Valentin de Boulogne - Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats)[c.1618-20]

Valentin de Boulogne - Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) [c.1618-20], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject of Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice is inspired by one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, The Cheats (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). Like Caravaggio's prototype, Valentin's painting shows a group of rough mercenary soldiers, types who idled about Rome in the seventeenth century waiting for employment and who are identifiable by their armor, worn piecemeal, and assorted livery. They are gaming at a table in a tavern or a dark alley, where two roll dice while two others, center and left, play cards. As the more finely dressed youth in a feathered cap at the left examines his cards, a fifth figure in the shadows behind him signals to his accomplice in the center the hand of the young dupe. 

Valentin (French, c.1591 - 1632) presented a raw and sinister scene of contemporary street life, which is at the same time a moral admonition of the incaution and profligacy of youth. The crowding of the figures into the picture space adds to the tension of the scene. The painting is indebted to Caravaggio not only for its subject, but also for the vivid sense of actuality with which Valentin invested his protagonists, for the strong chiaroscuro, and for the thinly and rapidly brushed execution. As was Caravaggio's practice, this work is painted alla prima, directly onto the prepared canvas without underdrawing or any other apparent preliminary work. This approach enhances the sense of spontaneity and the feeling that the spectator is catching a glimpse of illicit low life.

[Oil on canvas, 121 x 152 cm]

Edgar Degas - Self-Portrait [c.1857-58]

Edgar Degas - Self-Portrait [c.1857-58], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In this self-portrait a young Edgar Degas turns his head to look out at the spectator. He wears casual clothes, including an open collar and broad brimmed hat. The informal, extreme close-up view of Degas's face and his impassive, almost sullen expression echo the unpretentiousness of his clothing. The small-scale, informal presentation and lightness of touch emphasise the intimacy of this image and the still-tentative character of the young artist. 

Around 1857, when he was twenty-three or twenty-four, Degas travelled to Italy, where he spent much of his time making copies after Renaissance masters. The period was one of self-education and he drew prolifically, writing in one of his notebooks, "I must thoroughly realize I know nothing at all; it is the only way to get ahead." Finding in himself a willing sitter, he made fifteen or more self-portraits in various media during his time in Italy.

[Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 8.25 x 6.375 inches]

Adriaen Brouwer - The Smokers [c.1636]

Adriaen Brouwer - The Smokers [c.1636], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adriaen Brouwer (Flemish, Oudenaarde, 1605/6 - Antwerp, 1638), who specialised in tavern and low-life scenes, worked in Haarlem and Amsterdam and spent the last seven or eight years of his brief life in Antwerp. According to tradition, the present painting represents the artist and his friends drinking and smoking. Comparison with portraits of artists such as those in Van Dyck's Iconographie suggests that the foreground figure blowing smoke rings may be Brouwer himself, the man to the right of him, the painter Jan Cossiers, and the man at the right filling his pipe, the painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The picture was probably executed in Antwerp about 1636. It may have been among the seventeen paintings by Brouwer listed in the inventory of Rubens' collection. In the nineteenth century it was in the Steengracht collection in The Hague where it aroused the enthusiasm of the French critic Thoré-Burger.

[Oil on wood, 46.4 x 36.8 cm]

François Clouet - A Lady in Her Bath [c.1571]

François Clouet - A Lady in Her Bath [c.1571], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A number of bathing portraits depicting courtesans and mistresses of kings have survived from Renaissance France. However, the coolly elegant features of this woman make it impossible to identify her. In the past she has been linked with Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II, but that identification has now been ruled out. It may be that she is meant to represent an ideal of beauty rather than an actual person.

Her pose is based on the Mona Lisa, which Leonardo da Vinci had taken with him when he moved to France toward the end of his life. Several nude versions by his assistants were also widely known. Many artists had come from Italy at the invitation of Francis I to decorate his chateau at Fontainebleau. Among the rooms he constructed was an elaborate bath - a rare luxury in northern Europe. Paintings in the dressing rooms feature nymphs and nude goddesses reveling at baths and fountains. They may have helped to inspire this type of bathing portrait. The painting’s combination of Italian inspiration and the meticulous detail of Netherlandish art is characteristic of both François Clouet (French, before 1520 - 1572) in particular and the French Renaissance generally.

[Oil on oak, 92.3 x 81.2 cm]

Michael Ancher - The Lifeboat is Taken through the Dunes [1883]

Michael Ancher - The Lifeboat is Taken through the Dunes [1883], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The low, dark winter skies and densely filled picture plane deepens the sense of intense concentration, of heroic grandeur. The waves on the bluish-black ocean seem to force their way up into the snow-covered dunes which echo the tumbling waves by lifting up the lifeboat, prefiguring the launch of the boat and how it will break through the heavy surf. Two intersecting diagonals lead the fishermen through the dunes and out towards the vessels in distress. This movement eventually takes the spectator’s gaze back to the starting point: the shouting fisherman, cropped as in a photographic snapshot, making an appeal to someone outside the picture.

With this painting Michael Ancher (1849 - 1927) continued his tale of the heroic fishermen of Skagen. Previously, history painting was a vehicle for the depiction of great and good deeds done by mythological heroes and men who made history. Common people only made an appearance as rank and file soldiers or in anonymous crowds. The works of Michael Ancher, however, represent the culmination of counteracting endeavours to place ordinary men as the main characters of contemporary history painting.

Vincent van Gogh - White Roses [1890]

Vincent van Gogh - White Roses [1890], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Over the course of his career Van Gogh painted a number of still lifes often of sunflowers, irises, or roses. To him they were full of life.

The painting of roses seen here was done during the last three weeks Van Gogh was at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. It was a time of acceptance: he felt he was coming to terms with his illness, coming to terms with himself. He wrote to Theo that he worked on flower paintings that depicted great bunches of violet irises and big bouquets of roses, including this one. In fact, his letters indicate almost exactly when this work was produced. On either 11 or 12 May 1890 he mentions "a canvas of roses with a light green background."

In this work the paint surface is lush and sensual. Pigment is laid on thickly in undulating ribbons; diagonal lines accentuate the background and play into the curves of the roses. Van Gogh used a very limited palette in this canvas to create an image of exquisite subtlety and richness.

Cariani - A Concert [c.1518-20]

Cariani - A Concert [c.1518-20], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Reproduced on the cover of the standard monograph on Cariani (Italian, 1485/90 - 1547 or after), A Concert is widely regarded as the artist's masterpiece. The painting first came to light in the 1960s, when it was attributed to Cariani with a dating of c.1519. Born c.1485 near Bergamo, the westernmost of the Venetian mainland territories, Cariani was trained in Venice, first in Giovanni Bellini's workshop and then among the circle of Giorgione. In Venice until 1517, he underwent further influences from Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Palma Vecchio, the last of whom also came from Bergamo. Cariani returned to live in his native city twice, from 1517 to 1523 and again from 1528 to 1530; otherwise he was active in Venice until his death.

Cariani interpreted his Venetian models in a highly realistic Lombard manner. The musician accurately strums the six-stringed lute; near him are a white handkerchief with which to wipe his hands and a small box containing a spare string. Like the musical instruments, the costumes, especially the fur-lined cloaks, are treated with the utmost attention to texture and detail. All three figures, to judge from their individualized features, must be portraits, although the sitters have yet to be identified. Most impressive is the corpulent musician. He bursts onto the scene, separating the tutor, who is shown holding a book on the left, from his aristocratic young pupil, who looks out at the viewer from the right. Cariani's earthy realism gives the musician a humorous air: with his head cocked as if seeking inspiration, he is one of the great comic inventions of Italian Renaissance painting.

[Oil on canvas, 92 x 130 cm]