often, it was called Neo-Impressionist, because of its complex relationship with the art of Monet and Renoir.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 81.5 cm]

Childe Hassam - Tanagra (The Builders, New York) [1918]

Childe Hassam - Tanagra (The Builders, New York) [1918], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolised all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind's reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation's muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam's orderly and prosperous world. 

The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this "blond Aryan girl" provided a buffer against the unruliness of America's immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the painting (the lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screen) suggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamour of a new century.

[Oil on canvas, 149.2 x 149.0 cm]

Dod Proctor - The Tall Girl [1929]

Dod Proctor - The Tall Girl 1929], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dod Proctor (born Doris Shaw, 1892 - 1972) was a Cornish artist, and the wife of Ernest Proctor. From around 1922, Proctor painted a series of simplified, monumental images of young women of her acquaintance. They were typified by the volume of the figures, brought out by her use of light and shadow. During her life-time and after her death her work fell out of favour.

[Oil on canvas, 152 x 76 cm]

Edgar Degas - Horses in a Meadow [1871]

Edgar Degas - Horses in a Meadow [1871], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 31.8 x 40 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - House at Auvers [c.1890]

Vincent van Gogh - House at Auvers [c.1890], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In May 1890, van Gogh moved from the south of France to Auvers, northwest of Paris, painting many of his finest pictures there in a feverish spurt of activity before his suicide in July. Houses at Auvers shows the landscape of early summer. The view from above creates a flattened tapestry of shapes in which the tiled and thatched roofs of the houses form a mesmerising patchwork of colour.

[Oil on canvas, 75.6 x 61.9 cm]

Jan van der Heyden - A View in Cologne [c.1660-65]

Jan van der Heyden - A View in Cologne [c.1660-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The construction of Cologne Cathedral was begun in the middle of the 13th century, continued through the 14th and 15th centuries and was discontinued in the mid-16th century; it was only completed in 1842-80. Here, the unfinished cathedral is seen from the west. The crane on top of the tower was already in position by the second half of the 15th century, and was not removed until 1868. As the surrounding buildings and streets no longer exist, it is not possible to determine the accuracy of this view. Parts of the cathedral are incorrectly rendered. 

Van der Heyden executed a few landscapes and still lifes, but was chiefly a painter of townscapes, notable for their exceptionally detailed handling. Imaginary views, anticipating the capricci (imaginary topographical scenes) of 18th-century Venetian painters, are common among his works - the figures are often by other artists. Van der Heyden was a native of Gorinchem, though his family had moved to Amsterdam by 1650. He was trained, according to his biographer Houbraken, as a glass painter. Before 1661 he travelled extensively in the southern Netherlands and in Germany, making drawings later used in his paintings. From the late 1660s van der Heyden was also engaged in projects to improve street lighting and fire-fighting in Amsterdam.

[Oil on oak, 33.1 x 42.9 cm]

Mary Cassatt - A Woman and a Girl Driving [1881]

Mary Cassatt - A Woman and a Girl Driving [1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cassatt (American, 1844–1926) settled in Paris in 1874 and became the only American to show her works with the Impressionists. She specialised in portraying women's activities. This canvas conveys the comfortable existence of women in her circle and her own support of female empowerment. Cassatt's sister, Lydia, who came to live in Paris in 1877, is seen driving a small carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, enjoying a familiar outing and taking charge of her own path, actually and symbolically. She is accompanied by Odile Fèvre, a niece of Edgar Degas. Lydia's independence and determined concentration are in contrast to the family's passive young groom, who observes from the backward-facing seat only where the carriage has been, not where it is going.

[Oil on canvas, 89.7 x 130.5 cm]

Charles-François Daubigny - Spring Landscape [1863]

Charles-François Daubigny - Spring Landscape [1863], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

As did Monet a few years later, Daubigny (Paris, February 15, 1817 - Paris, February 19, 1878) owned a small studio boat in which he travelled along the Oise and the Seine on the lookout for motifs. The pictures painted from the river often have a panoramic element. Daubigny liked to complete even large paintings out of doors; they thus make a more live impression than most of the works by the Barbizon painters. The Impressionists held him in high esteem as their precursor. He, in turn, as a member of the jury in the Salon, defended their works.

[Oil on canvas, 133 x 240 cm]

Sergey Vasilkovsky - Spring Day in the Ukraine

Sergey Vasilkovsky - Spring Day in the Ukraine, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Sergey Vasilkovsky (1854 – 1917) was a Russian painter.

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Evening [1739-41]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Evening [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This picture of contemporary women disporting themselves at a stream is poking fun at the commonly depicted subject of Diana and her maidens. Diana was goddess of the moon.

[Oil on copper, 28.8 x 36.8 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Afternoon [1739-41]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Afternoon [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is the third in a series of four paintings known as Les Heures du Jour (The Hours of the Day). Two women watch a man and a woman playing backgammon. Gaming was a popular pursuit among the leisured classes of 18th-century France.

[Oil on copper, 28.8 x 36.7 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Morning [1739-41]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Morning [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The four paintings in this series - Morning, Midday, Afternoon, and Evening are also known as Les Heures du Jour (The Hours of the Day). They were painted by February 1741 when engravings of them by Nicolas de Larmessin III were presented to the Academie in Paris. It appears that this painting had been exhibited in the Salon of 1739.

[Oil on copper, 28.3 x 36.4 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Midday [1739-41]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Midday [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Three women and a man who have been picking flowers in a garden have stopped by a sundial, inscribed XII. Two of the figures are checking their watches. Lighthearted pursuits were typically shown in the genre scenes of artists like Watteau, Pater and Lancret.

[Oil on copper, 28.6 x 36.9 cm]

Meindert Hobberma - The Haarlem Lock, Amsterdam [c.1663-65]

Meindert Hobberma - The Haarlem Lock, Amsterdam [c.1663-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Haarlem Lock (Haarlemmersluis) and the Herring-Packers' Tower (Haaringpakkerstoren) are seen from the west side of the Singel Canal, at its junction with the Brouwersgracht. None of the buildings shown has survived. The tower was part of the town's fortifications and dated from the 15th century; its spire was added at the beginning of the 17th century. The view shows the area before alterations of 1661-62, but may have been painted later. Hobbema was living in the Haarlemmerdijk, the corner of which is shown here in the left background, by late 1668. The painting is the only known townscape by Hobbema. Thus the lack of comparable works makes dating the picture difficult; a date of about 1663-65 has been suggested.

[Oil on canvas, 77 x 98 cm]

Albert Chevalier Tayler - The Mirror

Albert Chevalier Tayler - The Mirror, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Albert Chevalier Tayler (Leytonstone, Essex, 1862 – 1925) was an important English artist who specialised in portrait and genre painting, but was also involved in the plein air methods of the Newlyn School. He was a member of the British Royal Academy of Painters, and he studied at Heatherley's School of Art, Royal Academy Schools and with avant garde painters in Paris. He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire.

Axel Fridell - Interior With Napoleon [1925]

Axel Fridell - Interior With Napoleon [1925], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Axel Fridell (Falun, 1894 - Stockholm, 1935) was a Swedish graphic artist and painter. In addition to graphics, he painted in oil, including self-portraits, interiors with figures and landscape motifs from the Stockholm area or Falun, often light and fluffy in nature and with a light and bright colouring. When Fridell died in 1935, just 40 years old, he had in almost two decades, managed to reach the artistic heights that it has taken such as Anders Zorn an entire lifetime to achieve. The cause of death was disseminated lung cancer. He died at St. Erik’s Eye Hospital on Sunday afternoon of May 26, 1935.

[Oil on wood, 45.5 x 55 cm]

Thomas Le Clear - Interior With Portraits [c.1865]

Thomas Le Clear - Interior With Portraits [c.1865], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

By about 1865 American artists were beginning to understand the implications of photography for the art of painting. This canvas reportedly was commissioned by the elder brother of the two children (James and Parnell Sidway) posing in the skylit studio. The paraphernalia of painting are upstaged by the photographer and his gear and the landscape is a mere prop, not an awe-inspiring view. Yet Le Clear does not simply tell a story of photography's triumph over painting. At the time the painting was made, James Sidway, a volunteer firefighter in his mid-twenties, had recently died in a hotel fire; his older sister, Parnell, had died in adolescence, more than fifteen years earlier. Thus, Le Clear may be lauding painters who, unlike photographers, could capture more than the moment at hand, invent narrative, and even restore life to individuals who had passed.

[Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 102.9 cm]

Felice Casorati - Girl on a Red Carpet [1912]

Felice Casorati - Girl on a Red Carpet [1912], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Felice Casorati (December 4, 1883– March 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusual perspective effects. Casorati was born in Navara and showed an early interest in music and art. To please his parents he studied law at the University of Padua until 1906, but his ambition to be a painter was confirmed in 1907 when a painting of his was shown in the Venice Biennale. After 1930 the severity of Casorati's earlier style softened somewhat and his palette brightened. He continued to exhibit widely, winning many awards, including the First Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1938. He was also involved in stage design. He died in Turin in 1963.

Victor Schivert - The Figurine

Victor Schivert - The Figurine, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Victor Schivert (Jassy, 1863 - Munich, 1929) was a Romanian artist.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 55 cm]

Eastman Johnson - Negro Life at the South [1859]

Eastman Johnson - Negro Life at the South [1859], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) fills a scene set in a Washington, D.C., backyard with African Americans who enact virtually every phase of family life: courtship and marriage, motherhood, training the young, and listening to the elderly. Focusing on the black community, he marginalises the white visitor at the right. Johnson seems to have sought a measure of ambiguity in recounting his tale. Such open-ended story lines would characterise many postwar paintings of everyday life. Although the location is urban, he called the painting Negro Life at the South, which invited viewers to see the tenements as outbuildings on a plantation. On the eve of the Civil War, apologists for slavery could read Johnson's narrative for signs of easy living and family solidarity despite forced servitude. Abolitionists could interpret the dilapidated buildings and humbly dressed people as symbols of slavery's oppression of blacks.

[Oil on canvas, 36 x 45.25 inches]

Edmund Charles Tarbell - New England Interior [1906]

Edmund Charles Tarbell - New England Interior [1906], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862–1938) was the leading figure in the group of painters that came to be called the Boston School. He was both an alumnus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and an important teacher there. Between his studies at the Museum School as an aspiring young artist and his appointment as the school's chief instructor of painting in 1890, he honed his education in Paris. There he familiarised himself with both the academic tradition and the new Impressionist style. Like his friend Frank Benson, Tarbell first earned success with brilliant outdoor studies of his family, sunlit scenes of leisure that brought him national acclaim.

At the end of the 1890s Tarbell began to bring Impressionism inside, creating images of elegant women in interiors suffused with light. At first Tarbell drew inspiration from the cropped asymmetry of Edgar Degas's scenes of dancers, but New England Interior and other works like it mark a definitive shift in his art. Rather than using modern painting as his model, Tarbell began to turn to the art of the past. He especially admired the seventeenth-century Dutch masters Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. His interiors, like theirs, often include doorways open to other rooms and paintings within the painting. But Tarbell did not create historical scenes - his models wear contemporary clothes and the settings are modern, often furnished with antiques, Japanese prints, and copies after Old Master paintings. In works like New England Interior Tarbell inculcated the present with the values of the past, employing careful craftsmanship and creating exquisite beauty.

[Oil on canvas, 77.15 x 64.13 cm]

Jean Corot - Woman Gathering Faggots [c.1871-74]

Jean Corot - Woman Gathering Faggots [c.1871-74], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 72.1 x 57.2]

Mark Senior - Runswick Bay

Mark Senior - Runswick Bay, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Mark Senior (English, 1862 - 1927) was a well-known Yorkshire post-Impressionist artist and teacher who was born in Hanging Heaton, Batley in 1862, but lived all his life in Ossett after marrying Alice Brook, the daughter of Ossett mungo manufacturer Thomas Brook in 1886. In the 1890s, Mark Senior established a pattern which was to govern the rest of his working life. Around Easter, the whole family would pack and remove itself to Runswick Bay on the North Yorkshire coast, until October. Here they initially rented a small cottage, but later, in 1919, a larger cottage ‘Hillside’ was built by Senior on land purchased from Gertrude Hudson, one of Senior's pupils.

[Oil on canvas, 79 x 79 cm]

William Glackens - The Shoppers [1907–08]

William Glackens - The Shoppers [1907–08], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject of the painting is a slice of middle-class New York life: well-dressed women shopping for clothes in a department store. The three principal figures are all portraits. The woman standing at centre is Edith Glackens, who is shown inspecting a piece of lingerie offered by a saleswoman. Edith's companion at right is Florence (Mrs. Everett) Shinn. The woman at left, seated at the counter with her back turned to the viewer, represents another family friend, Lillian G. Travis, who was noted for her beautiful auburn hair. Mrs. Travis was an old schoolmate of Edith's from the Art Students League and a frequent visitor to the Glackens's Washington Square apartment. Glackens' paean to feminine consumerism stresses the expanding role that department stores played in the lives of leisured, middle-class women in early-twentieth-century New York (both Edith and Florence Shinn were from moneyed families). In fact, the painting's setting may well be the Wanamaker department store that had only recently opened near Washington Square.

[Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches)

Jean Charles Cazin - Riverbank with Bathers [c.1882]

Jean Charles Cazin - Riverbank with Bathers [c.1882], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jean Charles Cazin (Samer, May 25, 1840 - March 17, 1901) was a French landscape painter and ceramicist. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889. His charming and poetical treatment of landscape is the feature in his tonalism painting which in later years has given them an increasing value among connoisseurs.

[Oil on canvas, 131.2 x 147 cm]

Paul Cezanne - The Large Bathers [c.1906]

Paul Cezanne - The Large Bathers [c.1906], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Near the end of his life Paul Cézanne painted three large canvases of female nudes disporting in a landscape. They derive in part from pastoral images of female bathers, such as the goddess Diana and her maidens, long favoured in French art. These works seem to have been, for Cézanne, the culmination of a lifetime of exploration on the nude, his final testament within the grand tradition of French narrative painting on the nature of the human condition. They differ greatly from one another, these three paintings (the others are in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania, and the National Gallery, London). The Philadelphia version, perhaps because of its unfinished state, is both the most exalted and the most serene. The women command a great stage, very much like goddesses in some grand opera production, with the arched trees acting as the proscenium. They are completely at ease, and for all the motion and activity there is a profound sense of eternal calm and resolution, as well as a quality of monumentality achieved through the most lucid and unlaboured means.

Alexandre Calame - The Lake of Thun [1854]

Alexandre Calame - The Lake of Thun [1854], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Calame painted the Lake of Thun, near Interlaken, several times. The snow-covered mountain is apparently the Blümlisalp. The painter's record-book shows that the picture was originally commissioned in 1852 by H. Vaughan. Calame was born in Vevey, and studied in Geneva from 1829 under Diday. He lost an eye at an early age. He was a landscape painter and specialised in Alpine scenery.

[Oil on canvas, 59.1 x 78.1 cm]

Thomas Faed - Last of the Clan

Thomas Faed - Last of the Clan, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Thomas Faed (Gatehouse of Fleet, June 8, 1826 - London, August 17, 1900) was a Scottish painter. He received his art education in the school of design, Edinburgh and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1849. He went to London three years later, was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1861, and academician in 1864, and retired in 1893. He had much success as a painter of domestic genre, and had considerable executive capacity.

Edgar Degas - Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando [1879]

Edgar Degas - Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando [1879], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The acrobat Miss La La caused a sensation when she performed at the Cirque Fernando in Paris. Here she is shown suspended from the rafters of the circus dome by a rope clenched between her teeth. Degas sought out such striking modern subjects, concentrating on figures in arresting poses. In January 1879 he make a series of drawings at the Cirque Fernando including a pastel study of Miss La La (London, Tate Gallery), which culminated in this painting. We view the spectacle as the audience would have done, gazing up at the daring feat taking place above. The painting was exhibited at the fourth Impressionist exhibition held in April 1879.

[Oil on canvas, 117.2 x 77.5 cm]

David Emile Joseph de Noter - In the Kitchen [1856]

David Emile Joseph de Noter - In the Kitchen [1856], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

David de Noter (1825 – 1875) was born into a family of artists in Brussels. His father, Jean-Baptiste, was a painter of city scenes and interiors, and his uncle, Pierre Francois, was a sculptor, painter and designer. David's brother, Raphael, also became a painter; and the style and subjects done by the brothers share similar qualities. During the 1860’s, de Noter lived and worked in Paris and was known to have shared a studio with J. Goupil in 1864 and at Le Vésinet in 1867. At some point during his career, he toured North Africa, in particular, Algeria.

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 98 cm]

Alfred Henry Maurer - In a Cafe [1905]

Alfred Henry Maurer - In a Cafe [1905], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Alfred Henry Maurer (New York City, April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. Leaving Paris shortly before World War I, he returned to his father's house only to be denied support. For the next seventeen years Maurer painted in a garret in his father's house and was able to gain no critical acclaim. It is extremely difficult to run across any of Maurer’s paintings as most of his work is still privately owned. Maurer took his own life by hanging, several weeks after his father's death. 

[Oil on canvas, 90 x 79.5 cm]

Axel Nilsson - Still Life with Onions

Axel Nilsson - Still Life with Onions, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Axel Nilsson (1889 - 1981) was a Swedish artist.

[Oil on panel, 44 x 39 cm]

Adolphe Monticelli - Still Life, Fruit [c.1878-82]

Adolphe Monticelli - Still Life, Fruit [c.1878-82], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A glass, a bottle (or carafe), a knife and a plate of fruit are seen on a table. Most of Monticelli's still life paintings were made between 1875 and 1885, with the majority being finished in the period from 1879 to 1882. The patterned tablecloth shown here is also present in the artist's Still Life, Oysters, Fish.

[Oil on wood, 45.7 x 61 cm]

Horace Vernet - The Angel of Death [1851]

Horace Vernet - The Angel of Death [1851], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (Paris, June 30, 1789 - Paris, January 17, 1863) was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist Arab subjects. One well known and possibly apocryphal anecdote maintains that when Vernet was asked to remove a certain obnoxious general from one of his paintings, he replied, "I am a painter of history, sire, and I will not violate the truth," hence demonstrating his fidelity to representing war truthfully.

[Oil on canvas, 146 x 113 cm]

Lillian Genth - Adagio [1900-09]

Lillian Genth - Adagio [1900-09], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Lillian Genth (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1876 - New York City, 1953) is known for her paintings of female nudes in landscapes, which she painted at her summer home in the Berkshires. However, later in her career (1928), she abandoned that subject matter for scenes of her travels that included Spain, North Africa, Japan, China, Fiji, Bali, New Guinea, and Thailand where she was commissioned to paint a portrait of the King.

Lillian Mathilde Genth is an anomaly in the history of American Art. For an artist to have received so much attention, both critical and public, during her career and then to fall into almost complete obscurity is difficult to understand. How is it that an artist who received major national and international awards and citations, and who was included in over 230 exhibitions in a thirty year period, can become a mere footnote in the history of American art?

[Oil on canvas, 89.1 x 73.9 cm]

Ken Howard - Mousehole, Summer

Ken Howard - Mousehole, Summer, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Mousehole, is a village and fishing port in Cornwall, England. Mousehole, along with Marazion, was until the 16th century one of the principal ports of Mount's Bay. Before its decline as a major commercial centre, Mousehole also had a number of fairs and markets, including the charter for a market on Tuesdays, with a fair for three days at the festival of St Barnabas, granted to Henry de Tyes in 1292.

Today, Mousehole hosts a vibrant variety of festivals and community activities. Tom Bawcock's Eve is a unique celebration held on December 23 each year to celebrate the ending of a famine in the 16th century by local resident Tom Bawcock. This festival is also the origin of Star Gazey Pie, a mixed fish, egg and potato pie with fish heads protruding through the pastry. Mousehole also holds a small maritime festival every two years called Sea, Salt and Sail.

Edward Seago - On the Beach at Great Yarmouth

Edward Seago - On the Beach at Great Yarmouth, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Born in Norwich on March 31, 1910, Edward Seago, the son of Brian and Mabel, and the younger brother of John, was inextricably linked to the counties of East Anglia by virtue of his life and ancestry. Throughout his life, Seago was consistently plagued by the effects of a rare and mystifying condition of the heart, paroxysmal tachycardia, with which he was first diagnosed as a young boy of eight. Ironically, it was during the extended periods of forced leisure when the boy was rendered house-bound that he was able to realise his great passion and potential for painting. Seago later reflected upon these periods as being ‘spells of sheer delight’ as he was able to practice his precociously sensitive observation of nature and the countryside. Left to his own devices, he learned how to extract from his environment much of the subject matter for his art. After months of illness, he died in London on January 19, 1974.

Aelbert Cuyp - The Small Dort [c.1650-52]

Aelbert Cuyp - The Small Dort [c.1650-52], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dordrecht (Dort) is seen in the background from the south-east, with the Grote Kerk in the centre, and the Vuilpoort, one of the town's water-gates (demolished in 1864) on the left. 

[Oil on oak, 66.4 x 100 cm]

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865]

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This view of the artist's studio was probably painted in Paris. During this period Cézanne divided his time between his native Aix-en-Provence and Paris, and the picture evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. On the right a single flower stands in a vase on a table. A canvas stretcher is visible behind the stove, and a palette and what may be a small picture hang on the wall at the left. The first owner of this work was Cézanne's boyhood friend, the writer Emile Zola.

[Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 cm]