Thomas Eakins - Arcadia [c.1883]

Thomas Eakins - Arcadia [c.1883], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 98.1 x 114.3 cm]

Martin Johnson Heade - Approaching Thunder Storm [1859]

Martin Johnson Heade - Approaching Thunder Storm [1859], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Heade (1819 - 1904) became a good friend of the acclaimed landscape painter Frederic Church (1826–1900), but he worked on the periphery of the Hudson River School. He specialised not in dramatic wilderness subjects, as many of the school did, but preferred more prosaic marshlands and coastal settings. Even when he painted storms, as here, he portrayed not the actual tempest, but its tense preamble of blackening sky and eerily illuminated terrain. This painting was based on a sketch of an approaching storm that Heade witnessed on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay about 1858. The image became the basis for a more elaborate and synthetic version of the subject painted in 1868 (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas).

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 111.8 cm]

Jan van Kessel the Younger - A Family in the Garden [1679]

Jan van Kessel the Younger - A Family in the Garden [1679], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jan van Kessel II (Antwerp, 1612 - Antwerp, 1679) counted his uncle Jan Brueghel the Younger among his teachers. He joined the Antwerp painters' guild in 1645 and specialised in small-scale pictures of subjects gleaned from the natural world such as floral still lifes and allegorical series showing animal kingdoms, the four elements, the senses, or the parts of the world. Obsessed with picturesque detail, van Kessel worked from nature and used illustrated scientific texts as sources for filling his pictures with objects represented with almost scientific accuracy. 

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 127 x 167 cm]

Giovanni Lanfranco - The Funeral of a Roman Emperor [c.1636]

Giovanni Lanfranco - The Funeral of a Roman Emperor [c.1636], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Emperor's funeral was one of the key ceremonies in imperial Rome, it was a preparation for his deification. It was a solemn ceremony that culminated in the act of cremation. The embalmed body of the deceased was arranged on a pyre, around which grieving demonstrations occurred. In the foreground several pairs of gladiators are fighting, an allusion to the funeral games which were held in honour of the emperor.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 335 x 488 cm]

William Henry Burr - The Intelligence Office [1849]

William Henry Burr - The Intelligence Office [1849], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Burr (American, 1819–1908) offers a startling view of the reality for women in the labour force at mid-century. The scene is an employment office where a self-satisfied proprietor offers a lady a selection of his best maids or housekeepers. The chosen girl stares out, resigned to her lot. Behind her are plainer, grimmer candidates. Burr's apparent objectivity is striking: he hints at emotion only in the way one woman grasps the rail while clutching her shawl close to her body, perhaps in desperation. The scene's rather eerie quality, a hint of potential future discord, is reiterated by the sign on the back wall: ‘Agent for Domestics - Warranted Honest.’ The lady seeking a maid must trust the agent and also be aware of the risk of admitting a pretty servant into her household.

[New York Historical Society Museum - Oil on canvas, 55.9 x 68.6 cm]

Marcel André Baschet - Family Reunion at the Home of Madame AdolpheBrisson [1893]

Marcel André Baschet - Family Reunion at the Home of Madame Adolphe Brisson [1893], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Marcel André Baschet (Gagny, August 5, 1862 - Paris, December 28, 1941) was a French portrait painter. On January 3, 1888, he married Jeanne Guillemeteau, and they had two children, one son and one daughter. He became a teacher at the Académie Julian in 1889. From 1907 to 1941, he had a shop at 21 Quai Voltaire in Paris, where a commemorative plaque was placed after his death.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas]

Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer - The Dance [1866]

Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer - The Dance [1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1864 Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer (Seville, December 15, 1833 - Madrid, September 23, 1870) was commissioned by the government to paint a series of paintings that reflected the popular festivals, customs and costumes of the different Spanish regions. This resulted in works such as Dance, a popular Fiesta del Moncayo or Spanish custom of the province of Soria. However a change of government led the painter having to discontinue his work through lack of funding. This work joined the Prado Museum in 1878 from the defunct Museum of the Trinity.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 65 x 101 cm]

George Hendrik Breitner - The Damrak in Amsterdam [c.1903]

George Hendrik Breitner - The Damrak in Amsterdam [c.1903], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

George Hendrik Breitner (Rotterdam, September, 12, 1857 - Amsterdam, June 5, 1923) was a Dutch painter. Amsterdam proved to be a great workplace. Here he painted his city scenes and cityscapes - Dam Square, Damrak and Rokin, but also lesser neighbourhoods of the capital, as the Jordan, had his attention. With rapid brushstrokes he gave a picture of life on the street with his labourers, housewives, dockers, street dogs, etc. Breitner drawings offered often a gray, somewhat depressing picture of the streets of the capital.

[Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm]

Eugene Louis Lami - Concert in the Gallerie des Guise at Chateau d’Eu [1844]

Eugene Louis Lami - Concert in the Gallerie des Guise at Chateau d’Eu [1844], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eugene Louis Lami (January 12, 1800 - December 19, 1890) was a French painter and lithographer. Lami began working in lithography and in 1819 produced a set of 40 lithographs depicting the Spanish cavalry. These, plus a collaboration with Vernet on a large set of lithographs helped build a reputation for doing military scenes which transferred to his paintings.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas, 83 x 172 cm]

Jacob Jordaens - Family of the Painter [1621-22]

Jacob Jordaens - Family of the Painter [1621-22], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The scene is set in a garden, where various animals move freely. These, and the sculptures represent the artist's effort to reflect a lordly atmosphere. His wife, Catharina van Noort, sits with her young daughter. The painter stands with his hand on an armchair, holding a lute. A dog lies at his feet. Alongside the group, a servant holds a basket of grapes, symbolizing family prosperity. 

Jordaens has been identified through an engraving that has the same features. He depicts himself here as the perfect gentleman, dressed in elegant clothing and interested in intellectual and noble activities, such as music. The work must be related with Baroque Flemish artists' interest in dignifying their professional activity, showing themselves to be relevant members of society. 

This painting was made by Jordaens at the height of his professional career. It is listed among Felipe V's paintings at the La Granja Palace in 1746.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 181 x 187 cm]

Carlos de Haes - Cliffs, Guethay [c.1881]

Carlos de Haes - Cliffs, Guethay [c.1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Carlos de Haes (Brussels, January 25, 1829 – Madrid, June 17, 1898) was a Spanish painter from Belgium. He was noted for the Realism in his landscapes, and was considered to be the "first contemporary Spanish artist able to capture something of a particularly Spanish essence in his work". He was cited along with Jenaro Perez Villaamil and Aureliano de Beruete as one of the three Spanish grand masters of landscape painting, the latter of which was his pupil.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 38.5 x 61 cm]

Charles-Francois Daubigny - Alders [1872]

Charles-Francois Daubigny - Alders [1872], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This scene has been identified as a lake in Picardie, Northern France. In 1872 Daubigny travelled to Villerville, a coastal town near Trouville in Normandy, and would have painted this view during the trip. 

Daubigny (1817 - 1878) initially trained with his father, the classical landscape painter Edmond-François Daubigny (1789-1843). Soon after he was apprenticed to an engraver, and he was later to publish two albums of etchings in 1850 and 1851. During this period he sketched in the environs of Paris and the Forest of Fontainebleau, and in 1835 he travelled to Italy. In 1838 he made his debut at the Paris Salon, where he regularly exhibited landscapes for the rest of his life.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on wood, 33 x 57.1 cm]

Prosper Lafaye - Pierre Joseph Guillaume Zimmermann, Pianist, in his Apartment in the Square d’Orleans, Paris

Prosper Lafaye - Pierre Joseph Guillaume Zimmermann, Pianist, in his Apartment in the Square d’Orleans, Paris , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Prosper Lafaye (1806 - 1883) was a French painter.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Albert Cahen d’Anvers [1881]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Albert Cahen d’Anvers [1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicted the self-assured composer Albert Cahen d'Anvers, a former pupil of César Franck, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette at a friend's home. Traditionally, portraits of men were somber, but Renoir combined decorativeness with fidelity to his sitter's appearance. Facial hair was regarded as a powerful indicator of male sexuality, and Renoir shows Cahen d'Anvers's curled mustache echoing the wallpaper's curves, his ruffled red hair referring to the potted plant's feathery leaves. Cahen d'Anvers's authority and status are suggested through his alert, commanding gaze and details such as his elaborate cigarette holder and cravat. 

Renoir hoped that success in portraiture would lead to success in the wider potential market attracted by the Salon. Twenty years into his career, he had become so disenchanted with Impressionism that he called the movement a "blind alley." He modified his style, combining the loose, painterly effects of early works such as La Promenade with Renaissance painting's firm contours and weighty forms. He began receiving portrait commissions, often from wealthy Jewish patrons. Only a year after making this portrait, however, his uncertainty about achieving his aims through portraiture and his increasing anti-Semitism meant that portraiture no longer appeared so promising to him. 

[Getty Centre, Los Angeles - Oil on canvas, 31.4375 x 25.125 inches]

Edgar Degas - The Ballet Class [c.1880]

Edgar Degas - The Ballet Class [c.1880], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In this everyday scene from backstage at the Paris Opéra, a ballet instructor observes two young dancers while a mother sits reading in the foreground. Degas spent a great deal of time in the corridors and rehearsal rooms of the Opéra, where he would have seen mothers like this one managing their young daughters' careers. Girls began official ballet classes at age seven or eight in hopes of becoming premiere dancers by their late teens.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 82.2 x 76.8 cm]

Alfred Sisley - Banks of the Loing River [1885]

Alfred Sisley - Banks of the Loing River [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 55.1 x 73.3 cm]

Alessandro Allori - The Abduction of Proserpine [1570]

Alessandro Allori - The Abduction of Proserpine [1570], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Pluto, god of the Underworld, seizes Proserpine, daughter of the corn-goddess Ceres, ready to carry her down to his kingdom on a chariot drawn by black horses. Because Pluto allowed Proserpine to return to earth each spring for four months, the story recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses symbolised seasonal death and rebirth. 

Yet, even this dire subject takes place in an enchanted setting. Characteristically, Alessandro Allori (Florence, 1535 - Florence, 1607) added playful touches: slender, graceful nymphs, possibly Proserpine's former companions, pick flowers and frolic while being observed by satyrs. The abrupt truncation of Pluto's chariot and horses at the bottom of the panel and the bright, saturated colours display frequent characteristics of Florentine Mannerism. Allori's complicated, twisted poses and his cool, smooth style reflect the influence of his adopted father and master Bronzino. 

Allori painted this panel, along with many others, as decoration for the Villa Salviati, a private home near Florence.

[Getty Centre, Los Angeles - Oil on panel, 90 x 137 inches]

Claude Monet - The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal) [c.1874]

Claude Monet - The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal) [c.1874], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 54.4 x 65.4 cm]

Mariano Fortuny Marsal - The Artist’s Sons in a Japanese Classroom [1874]

Mariano Fortuny Marsal - The Artist’s Sons in a Japanese Classroom [1874], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Mariano Fortuny Marsal (Reus, June 11, 1836 - Rome, November 21, 1874) was the leading Catalan painter of his day, with an international reputation. His brief career encompassed works on a variety of subjects common in the art of the period, including the Romantic fascination with Orientalist themes, historicist genre painting, military painting of Spanish colonial expansion, as well as a prescient loosening of brush-stroke and colour. Fortuny paintings are colourful, with a vivacious iridescent brushstroke that at times recalls the softness of Rococo painting but also anticipates impressionist brushwork. He died somewhat suddenly from an attack of tertian ague, or malaria, contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 44 x 93 cm]

Mariano Fortuny Marsal & Raimundo de Garreta Madrazo - Garden of Fortuny [c.1872]

Mariano Fortuny Marsal & Raimundo de Garreta Madrazo - Garden of Fortuny [c.1872], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1871, Fortuny settled in Granada, in a house at the foot of the Alhambra and there painted the garden surrounding his studio, full of vegetation and the atmosphere captured on a bright sunny summer afternoon. This picture appeared unfinished in Paris in 1875, at which time it was most likely bought by Ramon Errazu. Later, around 1877, Raimundo de Madrazo finished and signed the work, including the figure of his sister Cecilia, wife of Fortuny. This painting entered the Prado Museum as part of the legacy of Ramon de Errazu.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on wood, 40 x 28 cm]

Gustave Courbet - The Waterspout [1866]

Gustave Courbet - The Waterspout [1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas on gypsum board, 43.2 x 65.7 cm]

Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog [1901]

Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog [1901], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 100.2 cm]

Camille Corot - Forest of Fontainebleau [1834]

Camille Corot - Forest of Fontainebleau [1834], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The impressionist style developed as a method to render more accurately the appearance of the natural world, and was principally a technique for landscape painting. Corot, whose career began in the late 1820s when the academic tradition of landscape painting was being revived, was one of the most prolific and influential exponents of the genre. Forest of Fontainebleau, painted for and exhibited at the Salon of 1834, is a historic landscape, the hybrid category devised to elevate the status of landscape painting by combining with it the subjects of history painting. Although Corot's principal subject here was landscape, contemporaries readily identified the reclining woman in the foreground as Mary Magdalene. Her unbound hair and peasant costume, the deer in the background, and her solitude in the wilderness are traditional attributes of the saint.

In accord with academic training, Forest of Fontainebleau was created in the studio on the basis of sketches and studies that had been painted outdoors. The artist's humble attitude toward nature, unostentatious compositions, responsive paint handling, and conscientious clarity and freshness of vision distinguish his work from the formulaic landscapes of academic contemporaries. Corot declined to participate in the first impressionist exhibition, but his pervasive influence was manifest in works by pupils and followers including Pissarro, Morisot, Renoir, Monet, and Sisley.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on canvas, 175.6 x 242.6 cm]

Édouard Louis Dubufe - Congress of Paris in 1856

Édouard Louis Dubufe - Congress of Paris in 1856, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Édouard Louis Dubufe (April 30, 1820 – August 11, 1883) was a French painter. He learned the art of painting from his father, Claude Marie Dubufe and was strongly influenced by the historical paintings of Paul Delaroche. Until the 1840s, he painted primarily historical and biblical scenes, then switched to portrait painting.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas]

Imitator of Thomas Couture - Caught by the Tide [1860-90]

Imitator of Thomas Couture - Caught by the Tide [1860-90], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Formerly believed to be by Gericault, this work is now considered to be by an imitator of Couture. It may have been inspired by Couture's Marie Protectrice dans le Danger (Les Naufragés) in the Chapel of the Virgin in St-Eustace, Paris, which was probably painted between 1851 and 1854.

[National Gallery, London - Oil on canvas, 64.1 x 80.6 cm]

Eulalie Morin - Portrait of Madame Recamier [c.1798-99]

Eulalie Morin - Portrait of Madame Recamier [c.1798-99], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eulalie Morin (1765 - 1837) was a French female painter.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas]

Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Socrates [1787]

Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Socrates [1787], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Accused by the Athenian government of denying the gods and corrupting the young through his teachings, Socrates (469–399 B.C.E.) was offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or being sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. David shows him calmly discoursing on the immortality of the soul with his grief-stricken disciples. 

Painted in 1787 the picture, with its stoic theme, is perhaps David's most perfect Neoclassical statement. The printmaker and publisher John Boydell wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds that it was "the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the stanze of Raphael. . . . This work would have done honour to Athens at the time of Pericles." The subject is loosely based on Plato's Phaedo, but in painting it David consulted a variety of sources, including Diderot's treatise on dramatic poetry of 1758 and works by the poet André Chenier.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 196.2 cm]

Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Marat [1793]

Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Marat [1793], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Death of Marat is a painting of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. It is one of the most famous images of the Revolution. David was the leading French painter, as well as a member of the revolutionary Committee of General Security. The painting shows the radical journalist lying dead in his bath on July 13, 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Painted in the months after Marat's murder, it has been described by T. J. Clark as the first modernist painting, for "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it.”

[Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium - Oil on canvas, 165 x 128 cm]

Lewis Carroll - Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid [1858]

Lewis Carroll - Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid [1858], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Carroll's famous literary works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), were both written for Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Christ Church, Oxford. For Carroll, Alice was more than a favourite model; she was his "ideal child-friend," and a photograph of her, aged seven, adorned the last page of the manuscript he gave her of Alice's Adventures Underground. 

The present image of Alice was most likely inspired by The Beggar Maid, a poem written by Carroll's favorite living poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1842. If Carroll's images define childhood as a fragile state of innocent grace threatened by the experience of growing up and the demands of adults, they also reveal to the contemporary viewer the photographer's erotic imagination. In this provocative portrait of Alice at age seven or eight, posed as a beggar against a neglected garden wall, Carroll arranged the tattered dress to the limits of the permissible, showing as much as possible of her bare chest and limbs, and elicited from her a self-confident, even challenging stance. This outcast beggar will arouse in the passer-by as much lust as pity. Indeed, Alice looks at us with faint suspicion, as if aware that she is being used as an actor in an incomprehensible play. A few years later, a grown-up Alice would pose, with womanly assurance, for Julia Margaret Cameron.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Albumen silver print from glass negative, 16.3 x 10.9 cm]

José Jiménez Aranda - Slave for Sale [c.1892]

José Jiménez Aranda - Slave for Sale [c.1892], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A slave girl, sitting on a carpet in an oriental market modestly bends his head to hide her shame. Around her neck is a sign written in Greek which reads "Rose of 18 years for sale for 800 coins." Around her are the faceless figures of potential buyers. The picture is one of the most striking Spanish painting of the nineteenth century. The artist played with the sensual softness of the girl’s naked body in contrast to the colourful vibrancy the carpet. The modernity of the way the subject is framed, with the suggestion of a ring of men lustfully contemplating the slave, is one of the most striking aspects of the work.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 100 x 82 cm]

Antonio Gisbert Pérez - Execution of Torrijos and His Companions on theBeaches of Malaga [1888]

Antonio Gisbert Pérez - Execution of Torrijos and His Companions on the Beaches of Malaga [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Antonio Gisbert Pérez (Alcoy, December 19, 1834 – Paris, November 27, 1901) was a Spanish artist situated on the cusp between the realist and romantic movements in art. He was known for painting pictures of important events in a country's history in a realistic style, yet clearly with a political aim as well; his variance in styles puts him in the Spanish eclectic school of painters. He generally tried to promote liberal causes in his politics and paintings. He became the first Director of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid in 1868.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 390 x 601 cm]

William Lamb Picknell - The Banks of the Loing [c.1894-97]

William Lamb Picknell - The Banks of the Loing [c.1894-97], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

William Lamb Picknell (October 23, 1853 – August 8, 1897) was an American painter of landscapes, coastal views, and figure genres, known for his rapid painting style. He was born in Hinesburg, Vermont and died in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 148 x 210.8 cm]

Luca Carlevaris - The Bacino, Venice, with the Dogana and a DistantView of the Isola di San Giorgio [c.1709]

Luca Carlevaris - The Bacino, Venice, with the Dogana and a Distant View of the Isola di San Giorgio [c.1709], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 119.7 cm]

Goya - The Clothed Maja [1807-08]

Goya - The Clothed Maja [1807-08], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

An unidentified lady wearing delicate transparent clothing and a yellow jacket with black decorations lies on a green velvet divan with cushions and a spread. There has been a great variety of opinions as to who the sitter is, but her anonymity is maintained in all of the inventories listing this work. Legend would have it that she was the Duchess of Alba, although she has also been identified as Pepita Tudó, Godoy's mistress from 1797 onwards. 

This painting is first mentioned in 1808 along with its companion, The Nude Maja, in the inventory of the property of Manuel Godoy carried out by Frédéric Quillet, an agent of José Bonaparte. In 1813, the two Majas are described as Gypsies in the inventory of Godoy's properties confiscated by King Fernando VII. The present work is more summarily painted than the nude work, which has more subtle transparencies and tonal gradations, as well as some differences in the position of the figure. 

This work entered the Prado Museum in 1901 by way of the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where it had been from 1808 to 1813, and again from 1836 to 1901. In the hiatus between those two periods, it was sequestered by the Inquisition.

[Museo Nacional del Prado - Oil on canvas, 95 x 190 cm]

Goya - The Nude Maja [1797-1800]

Goya - The Nude Maja [1797-1800], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

An image of Venus in the nude, lying on a green velvet divan with pillows and a spread. It is listed for the first time in 1800 as hanging over a door in Manuel Godoy's palace, but without its companion, The Clothed Maja. In 1808 it is mentioned again, along with The Clothed Maja, in the inventory which Frédéric Quillet, José Bonaparte's agent, made of the property of Manuel Godoy, who may have commissioned it. Then, in 1813, the two ladies are described as Gypsies in the inventory of Godoy's property confiscated by King Fernando VII. 

[Museo Nacional del Prado - Oil on canvas, 98 x 191 cm]

Attributed to Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis - Girl with Cherries[c.1491-95]

Attributed to Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis - Girl with Cherries [c.1491-95], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Trained in Milan, Ambrogio de Predis was associated after 1483 with Leonardo da Vinci, with whom he collaborated. The careful study of the positions of the hands and the enigmatic, slight smile both come from Leonardo's example. The painting is sometimes thought to be by another of his followers.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 48.9 x 37.5 cm]

Cornelis Kruseman - Godliness [c.1823]

Cornelis Kruseman - Godliness [c.1823], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cornelis Kruseman (Amsterdam, September 25, 1797 - Lisse, November 14, 1857) was a Dutch painter. 

[Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 153 x 122.5 cm]

Claude Monet - The Garden at Sainte-Adresse [1867]

Claude Monet - The Garden at Sainte-Adresse [1867], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Monet painted this canvas in the summer of 1867 in a Sainte-Adresse garden with a view of Honfleur at the horizon. The models were probably Monet's father, Adolphe, in the foreground; Monet's cousin Jeanne Marguérite Lecadre at the garden fence; Dr. Adolphe Lecadre, her father; and perhaps Lecadre's other daughter, Sophie, the woman seated in the foreground with her back to the viewer. Although this scene projects affluent domesticity, it is by no means a family portrait. Monet's relations with his father were tense that summer, owing to family disapproval of the young artist's liaison with his companion, Camille Doncieux.

Monet called this work "the Chinese painting in which there are flags"; Renoir referred to it as "the Japanese painting with little flags." In the 1860s, the composition's flat horizontal bands of colour would have reminded sophisticated viewers of Japanese colour wood-block prints, which were avidly collected by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Whistler, and others in their circle. The print by the Japanese artist Hokusai that may have inspired this picture remains today at Monet's house at Giverny.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 98.1 x 129.9 cm]

José Casado del Alisal - The Bell of Huesca [1880]

José Casado del Alisal - The Bell of Huesca [1880], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

José Casado del Alisal (Villada, 1832 - Madrid, October 8, 1886) was a Spanish painter.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 356 x 474 cm]

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier - African Venus [1851]

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier - African Venus [1851], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cordier submitted a plaster cast of the bust of an African visitor to Paris to the Salon of 1848, and two years later he again entered it as a bronze. A young African woman served as the model for this companion piece in 1851. Regarded as powerful expressions of nobility and dignity, these sculptures proved to be highly popular: casts were acquired by the Museum of National History in Paris and also by Queen Victoria. The Walters' pair were cast by the Paris foundry Eck and Durand in 1852. These bronzes were esteemed by 19th-century viewers as expressions of human pride and dignity in the face of grave injustice.

[Walters Art Museum, Baltimore - Bronze and gold, height 39.5 cm]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau - An Offering of Thanks [1867]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau - An Offering of Thanks [1867] , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Private Collection - Oil on canvas, 147.2 x 107 cm]

Aert de Gelder - Ahimelech Giving the Sword of Goliath to David [c.1680s]

Aert de Gelder - Ahimelech Giving the Sword of Goliath to David [c.1680s], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The painting's subject comes from the Old Testament: the first book of Samuel, which describes the turning point in David's relationship with King Saul. The priest Ahimelech gives the sword of Goliath to the young David, who won it in battle. When King Saul learned that this symbol of power had been given to David, he had Ahimelech murdered. 

The sleeve and head-dress of the priest Ahimelech reveal scratches and uneven working of the pigment so it catches the light in vivid contrasting highlights. Aert de Gelder (Dordrecht, 1645 - Dordrecht , 1727) made these scratches with a paint knife or the end of a brush, which he often used to highlight the paint surface. De Gelder was a pupil of Rembrandt, and the influence of Rembrandt's late style is evident in his choice of half-length, life-size figures, muted colours, and expressive brushstrokes. 

[Getty Centre, Los Angeles - Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 52 inches]

Unknown Indian Artist - Jain Svetambara Tirthankara in Meditation [First half of the 11th century]

Jain Svetambara Tirthankara in Meditation - India [First half of the 11th century], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

At the heart of daily Jain religious observance is the veneration of the image of the jina, the conceptual basis of which is the pan-Indian ideal of the yogic ascetic. This ancient practice, celebrated in the Vedas (the most ancient Hindu texts), equates the acquisition of spiritual wisdom with the pursuit of advanced forms of meditation and withdrawal from material comforts. In Jainism, the twenty-four liberated souls who are recognized as having attained this elevated state are worshipped as tirthankaras (ford crossers). This jina-tirthankara, seated on a bejeweled throne cushion, was probably intended to represent Mahavira, the historical founder of Jainism, a near contemporary of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the fifth century B.C.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Marble, height 99 cm]

Jean-Charles Cazin - The Route Nationale at Samer

Jean-Charles Cazin - The Route Nationale at Samer, 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. 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. His wife, Marie Cazin (1844–1924), who was his pupil and exhibited her first picture at the Salon in 1876, the same year in which Cazin himself made his debut there, was also a well-known artist and sculptor.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 105.4 x 122.6 cm]

Camille Pissarro - The Route to Versailles, Louveciennes [1869]

Camille Pissarro - The Route to Versailles, Louveciennes [1869], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1869, Pissarro moved to No. 22 on the road to Versailles in the Paris suburb of Louvciennes. He was joined by Claude Monet who was then at nearby Saint Michel. In the winter of 1869/70, they both painted snow scenes showing this roadway from varying angles. The road to Versailles, on the north side of the village, afforded a superb view of Paris in the distance. The impressionists inherited from the Barbizon artists of a generation earlier an interest in the representation of winter, particularly, the challenge of the rendering of snow. Pissarro's early works are relatively rare because the German troops who had been billeted in his house on the road to Versailles during the Franco-Prussian War had wrecked many of them.

[Walters Art Museum, Baltimore - Oil on canvas, 38.4 x 46.3 cm]

Charles Le Brun - The Family of Darius Before Alexander [c.1660]

Charles Le Brun - The Family of Darius Before Alexander [c.1660], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Charles Le Brun (Paris, February 24, 1619 - Paris, February 22, 1690) was a French painter and art theorist. Le Brun primarily worked for King Louis XIV, for whom he executed large altarpieces and battle pieces. His most important paintings are at Versailles. Besides his gigantic labours at Versailles and the Louvre, the number of his works for religious corporations and private patrons is enormous.

[Château de Versailles - Oil on canvas, 164 x 260 cm]

Charles Meynier - The Return of Napoleon to the Island of Lobau after the Battle of Essling [1812]

Charles Meynier - The Return of Napoleon to the Island of Lobau after the Battle of Essling [1812], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Charles Meynier (Paris, 1763 or 1768 - Paris, 1832) was a French painter. A student of Francois-Andre Vincent, Meynier won the second prize in the 1789 prix de Rome competition. He made designs for the bas-reliefs and statues on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and was, from 1816 onward, a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts.

[Château de Versailles - Oil on canvas, 473 x 529 cm]

Aimé Nicolas Morot - Portrait of Gustave Eiffel [1905]

Aimé Nicolas Morot - Portrait of Gustave Eiffel [1905], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Aimé Nicolas Morot (Nancy, 1850 - Dinard, 1913) was a French painter. After producing some extremely remarkable figure paintings in the beginning of his career, he went on to become a society portraitist. Although he travelled widely with his family, he produced no works in the Orientalist genre.

[Château de Versailles - Oil on canvas, 98 x 150 cm]

Franz Xavier Winterhalter - The Young Queen Victoria in 1837 [1842]

Franz Xavier Winterhalter - The Young Queen Victoria in 1837 [1842], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Queen Victoria (May 24, 1819 – January 22, 1901) was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 20, 1837 until her death. From May 1, 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe.” After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances.

[Château de Versailles - Oil on canvas]

Auguste François Biard - Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies

Auguste François Biard - Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Auguste François Biard (June 30, 1799 – June 20, 1882) was a French genre painter. Born at Lyon, he travelled around the world, sketching on the way. He was particularly successful in rendering burlesque groups. His painting, Scenes on the Coast of Africa was the inspiration behind Isaaac Julien’s short film The Attendant (1993). Biard was a known abolitionist against the Atlantic slave trade.

[Chateau de Versailles - Oil on canvas]