Winslow Homer - The Life Line [1884]

Winslow Homer - The Life Line [1884], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The dramatic rescue from a foundering ship shown here was made possible by a recent innovation in lifesaving technology, the breeches buoy. Secured firmly to ship and shore, the device permitted the transfer of stranded passengers to safety by means of a pulley that was hauled back and forth by crews at either end. Cropped down to its essentials, Homer's composition thrusts us into the midst of the action with massive waves rolling past, drenching the semiconscious woman and her anonymous savior. The Life Line was immediately recognised by critics as a major contribution to American art, portraying a heroic, contemporary subject with both painterly virtuosity and detailed observation.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 72.7 x 113.7 cm]

Winslow Homer - The Gulf Stream [1899]

Winslow Homer - The Gulf Stream [1899], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was based upon studies made during Homer's two winter trips to the Bahamas in 1884–85 and 1898–99. First exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1900, the picture was subsequently reworked and "improved" by the artist. Early photographs show changes to the sea and to the back of the ship, making the composition more dramatic and vivid. The painting was shown in this state at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1900–01, and then at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York, where the artist placed on the picture the record asking price of $4,000. There were problems selling the work because of either its high price or its unpleasant subject matter. Homer may have reworked the painting again in the face of this criticism in order to add the rigger on the horizon that signals hope and rescue from the perils of the sea.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 71.4 x 124.8 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Cider [c.1864]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Cider [c.1864], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 129.5 x 252.1 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The River [c.1864]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The River [c.1864], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In a career that spanned fifty years, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes played a seminal role in the resurgence of mural painting in France during the nineteenth century. His first decorative paintings, War and Peace, exhibited at the Salon of 1861, led to the 1864 commissioning of the monumental mural Ave Picardia Nutrix (Hail, Picardy the Nourisher) for a large stairwell in the newly constructed Musée de Picardie in Amiens. Cider and The River, respectively, are studies for the left and right sides of the mural.

Cider and The River present an idealised vision of Picardy's distant past, and their subjects would have resonated particularly in the 1860s, a time when each region of France was rediscovering its unique history, character, and culture as part of a broader movement toward decentralisation.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 129.5 x 252.1 cm]

Luca Carlevarijs - The Bucintoro Departing from the Bacino di San Marco[1710]

Luca Carlevarijs - The Bucintoro Departing from the Bacino di San Marco [1710], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Grand Canal is filled with a colourful array of boats getting ready to make their way out to sea. This is Ascension Day, when Venice celebrates her authority over the sea by conducting a symbolic marriage ceremony with the Adriatic Sea. In front of the Doge's palace, the Doge boards the magnificent two-storied Boat of the State called the Bucintoro, which will head a procession of other boats out to the Porto del Lido. On arrival, the Patriarch of Venice will bless the sea with holy water and the Doge will throw out a ring from a little door in the prow, saying, "In sign of eternal domination, we, the Doge of Venice, marry you, oh sea." 

Luca Carlevarijs (Udine, 1663 - Venice, 1730) carefully delineated the piazza San Marco, framed by the library, the campanile, the basilica, and most prominently, the Doge's palace. Carlevarijs founded the tradition of vedute, or view painting, that flourished in Venice in the 1700s. 

[Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles - Oil on canvas, 53.06 x 102.125 inches]

Canaletto - The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day [c.1745]

Canaletto - The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day [c.1745], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Bucintoro was the ceremonial boat of the Doge, the ruler of the Venetian republic. Once a year on Ascension Day, the Doge and other officials boarded this vessel to participate in a ritual celebrating the marriage of Venice and the sea. Here, the assembled group can be seen lining the dock. The painting is dated by the jagged edge of the bell tower, which was struck by lightning in 1745.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 114.9 x 162.6 cm]

Alexandre Cabanel - The Birth of Venus [1875]

Alexandre Cabanel - The Birth of Venus [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The first version of Cabanel's Birth of Venus (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) created a sensation at the Salon of 1863, which was dubbed the Salon of the Venuses owing to the number of alluring nudes on view. Embodying the ideals of academic art, the careful modeling, silky brushwork, and mythological subject of Cabanel’s canvas proved a winning combination: the Salon picture was purchased by no less than Napoleon III for his personal collection. In 1875, John Wolfe commissioned the present, slightly smaller, replica from Cabanel (French, Montpellier, 1823 - Paris, 1889).

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 106 x 182.6 cm]

Abraham Bloemaert - Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing HerChildren [1591]

Abraham Bloemaert - Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing Her Children [1591], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Niobe was the daughter of the proud King Tantalus of Phrygia. She married Amphion, the king of Thebes, and bore him seven sons and seven daughters. She bragged of her many children and chided the goddess Latona, mother of the twins Apollo and Diana, for having only two. In vengeance, Apollo and Diana carried out a massacre. They are shown in the clouds showering arrows down onto Niobe’s children.

Abraham Bloemaert’s style of painting suits the drama of the tale, full of contrasting shifts between colours, light, and shade as well as complicated poses with bodies viewed from extreme angles. Only 24 years old at the time, the painting sees Bloemaert closely approximating his great role model Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1562-1638), who in the 1580s joined his friends Karel van Mander (1548-1606) and Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) to make his native town of Haarlem the centre of the special Haarlem Mannerist style.

[National Gallery of Denmark]

Henry Lerolle - The Organ Rehearsal [c.1885]

Henry Lerolle - The Organ Rehearsal [c.1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Lerolle (French, Paris, 1848 - Paris, 1929) belonged to a dynamic circle of French intellectuals at the turn of the last century. Along with his brother-in-law, the composer Ernest Chausson, he collected works by Bonnard, Degas, Denis, Renoir, Vuillard, and other contemporaries. 

The Organ Rehearsal is Lerolle's most important painting. Set in the choir loft of the church of Saint-François-Xavier in Paris, the figures are members of the artist’s family and close friends. Lerolle's wife, shown with sheet music on her lap, sits between her two sisters: one is the singer; the other was married to Chausson, who plays the organ. Lerolle appears at left, facing outward. 

This monumental composition was exhibited at the Salon of 1885. The following year, it debuted in New York, in the first major Impressionism exhibition held in America. The picture was a triumph.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 236.9 x 362.6 cm]

Jean Béraud - A Windy Day on the Pont des Arts [c.1880-81]

Jean Béraud - A Windy Day on the Pont des Arts [c.1880-81], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting of about 1880–81 depicts the Pont des Arts, a footbridge spanning the Seine between the Institut de France and the Cour Carré of the Louvre. Béraud (French, St. Petersburd, 1849 - Paris, 1936) positioned himself on the Quai du Louvre; the cupola of the Institut is visible in the background.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 39.7 x 56.5 cm]

Gerard ter Borch - Woman Playing the Theorbo-Lute and a Cavalier[c.1658]

Gerard ter Borch - Woman Playing the Theorbo-Lute and a Cavalier [c.1658], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Ter Borch (Dutch, Zwolle, 1617 - Deventer, 1681) was an exceptionally gifted observer of social behavior as well as physical qualities, such as the surfaces of fine materials or the naturalistic arrangement of objects in space. In this panel of about 1658 a duet, the man seems to be singing, resonates to the heartstrings, while a watch quietly recommends temperance.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on wood, 36.8 x 32.4 cm]

Giovanni Battista Moroni - Abbess Lucrezia Agliardi Vertova [1557]

Giovanni Battista Moroni - Abbess Lucrezia Agliardi Vertova [1557], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Latin inscription reads: "Lucrezia, daughter of the most noble Alessio Agliardi of Bergamo, [and] wife of the most honourable Francesco Cataneo Vertova, herself founded the church of Saint Anne at Albino. 1557"

The Agliardi were a prominent family in the north Italian city of Bergamo. After being widowed, Lucrezia founded the Carmelite convent of Santa Anna. It was there that she was buried and there that this remarkably unidealised portrait hung until around 1797, when the convent was suppressed. Moroni's uncompromising, naturalistic style may have been an important ingredient in the training of the young Caravaggio.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 68.6 cm]

Frederick Carl Frieseke - Summer [1914]

Frederick Carl Frieseke - Summer [1914], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 114.3 x 146.7 cm]

Woutherus Mol - Academy Study of a Man and a Woman [1808]

Woutherus Mol - Academy Study of a Man and a Woman [1808], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Woutherus Mol (March 21, 1785 - August 30, 1857) was a Dutch painter. After the restoration of the Netherlands in 1813 he returned to his home town Haarlem where he further developed his talent by studying the Dutch masters, for which the Amsterdam museum offered him plenty opportunity. His later works were considered to be of inferior quality, and public opinion turned against him, though his friends continued to encourage him. Woutherus Mol had a nervous breakdown, and in 1846, he entered the "Rooms-Katholieke Wees- en armenhuis" (the Catholic almshouse, or Diaconie, which building is currently in use as police station) in Haarlem, where he died in 1857.

[Rijksmusem, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 96 x 83 cm]

Georges de La Tour - The Fortune Teller [probably 1630s]

Georges de La Tour - The Fortune Teller [probably 1630s], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

While an old gypsy crone tells his fortune, a naive youth is robbed by her accomplices, a subject popular among Caravaggesque painters throughout Europe in the 17th century. La Tour's painting can be interpreted as a genre or theatrical scene, or as an allusion to the parable of the prodigal son. It has been variously dated from about 1620 to as late as 1639. The inscription includes the name of the town where La Tour (French, Vic-sur-Seille, 1593 - Lunéville, 1653) lived, Lunéville in Lorraine.

[Oil on canvas, 101.9 x 123.5 cm]

George Willoughby Maynard - In Strange Seas [1889]

George Willoughby Maynard - In Strange Seas [1889], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

George Willoughby Maynard (Washington, D.C., 1843 - 1923) was an American figure, marine, and mural painter. He studied at the National Academy of Design and in Florence and Antwerp. Maynard created decorations for the Library of Congress and the old Metropolitan Opera House, New York City. His In Strange Seas is in the Metropolitan Museum.

[Oil on canvas, 91.8 x 127.8 cm]

Canaletto - View the Arch of Constantine with the Coliseum [1742-45]

Canaletto - View the Arch of Constantine with the Coliseum [1742-45], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Canaletto specialised in vedute, or views, of Venice that he sold to tourists on the Grand Tour in the 1700s. For a brief time in the 1740s, he painted scenes of contemporary life set around the principal monuments of ancient Rome, based either on drawings made during an earlier visit to Rome or on engravings by other artists. Both groups of his views appealed to the traveler as well as the antiquarian. 

Seen through the central bay of the Arch of Constantine is the Colosseum, which Canaletto shifted to the left in the interests of compositional design. Figures converse, stroll, or carry out daily chores in the vicinity of these ancient buildings. To the left, a lone man sits on ruins with his back to the viewer, perhaps sketching or writing. Wealthy tourists and their servants laden with goods contrast with the poor Roman natives who have nothing, such as the woman who lies against the Arch or the man with a cane at the right. In this painting, Canaletto seems to remark on the gulf between Rome's ancient glory and the city's current impoverished state.

[Oil on canvas, 32.25 x 48 inches]

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg - View through Three of theNorth-Western Arches of the Third Storey of the Coliseum in Rome[c.1815-16]

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg - View through Three of the North-Western Arches of the Third Storey of the Coliseum in Rome [c.1815-16], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eckersberg (1783 - 1853) began his open-air painting, previously unknown within Danish art, while in Rome, completing the painting on site. This gave him the opportunity to observe the scene more directly, and the rendition is characterised by great freshness and immediacy. He undoubtedly used binoculars to be able to faithfully reproduce the details in the background. 

With his art firmly anchored in representations of reality, Eckersberg laid down the foundations for the next three or four decades of Danish painting, thus helping to create the Golden Age of Danish art. Eckersberg was appointed professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1818, giving his students the chance to study his Roman scenes at the residence provided for him at Charlottenborg.

Gabriël Metsu - A Visit to the Nursery [1661]

Gabriël Metsu - A Visit to the Nursery [1661], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In an elegantly furnished bedroom the parents of a newborn baby receive a congratulatory visit from a lady. The painting of a storm at sea above the mantlepiece probably refers to the perils of life awaiting the child. The picture is among Metsu's most ambitious and harmonious works. In the seventeenth century it was the subject of a poem by Jan Vos, and in 1721 it was highly praised by Houbraken for the treatment of textures and the lifelike expressions of the figures. The graceful gestures may reflect the influence of Gerard ter Borch.

[Oil on canvas, 77.5 x 81.3 cm]

Jan Steen - A Young Woman Playing a Harpsichord to a Young Man [c.1659]

Jan Steen - A Young Woman Playing a Harpsichord to a Young Man [c.1659], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In contrast to Steen's characteristic scenes of dissolute households and festive abandon, this painting shows an interior within a stone arch in the manner of Dou and the Leiden fijnschilders (Fine Painters). A girl playing the virginals, or as here, a harpsichord, was one of the most popular subjects with Dutch 17th-century painters, and the instrument is inscribed with popular quotations from the Bible. The inscription reads: ACTA VIRUM / PROBANT (actions prove the man), which may be a witty and ironic comment on this scene of rather passive flirtation. On the inner side of the instrument one can read: 'Soli Deo Gloria' (Glory to God alone). 

[Oil on oak, 42.3 x 33 cm]

Evan Wilson - Textures

Evan Wilson - Textures, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches]

John Constable - Study of Clouds, Hampstead Heath [c.1821-22]

John Constable - Study of Clouds, Hampstead Heath [c.1821-22], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

From 1819 to 1826 John Constable rented various small houses in Hampstead, an escape in the summer months from the bustle and pollution of London, but an easy coach journey from his house and painting room in Charlotte Street. Hampstead Heath, with its panoramic views and fresh breezes, had attracted writers such as John Keats and Leigh Hunt and artists such as John Linnell, William Collins and F W Watts to live there in the second and third decade of the nineteenth century. It was an ideal spot for Constable’s wife Maria, who was in delicate health, and her growing brood of children. The family settled there permanently, at 6 Well Walk, in 1827.

In his early summers at Hampstead, particularly in 1821-22, Constable produced an extraordinary series of nearly one hundred plein air sketches of skies. Mostly in oil on prepared paper, they range from full-size 20 x 24 inch standard paper sheets to fractions of such sheets: the present work is roughly an eighth of such a sheet. Subjects range from hot sunsets viewed through a fringe of trees at the western edge of the Heath, to pure cloud studies, to works such as the present one, where a delicate cloudscape is anchored and put in context by the merest line of horizon.

[Oil on paper laid down on board, 14 x 21.5 cm]

Henri Rousseau - A Centennial of Independence [1892]

Henri Rousseau - A Centennial of Independence [1892], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Henri Rousseau commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of the proclamation of the first French Republic in 1792. Peasants dance the farandole, a popular southern French dance, around three liberty trees and two female figures representing the First and Third Republics. Rousseau copied the dancers from a French magazine illustration but added waving banners, the liberty poles, and the allegorical figures. A wagon in the background is full of costumed musicians, reminiscent of parades the artist had seen. He used brilliant colours and solid forms to express the happiness of the scene symbolising good government. To the right, the erect posture of the dignified republican leaders signals the solidity of the French Republic.

[Oil on canvas, 44 x 71.875 inches]

Cornelis Kruseman - A Sense Of [1830]

Cornelis Kruseman - A Sense Of [1830], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 102 x 120 cm]

Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Florinda [1853]

Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Florinda [1853], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting depicts an episode from the legend of Roderick, the last king of the Spanish Visigoths. After spying on his maids of honour to determine the fairest among them, the king chose Florinda (at centre left), who became the object of his love. In revenge, Florinda's father called the Arabs into Spain and brought about the conquest. This painting, which was shown at the Salon of 1853, is a replica of a version of the same size given by Queen Victoria to Prince Albert in 1852.

[Oil on canvas, 178.4 x 245.7 cm]

Emanuel Leutze - Washington Crossing the Delaware [1851]

Emanuel Leutze - Washington Crossing the Delaware [1851], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Leutze's depiction of Washington's attack on the Hessians at Trenton on December 25, 1776, was a great success in America and in Germany. Leutze (American, Schwäbisch Gmünd, 1816 - Washington, D.C., 1868) began his first version of this subject in 1849. It was damaged in his studio by fire in 1850 and, although restored and acquired by the Bremen Kunsthalle, was again destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942. In 1850, Leutze began this version of the subject, which was placed on exhibition in New York during October of 1851. At this showing Marshall O. Roberts bought the canvas for the then enormous sum of $10,000. In 1853, M. Knoedler published an engraving of it. Many studies for the painting exist, as do copies by other artists.

[Oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm]

Therese Schwartze - Three Girls from the Amsterdam Orphanage [1885]

Therese Schwartze - Three Girls from the Amsterdam Orphanage [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 96 cm]

Pierre van Laere Hans - Susanna and the Elders [1820]

Pierre van Laere Hans - Susanna and the Elders [1820], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 135 x 96 cm]

Jan Toorop - Portrait of Marie Jeannette Lange [1900]

Jan Toorop - Portrait of Marie Jeannette Lange [1900], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 77.4 cm]

Paul Signac - Sailing Ships [1895]

Paul Signac - Sailing Ships [1895], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Colour lithograph, 40.3 x 32.4 cm]

Fitz Henry Lane - Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbour [1862]

Fitz Henry Lane - Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbour [1862], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Lane (1804 - 1865) returned to his native Gloucester from Boston in 1848. His works of the 1850s and 1860s are successively purged of genre and topographical elements, becoming increasingly spare and essential. By 1862, Lane had engineered a seamless, self-effacing style, possibly influenced by the works of Martin Johnson Heade. Stage Fort, once the site of military fortifications, sits on an arching land form used to lead the viewer's eye into the glowing, lucid, and almost eerily still distance. Despite the disjuncture between the virtually surreal, meticulously painted foreground and the sheer plane of water near the horizon, this work marks the transition to Lane's final, taut, elemental style. The painting's disquieting stasis, even with its hopeful pink and golden glow, creates a hermetic, elegiac mood found in many of Lane's late works.

[Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 152.4 cm]

Willem Duyster - Soldiers Fighting over Booty in a Barn [c.1623-24]

Willem Duyster - Soldiers Fighting over Booty in a Barn [c.1623-24], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Duyster's treatment of the subject is meant to be satirical. These soldiers, who are fighting over the distribution of booty, are dressed in elaborate finery entirely unsuited to the battle field. Willem Duyster (1599 – 1635) was a painter from Amsterdam who specialised in small-scale portraits and genre paintings. Duyster is an adopted surname, a pun on the name of his house 'De Duystere Wereld' (the dark world).

[Oil on oak, 37.6 x 57 cm]

Hendrik Johannes Weissenbruch - The Shipping Canal at Rijswijk [1868]

Hendrik Johannes Weissenbruch - The Shipping Canal at Rijswijk [1868], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This landscape depicts the countryside around The Hague, featuring certain specific aspects of the area: the shipping canal, with sailing boats, Laak mill and the tower of Binckhorst castle. On the opposite bank is the towpath along which barges were towed. Left, in the foreground, is a woman lifting one child and holding another's hand. They are painted rather sketchily, like part of the landscape. The painting appears to be a spontaneous snapshot of a piece of countryside on a blustery day in the summer. However, Weissenbruch (1824 - 1903) painted the scene in his studio, using sketches he had made outdoors before.

[Oil on panel, 31 x 50 cm]

William Orpen - Self-Portrait [c.1910]

William Orpen - Self-Portrait [c.1910], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Born in Ireland, William Orpen studied in Dublin from 1892 to 1896 and went to London for further study at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1896. For the rest of his life, he lived and worked in London. There he received a number of honors, including membership in the New English Art Club, a governmental appointment as an official war artist during World War I, and a knighthood in 1918. He continued to work as a fashionable portrait painter during the 1920s, portraying wealthy and prestigious sitters in a traditional, highly polished style that rejected more recent developments in avant-garde art. 

This self-portrait, also known as Leading the Life in the West, refers to Orpen's life as a young artist in the West End of London. Orpen stands reflected full-length in a mirror in his studio, wearing a bowler hat and holding gloves and a riding crop. A shelf below the mirror holds paintbrushes and rags, the tools of the artist's trade, as well as several bottles of liquor. Various pieces of correspondence, including an I.O.U. signed by Orpen, are tucked behind the frame of the mirror, further testifying to the pleasures and distractions of the painter's early career. The space of the picture is shallow but complex, with Orpen using his skills as a draftsman to resolve the challenges of surface, lighting, and reflection that he has set for himself.

[Oil on canvas, 101.9 x 84.1 cm]

Georges de la Tour - The Repentant Magdalen [c.1635-40]

Georges de la Tour - The Repentant Magdalen [c.1635-40], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

According to the tenets of the 17th–century Catholic church, Mary Magdalen was an example of the repentant sinner and consequently a symbol of the Sacrament of Penance. According to legend, Mary led a dissolute life until her sister Martha persuaded her to listen to Jesus Christ. She became one of Christ's most devoted followers and he absolved her of her former sins.

In Georges de La Tour's sombre canvas Mary is shown in profile seated at a table. A candle is the source of light in the composition, but the light also carries a spiritual meaning as it casts a golden glow on the saint's face and the objects assembled on the table. The candle light silhouettes Mary's left hand which rests on a skull that is placed on a book. The skull is reflected in a mirror. The skull and mirror are emblems of vanitas, implying the transience of life.

The simplification of forms, reduced palette, and attention to details evoke a haunting silence that is unique to La Tour's work. La Tour's intense naturalism rendered religious allegory accessible to every viewer. Although his work is deeply spiritual in tone, the solidity and massing of the forms reveal the same emphasis on clarity and symmetry that pervaded contemporary history painting and was a hallmark of French baroque art.

[Oil on canvas, 113 x 92.7 cm]

Ivan Shishkin - Road in the Rye [1866]

Ivan Shishkin - Road in the Rye [1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 27 x 71 cm]

Francis William Edmonds - The New Bonnet [1858]

Francis William 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 (American, Hudson, New York, 1806 - Bronxville, New York, 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's 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]

Canaletto - Porta Portello, Padua [c.1741-42]

Canaletto - Porta Portello, Padua [c.1741-42], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 62 x 109 cm]

Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace [1770]

Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace [1770], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In this gentle allegory of peace by Louis Jean François Lagrenée, Mars, the Roman god of War, throws back the rich green bed curtains that frame the scene. As the drapery parts, the morning light spills in to reveal the form of the sleeping Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Mars gazes at her, utterly captivated by her beauty. Her love has tempered his fierce character, and his shield and sword lie abandoned on the floor. Echoing the lovers' bliss, a pair of white doves, symbolizing Peace, build a nest in Mars's helmet. 

Lagrenée (1725 - 1805) created his finest works, including this small, jewel-like painting, around 1770. The lavish folds of drapery, the delicate play of light over fabric and skin, and the rich, restrained palette combine to create a captivatingly beautiful image. 

[Oil on canvas, 33.57 x 29.75 inches]

Edvard Perseus - Nude Model [1872]

Edvard Perseus - Nude Model [1872], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Edvard Perseus (Lund, December 23, 1841 - Stockholm, October 7, 1890) was a Swedish artist.

[Oil on canvas, 142 x 102 cm]

Bartolome Esteban Murillo - Isaac Blessing Jacob [c.1660]

Bartolome Esteban Murillo - Isaac Blessing Jacob [c.1660], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Murillo was apprenticed early to the painter Juan del Castillo. When, in 1639, Castillo left Seville for Cadiz, Murillo did not enter any workshop of a known artist, as it was the traditional way of all the beginners, but preferred to stay independent. It is said that to gain a living Murillo started to make sargas - cheap paintings on rough canvas sold at country fairs, and shipped to America by traders. Obviously his paintings appealed to the taste of the public, besides they revealed a certain talent of the young man. That was why the Franciscan monastery in Seville commissioned this unknown artist with a cycle of 11 paintings with scenes from the lives of Franciscan saints, which, after their execution, brought Murillo fame. The artist seldom dated his works.

[Oil on canvas, 245 x 357 cm]

Angel Ramiro Sanchez - Los Amigos

Angel Ramiro Sanchez - Los Amigos, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on linen, 62.9 x 47.2 inches]

David Teniers the Younger - Guardroom with the Deliverance of SaintPeter [c.1645-47]

David Teniers the Younger - Guardroom with the Deliverance of Saint Peter [c.1645-47], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Teniers's talents as a still life painter, observer of folksy figures, and popular moralist are amply evident in this panel of about 1645–47. By placing Saint Peter in prison in the background of a modern guardroom scene, the artist makes a pointed comparison between everyday life in his own time and in that of Herod.

[Oil on wood, 55.2 x 75.9 cm]

Charles Robert Leslie - The Last Throw [c.1840]

Charles Robert Leslie - The Last Throw [c.1840], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Charles Robert Leslie (London, October 19, 1794 - May 5, 1859) was an English genre painter. In addition to his skill as an artist, Leslie was a ready and pleasant writer. His Life of his friend Constable, the landscape painter, appeared in 1843, and his Handbook for Young Painters, a volume embodying the substance of his lectures as professor of painting to the Royal Academy, in 1855.

[Oil on canvas, 47 x 96.5 cm]

George Caleb Bingham - Fur Traders Descending the Missouri [1845]

George Caleb Bingham - Fur Traders Descending the Missouri [1845], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

On June 4, 1845, Bingham (American, Augusta County, Virginia, 1811 - Kansas City, Missouri) returned from a winter stay in central Missouri to St. Louis, bringing with him several paintings and many sketches. This apparently was one of the pictures that he brought with him, and he sent it later that year for sale to the American Art-Union. It was first called French Trader Half Breed Son, but the Art-Union gave it the title by which it is now known. The solemn, motionless scene immortalises the vanished world of the American frontier, constructed for a northeastern audience. 

[Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.7 cm]

Edward Lamson Henry - The 9-45 Accommodation [1867]

Edward Lamson Henry - The 9-45 Accommodation [1867], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Edward Lamson Henry (Charleston, South Carolina, January 12, 1841 - May 9, 1919) was an American genre painter. As a painter of colonial and early American themes and incidents of rural life, he displays a quaint humour. Among his best-known compositions are some of early railroad travel, incidents of stage coach and canal boat journeys, rendered with much detail on a minute scale.

[Oil on canvas, 40.6 x 77.8 cm]

Harald Slott-Møller - Danish Landscape [1891]

Harald Slott-Møller - Danish Landscape [1891], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Harald Slott-Møller (Copenhagen, August 17, 1864 - Copenhagen, October 20, 1937) was a Danish painter and ceramist. Harald Slott-Møller is known for his portraits of prominent Southern Jutland and South Schleswig. The portraits appear, each with its individual background, a landscape or some characteristic buildings.

[Oil and gold bronze on cast iron plate, 41 x 70 cm]

Anton Mauve - Changing Pasture [c.1880s]

Anton Mauve - Changing Pasture [c.1880s], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, The Hague became the centre of a major school of landscape painting. Its principal members were the Maris brothers, Josef Israels, H. W. Mesdag, and Mauve (Dutch, 1838 - 1888), who settled in The Hague in 1874. Inspired by J. F. Millet and other members of the Barbizon School, whose work could be seen in the Goupil Gallery in The Hague and in Mesdag's personal collection, they shared a commitment to record the peasant life, gray skies, and flat terrain of their native country. Changing Pasture reflects these interests and is a characteristic work of the last decade of Mauve's life.

[Oil on canvas, 61 x 100.6 cm]

François Hubert Drouais - Madame Charles Simon Favart [1757]

François Hubert Drouais - Madame Charles Simon Favart [1757], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This picture, signed and dated 1757, has been said to represent Marie Justine Benoîte Cabaret Duronceray (1727–1772), who first appeared on the Paris stage at the Foire Saint-Germain in 1744 or 1745, and thereafter married Charles Simon Favart (1710–1792), writer, librettist, and director of the Opéra Comique and the Comédie Italienne. From 1751 until 1769 Madame Favart reigned supreme in Paris as a comic actress. She was also a singer and dancer and played the harp and harpsichord. Among her most famous roles was that of the peasant heroine in Bastien et Bastienne (1753), in which she effected a revolution in theatrical costume by wearing authentic peasant dress.

[Oil on canvas, 80 x 64.8 cm]

Edgar Degas - Convalescent [c.1872-87]

Edgar Degas - Convalescent [c.1872-87], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Although the identity of the sitter in this portrait is a mystery, Edgar Degas conveyed her character by capturing the overwhelming sorrow to which she has succumbed. Posed with her head tilted and leaning against the back of her left hand, she appears weary. Her languorous expression and red-rimmed eyes, together with the limp right arm hanging at her side, suggest a physical or emotional malady, though nothing in the painting confirms the cause of her affliction. Hidden beneath a brown robe and full white gown, her pose is ambiguous; it is unclear if she sits, stands, or leans. The Convalescent attests to Degas's interest in the world of women - their physical characteristics and surroundings, and their complex emotional and psychological conditions. 

Unlike traditional nineteenth-century portraits, which were commissioned and usually left the artist's studio upon completion, this depiction of an unidentified woman remained in Degas's studio for at least fifteen years. The painting is unconventional in other ways as well; The Convalescent is more psychologically suggestive and spatially ambiguous than typical portraits of the time, such as Franz Xaver Winterhalter's official portrait, Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn. Degas's thick, unblended brushstrokes and flattened space bring the figure forward, conveying informality and intimacy.

[Oil on canvas, 25.625 x 18.5 inches]