Gilbert Stuart - Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick [1790-91]

Gilbert Stuart - Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick [1790-91], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Seeking to enliven their portraits, some painters reiterated their sitters' real-life parlour behaviour and polite accomplishments. Responding to a commission from Dublin's distinguished Foster family, Stuart (American, 1755 – 1828) enlisted the pastime of embroidery to help tell a story. He puts on display the teenaged Anna Dorothea, a marriageable aristocratic girl in want of a good match, perhaps even love, and lets her expert sewing skills carry the narrative. He shows her working on a tambour frame, which indicates that she has graduated from mere samplers to significant projects suitable for framing or use in upholstery. In contrast, he portrays her cousin Charlotte Anna Dick in profile, as befits a younger not-yet-marriage-age lass who serves merely as an accomplice to Anna Dorothea's dual tasks of embroidering and of finding a husband.

[Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 94 cm]

Ilya Repin - The Volga Barge Haulers [1873]

Ilya Repin - The Volga Barge Haulers [1873], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (Chuhuiv, Russian Empire, August 5, 1844, – Kuokkala, Finland, September 29, 1930) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model progressive and realist to be imitated by Socialist Realist artists in the USSR.

Johannes Vermeer - The Little Street [c.1658]

Johannes Vermeer - The Little Street [c.1658], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In a cobblestone street are two houses with a gate opening onto the passageway between them. A woman sits in an open doorway, busy sewing; two children are playing on the stoop. Soapy water is washing down a small runnel between the paving stones - probably the woman in the passageway has just scrubbed her part of the stoop. Vermeer has recorded this everyday scene with apparent casualness. Although world-famous, not much is known about Vermeer's Little Street. In fact the original location has never been identified, and indeed may never have existed. But more significant is the atmosphere of the picture. The women are diligently employed while the children are absorbed at play. The scene emanates tranquillity and security.

In this picture the sky is cloudy and the colours are muted. Besides brown and red there are touches of blue in the sky, the garments of the woman who is furthest away, and the plant at the left. When first painted the ivy was greener, but the yellow pigment in the paint has faded. Nevertheless, the painting appears fresh, thanks to the white plasterwork. Against this, the figures stand out in pleasing contrast. At the left is Vermeer's signature - also on a white wall. The figures appear convincingly real, even though, like the bricks or the cobblestones, they are not rendered in detail.

[Oil on canvas, 54.3 x 44 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Portrait of a Restaurant Owner [1887]

Vincent van Gogh - Portrait of a Restaurant Owner [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Van Gogh painstakingly built up this portrait in subtle colours rendered with fine brushstrokes. While the background and the man’s clothes are subdued, the face consists of stripes painted in all manner of colours. 
The man depicted here is possibly Lucien Martin, the owner of a restaurant where Van Gogh and his friends showed their work in November 1887. Vincent’s paintings were often shown at Parisian cafés, restaurants and art dealers. However, they failed to sell. 

[Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 54.5 cm]

Richard Miller - The Necklace [c.1924]

Richard Miller - The Necklace [c.1924], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

A plein-air and impressionist painter as well as illustrator, Richard Miller (St. Louis, Missouri, 1875 - St. Augustine, Florida, 1943) was especially known for his paintings of female figures in sunlit interiors. He was part of the American art colony in Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, staying from 1898 to 1914 when World War I began. His reputation in France was so distinguished that he was made a Chevalier in the Legion of Honour.

[Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 71.1 cm]

Maximilien Colin - Woman Seated in an Interior [1890-92]

Maximilien Colin - Woman Seated in an Interior [1890-92], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Maximilien Colin (1862 – 1894) was an American painter.

[Oil on canvas, 73.66 x 91.44 cm]

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin - Morpheus and Iris [1811]

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin - Morpheus and Iris [1811], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Pierre-Narcisse, baron Guérin (May 13, 1774 – July 6, 1833), French painter, was born in Paris. Guérin was commissioned to paint for the Madeleine a scene from the history of St Louis, but his health prevented him from accomplishing what he had begun, and in 1822 he accepted the post of director of the French Academy in Rome, which in 1816 he had refused. Guérin died, on the July 6, 1833, and was buried in the church of La Trinité de Monti by the side of Claude Lorrain.

[Oil on canvas, 251 x 178 cm]