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Gandalf's Gallery was founded as non-profit making, educational site dedicated to the exhibition of art. The gallery claims no copyright over the art exhibited. Visitors may, therefore, download images for purely non-commercial purposes. If you feel that your copyright has been infringed, please contact the gallery immediately.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida - And They Still Say Fish Are Expensive! [1894]

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida - And They Still Say Fish Are Expensive! [1894], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Inside a ship, two aged fisherman with serious, worried expressions tend to a younger one who lies on the deck after an accident. A protective medal hanging from the younger one's torso is supposed to ward off seagoing misfortunes like the one he has just suffered. Various fishing implements and even some fish are visible around the figures. This subject stems from the artist's deep social concerns. The suffering of maritime workers ties in with other paintings Sorolla made around 1890. Here it is directly inspired by the view of that subject offered by writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his novel Flor de Mayo.

The drawing is rigorous and descriptive, but the tradition of Velasquez appears in the use of colour, where ochres predominate. The composition is unbalanced toward one side, giving it great depth. And some aspects, such as the warm lighting coming from the hatchway, foreshadow the importance light will have in this artist's later works.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 151.5 x 204 cm]

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida - Boys on the Beach [1910]

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida - Boys on the Beach [1910], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Three nude boys lie face-down on the beach, enjoying the tail end of the tranquil waves. In this work, Sorolla combines two subjects that were objects of his attention on numerous occasions: children and the beach. These light-filled scenes definitively marked the esthetic that made this artist so popular. Approached with an exquisite analysis, colour is another of the characteristics of his outdoor scenes. Here, the blond hair of the boy in the centre of the composition stands out, and its colour mixes with that of the warm sand. The long, juicy brushstrokes build the painting with touches of great expressivity.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 118 x 185 cm]

Camille Corot - The Ponds of Ville D’Avray

Camille Corot - The Ponds of Ville D’Avray, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Portland Art Museum, Oregon - Oil on canvas, 52 x 81 cm]

Paul-Désiré Trouillebert - A Pond near Nangis [1880-95]

Paul-Désiré Trouillebert - A Pond near Nangis [1880-95], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Paul-Désiré Trouillebert was a famous French Barbizon School painter in the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. He was born in Paris in 1829 and died there on June 28, 1900. He was also interested in the orientalism and produced paintings of nudes.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 66 cm]

Ilkka Lammi - I Can See With Closed Eyes [2000]

Ilkka Lammi - I Can See With Closed Eyes [2000], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Ilkka Lammi Armas (February 9, 1976 - June 24, 2000) was a Finnish painter. 

[Bukowski’s Auctions - Oil on canvas, 114.5 x 180 cm]

Edwin Lord Weeks - The Taj Mahal [1883]

Edwin Lord Weeks - The Taj Mahal [1883], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Weeks (American, 1849 - 1903) was the most avid traveller among the American orientalists. He did not limit his journeys to the Near East, but also visited India in 1882 and again from 1892 through 1894. After returning to his studio in France, he specialised in Indian subjects, which were based on photographs and drawings made during his travels. In this painting, he depicts the famous tomb erected in 1630 by Shah Jahan for his wife.

[Walters Art Museum - Oil on composition board, 52 x 77 cm]

John William Godward - In the Tepidarium

John William Godward - In the Tepidarium, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

John William Godward (Wimbledon, August 9, 1861 – London, December 13, 1922) was an English painter from the end of the Pre-Raphaelite / Neo-Classicist era. He was a protégé of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema but his style of painting fell out of favour with the arrival of painters like Picasso. He committed suicide at the age of 61 and is said to have written in his suicide note that "the world was not big enough" for him and a Picasso. His already estranged family, who had disapproved of him becoming an artist, were ashamed of his suicide and burned his papers. No photographs of Godward are known to survive.

[Private Collection - Oil on canvas, 98.5 x 48.5 cm]

Jonathan Ahn - The Gaze

Jonathan Ahn - The Gaze, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches]

Matthijs Maris - Boat With Willow [1863]

Matthijs Maris - Boat With Willow [1863], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - Oil on wood, 23 x 30 cm]

John Constable - Boat Building Near Flatford Mill [c.1815]

John Constable - Boat Building Near Flatford Mill [c.1815], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The scene is a pleasant summer's day on the banks of the river Stour. A barge is being constructed in Constable's father's boat-yard by the mill to carry his flour down to Mistley in Essex on its way to London. The unfinished boat is shown with a degree of detail unusual for Constable, but it is not painted with any more care than the surrounding trees. The general effect is of a placid, tranquil and uneventful day.

[Victoria & Albert Museum, London - Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 61.6 cm]

Kenyon Cox - Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1887, replica 1908]

Kenyon Cox - Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1887, replica 1908], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 85.1 x 119.7 cm]

Gillis Hafström - Behind the Scenes [1897]

Gillis Hafström - Behind the Scenes [1897], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Gillis Hafström (Gothenburg, January 3, 1841 - 1909) was a Swedish artist. 

[Bukowski’s Autumn Sale, Stockholm - Oil on canvas, 53 x 43 cm]

Nils von Dardel - The Return to the Playgrounds of Youth [1924]

Nils von Dardel - The Return to the Playgrounds of Youth [1924], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Nils von Dardel (Bettna, October 25, 1888 - New York City, May 25, 1943) was a Swedish post-impressionist painter. Von Dardel led a self-destructive, itinerant and hectic life. Many of his later paintings are portraits of people he met on his travels. Around the time of the outbreak of World War II, the Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm mounted a retrospective of his work; this was his final popular breakthrough in his native country.

[Bukowski’s Auctions - Oil on relined canvas, 100 x 82 cm]

Teng Chuah Thean - Mothers and the Child

Teng Chuah Thean - Mothers and the Child, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Teng, as he is popularly known, was born in China in 1912, where he studied at the Amoy Art School. Although batik painting has been around for hundreds of years, it is remarkable that no one before Teng had ever thought of adapting this age-old craft as a medium of fine art. Teng first started in this medium in 1953 and therefore he can be considered the father of Batik Painting in Malaysia. He died in 2008.

[Bukowski’s Auctions - Batik, 92 x 60 cm]

Peter Paul Rubens - Daniel in the Lion’s Den [c.1614-16]

Peter Paul Rubens - Daniel in the Lion’s Den [c.1614-16], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Old Testament prophet Daniel, as chief counselor to the Persian king Darius, aroused the envy of the other royal ministers. Conspiring against the young Hebrew, they forced the king into condemning Daniel to a den of lions. The following dawn Darius, anxious about his friend, had the stone that sealed the entrance rolled away to discover Daniel had been miraculously saved. Rubens depicted this deliverance when, as the beasts squint and yawn at the morning light streaming into their lair, Daniel gives thanks to his God.

The monumental size of the ten lions and their placement close to the viewer heighten the sense of immediacy. Within the asymmetrical, baroque design, Daniel is the focal point even though his position is off-center. Against the brown tones of animals and rocks, his pale flesh is accented by his red and white robes as well as by the blue sky and green vines overhead.

In 1618, Rubens traded Daniel along with eight other paintings and some cash for a collection of over a hundred ancient Roman busts and statues - the prize material of any art gallery in that era. During the transaction, Rubens described this canvas as: "Daniel among many lions, taken from life. Original, entirely by my hand."

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on canvas, 268 x 374.7 cm]

Thomas Cole - The Voyage of Life, Childhood [1842]

Thomas Cole - The Voyage of Life, Childhood [1842], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cole's renowned four–part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the "River of Life." Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of "Youth" and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveller approaches his goal, the ever–more–turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature's fury, evil demons, and self–doubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate.

From the innocence of childhood, to the flush of youthful overconfidence, through the trials and tribulations of middle age, to the hero's triumphant salvation, The Voyage of Life seems intrinsically linked to the Christian doctrine of death and resurrection. Cole's intrepid voyager also may be read as a personification of America, itself at an adolescent stage of development. The artist may have been issuing a dire warning to those caught up in the feverish quest for Manifest Destiny: that unbridled westward expansion and industrialization would have tragic consequences for both man and nature.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on canvas, 134.3 x 195.3 cm]

Matthias Stom - Old Woman Praying [late 1630s or early 1640s]

Matthias Stom - Old Woman Praying [late 1630s or early 1640s], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The earliest known reference to Stom (wrongly called Stomer in modern literature) dates from 1630, when he was living in the same house in Rome that the Utrecht painter Paulus Bor occupied about five years earlier. About 1632 Stom went to Naples, and in the 1640s he was active in Palermo and elsewhere in Sicily. Antonio Ruffo, the nobleman in Messina for whom Rembrandt painted Aristotle with a Bust of Homer in 1653, purchased three works by Stom between 1646 and 1649. Both the name Stom and the usual description of him as "fiamingo" indicate that he was Flemish, not Dutch. He specialised in exaggerated Caravaggesque effects of light and shadow, with leathery surfaces suited to his frequent representation of elderly characters.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 77.8 x 63.8 cm]

Juan Dò - The Sense of Sight

Juan Dò - The Sense of Sight, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Juan Dò (1604? - 1656?) was a Spanish artist.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Overall, with added strips, 75.9 x 63.2 cm]

David Roberts - The Golden Tower [1833]

David Roberts - The Golden Tower [1833], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

David Roberts was one of the British romantic painters who travelled through Spain, capturing images that best represented the landscape and picturesque aspects of the country, especially in Andalusia. Here, he offers an image of the Guadalquivir River where it flows through Seville, with the Torre de Oro (Golden Tower) as the protagonist. The comings and goings of the boats on the water or berthed on the banks perpetuate the exotic atmosphere that romantic outsiders saw in Spain. This work entered the Prado Museum collection in 1943.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on wood, 39 x 48 cm]

David Roberts - The Castle of Alcalá de Guadaíra [1833]

David Roberts - The Castle of Alcalá de Guadaíra [1833], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The broken profile Alcalá de Guadaíra Castle, near Seville, seen in the distance appears in a beautiful sunset reflected on the river. The image is the result of the evocative vision of the romantic Scottish painter David Roberts, a prominent representative of the British landscape, who exerted great influence on Spanish artists, especially in Genaro Pérez Villamil.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on wood, 40 x 48 cm]

Édouard Manet - Boating [1874]

Édouard Manet - Boating [1874], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In the summer of 1874, Manet was staying outside Paris at Gennevilliers, not far from the house in Argenteuil that he had found for the Monet family. He had refused to participate in the independent exhibition organised in the spring by the newly dubbed Impressionists. Nonetheless, Manet clearly wished to adopt the high-keyed palette, sketch-like brushwork, and subject matter centered on leisurely pursuits of his young colleagues. Boating is the manifesto of Manet's new allegiance to Impressionism.

Manet's biographers recount that Rodolphe Leenhoff, the painter's brother-in-law, posed for the figure of the sailor. The simplicity of the composition and the use of broad planes of colour accented by strong diagonals reveal Manet's admiration for Japanese colour wood-block prints. The artist Mary Cassatt, who recommended this acquisition to the New York collectors Louisine and H. O. Havemeyer, called it "the last word in painting."

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm]

Pieter Quast - A Party of Merrymakers [c.1635-39]

Pieter Quast - A Party of Merrymakers [c.1635-39], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Quast worked in the cosmopolitan milieus of Amsterdam and The Hague. His paintings, finished drawings, and a few terra-cotta reliefs reflect awareness of the comic stage and artists as varied as Adriaen Brouwer, Jacques Callot, Adriaen van de Venne, and Pieter Codde. This panel was long attributed to Codde but it is typical of Quast in the late 1630s.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on wood, 37.5 x 49.5 cm]

Caspar David Friedrich - Two Men Contemplating the Moon [c.1825-30]

Caspar David Friedrich - Two Men Contemplating the Moon [c.1825-30], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is the third version of one of this artist's most famous paintings, of which the first (1819) is in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, and the second (c.1824) is in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. The two men contemplating the sinking moon have been identified as Friedrich himself, on the right, and his talented young colleague August Heinrich (1794-1822). The mood of pious contemplation relates to fascination with the moon as expressed in contemporary poetry, literature, philosophy, and music. Both figures are seen from the back so that the viewer can participate in their communion with nature, which the Romantics saw as a manifestation of the Sublime.

Although the landscape is imaginary, it is based on studies after nature that Friedrich had made in various regions at different times. Both men wear Old German dress, which had been adopted in 1815 by radical students as an expression of opposition to the ultraconservative policies then being enforced in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. The staunchly patriotic Friedrich deliberately ignored the 1819 royal decree forbidding this practice and depicted figures in traditional costume until his death.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 34.9 x 43.8 cm]

Claude-Joseph Vernet - Calm at a Mediterranean Port [1770]

Claude-Joseph Vernet - Calm at a Mediterranean Port [1770], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In brilliant detail, Claude-Joseph Vernet (Avignon, 1714 - Paris, 1789) captured the gorgeous weather and leisurely activities of a day by the sea. Fishermen clean the day's catch on a stone pier while several people chat nearby, one of them pointing toward the large ship in the bay. Meanwhile, a man sits and smokes his pipe, the tobacco glowing a bright red. A cumulus cloud, perhaps the remnant of a distant storm, towers to the left of the setting sun. Warm tones of yellow, orange and red predominate, suggesting a hazy sunset after a bright day. 

[Getty Centre, Los Angeles - Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 57.375 inches]

Alfred Sisley - The Road from Versailles to Louveciennes [c.1879]

Alfred Sisley - The Road from Versailles to Louveciennes [c.1879], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In the 1870s, Sisley (English, Paris, 1839 - Moret-sur-Loing, 1899), like his fellow Impressionists Monet and Pissarro, painted in the villages to the north and west of Paris, which were rapidly becoming suburbs of the capital. The landscapes by the three artists often depicted the roads, bridges, and waterways that linked these outlying villages with Paris. 

The site in this painting is the main road between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Sisley's juxtaposition of two figures on the road, a rural labourer pushing a cart and a man clad in the urban uniform of black suit and top hat, alludes to the transformative effects of industrialisation and suburbanisation on the French countryside. Sisley's loose, summary technique in this work is in keeping with his style of the late 1870s, as he moved away from the broken brushwork of his earlier Impressionist paintings.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 55.9 cm]

Camille Pissarro - Barges at Pontoise [1876]

Camille Pissarro - Barges at Pontoise [1876], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1872 Pissarro and his family settled in the village of Pontoise. Of the six views he painted in 1876 of the barges and factories along the banks of the Oise, this one is stylistically the boldest. While each of the brushstrokes serves a descriptive function, attention to detail is minimal.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 46 x 54.9 cm]

Jean-François Millet - Bird’s-Nesters [1874]

Jean-François Millet - Bird’s-Nesters [1874], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This haunting and strange picture, brutishly literal yet terrifyingly generic, is the final painting by Jean-François Millet, a remarkable last testament by one of the most profound artists of the nineteenth century. He drew on his own boyhood experiences in depicting the subject of bird's-nesters, who would hunt great flocks of pigeons at night by blinding them with torchlight and then clubbing them to death. 

By the 1870s Millet's paintings of rural life were among the most famous in France. His subjects are nearly all drawn from the peasantry, done just as the countryside was being depopulated by immigration to the new industrial centers. But unlike many other artists who worked in the very popular specialty of peasant painting, Millet's great genius was his ability to bond his subjects to their native place while simultaneously elevating them to a level of universal humanity. Much of his success was based on his evocation of a communal memory of a lost rural world that was either arcadian or pathetic or a combination of both.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.7 cm]

Willem van Mieris - A Woman and a Fish Pedlar in a Kitchen [1713]

Willem van Mieris - A Woman and a Fish Pedlar in a Kitchen [1713], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

On the sill are two ducks, a basket of snipe, and fish; hanging on the right, a pheasant and two rabbits. The bas-relief is a variant of a 'Triumph of Galatea' relief which appears in several of van Mieris' paintings. This is one of several variations van Mieris painted in the tradition of Gerrit Dou's 'niche paintings' (the depiction of an interior through a window or aperture). 

[National Gallery, London - Oil on oak, 49.5 x 41 cm]

David Rijckaert III - The Alchemist [1649]

David Rijckaert III - The Alchemist [1649], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

David Rijckaert III (Antwerp, baptised December 2, 1612 - November 11, 1661) was a Flemish painter.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on wood, 58 x 86 cm]

Fray Jaun Andres Rizi - San Benito Dinner

Fray Jaun Andres Rizi - San Benito Dinner, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Fray Jaun Andres Rizi (Madrid, 1600 - Monte Cassino, 1681) was a Spanish painter. In 1628 he entered the Benedictine Order, studied in Salamanca, and became Abbot of the Medina del Campo in Madrid. He afterwards went to Rome, where he was made an Archbishop by pope Clement X. He died at Monte Cassino in 1681.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 185 x 216 cm]

Herman Willem Koekkoek - Mill on the Laan

Herman Willem Koekkoek - Mill on the Laan , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Herman Willem Koekkoek (Amsterdam, 1867 - Amsterdam, 1929) was a Dutch artist.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art - Oil on wood, 19.1 x 30.5 cm]

Claude Monet - Morning Haze [1894]

Claude Monet - Morning Haze [1894], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 100.3 cm]

Aniello Falcone - Roman Soldiers in the Circus [c.1640]

Aniello Falcone - Roman Soldiers in the Circus [c.1640], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Nacional Museo del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 92 x 183 cm]

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller - Roll Call of the Last Victims of Terror [c.1850]

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller - Roll Call of the Last Victims of Terror [c.1850], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller (1815 - 1892) was a French painter.

[Art Institute of Chicago, 76.2 x 132 cm]

Goya - Portrait of Joaquina Téllez-Girón y Pimentel, Marchioness of Santa Cruz [1805]

Goya - Portrait of Joaquina Téllez-Girón y Pimentel, Marchioness of Santa Cruz [1805], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The marchioness is shown clad in a very light white dress, lying sideways on a red divan. Her head is decorated with yellow flowers; her left hand is balancing a lyre. Her gaze does not directly fix on the viewer but seems to look distant. Her body does not seem to sit in a natural position, but seemingly floats on the red divan and the pillows. The theme seems almost allegorical, a reference to the ancient Greek theatre. The Prado has exhibited this painting since 1986, after having paid over $6 million to the previous owners.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 124.7 x 207.7 cm]

Angelica Kauffmann - Portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples andSicily, and His Family

Angelica Kauffmann - Portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples and Sicily, and His Family, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Princely Collections not only own the sketch but also the modello for Angelika Kauffmann’s monumental painting of King Ferdinand IV of Sicily and Naples and His Family, which is now in the Museo di Capodimonte of Naples. The extraordinarily large finished painting, over four metres wide, hangs in Naples. The life-size figures we find here are those of the king, his consort, Queen Marie Karoline, a daughter of Maria Theresia, and six of her children. The royal family is posed against the background of a park landscape and is dressed accordingly. The bucolic ideal of a rural life and the ideas of the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau both inform this composition, which reflects the corresponding shift of taste among patrons. These no longer desired to have themselves recorded for posterity in the context of their palaces and other imposing residences. They wished to be shown, rather, under God’s open sky. The modello, a later version of the painting most closely resembling the finished composition, in fact includes the ‘ghost’ of a seventh child (this was the short-lived Prince Joseph, who died in 1783); although painted out, he nonetheless remains visible. By comparison with the finished composition, the sketch and the modello, both in the Princely Collections, are distinguished by their directness and liveliness, and it is through these qualities that they provide such a vivid image of the royal family.

[Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna - Oil on canvas, 72 x 100 cm]