Norman Rockwell - The Connoisseur [1962]

Norman Rockwell - The Connoisseur [1962], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. He was a prolific artist, producing over 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his works are either in public collections, or have been destroyed in fire or other misfortunes. Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in modern critics' eyes, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life; this has led to the often-deprecatory adjective Rockwellesque. Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a serious painter by some contemporary artists, who often regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch.

Norman Rockwell - Triple Self-Portrait [1960]

Norman Rockwell - Triple Self-Portrait [1960], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Hendrick ter Brugghen - The Concert [c.1626]

Hendrick ter Brugghen - The Concert [c.1626], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This painting has a strong claim to be ter Brugghen's finest treatment of a secular subject. He has taken a scene favoured by Caravaggio and his Roman followers (a group of flamboyantly dressed musicians seen by candlelight) and treated it in his own distinctive manner, placing the dramatically lit half-length figures against a light background. 

Paintings of the same subject by Caravaggio (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Bartolommeo Manfredi (Florence, Uffizi) are among the prototypes for this composition. Their large-scale, half-length figures, their crowding together within the composition and their closeness to the edge of the canvas, as well as the bright, colourful palette can all be found in this painting. Ter Brugghen brings to this existing format an individual fluency in modelling the soft edges of his forms and a remarkable subtlety of palette.

[Oil on canvas, 99.1 x 116.8 cm]

Isabel Bishop – Unknown Title

Isabel Bishop – Unknown Title , originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Isabel Bishop (Cincinnati, Ohio, March 3, 1902 – New York, February 19, 1988) was an American painter and graphic artist. Bishop's mature works depict the inhabitants of New York's Union Square area, where she maintained a studio between 1934 and 1984. Her subjects are nearly always women who come from a blu-collar background, yet she was also known to produce panoramic landscape studies and social scenes. Bishop also delighted in multiple-figure compositions, often containing two females engaged in various workaday interactions. In the post-war years Bishop's interest turned to more abstracted scenes of New Yorkers walking and travelling, in the streets or on the subways.

Isabel Bishop - Unknown Title

Isabel Bishop - Unknown Title, originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Louis-Leopold Boilly - A Game of Billiards [1807]

Louis-Leopold Boilly - A Game of Billiards [1807], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Boilly's painting encapsulates the era of social change in France after the Revolution of 1789, with its affirmation of new tastes and norms of behaviour. During the period of the Directory and the First Empire, billiard rooms became like clubs to which people came not only to play the game but also to meet friends, to make new acquaintances, to gossip and flirt. Here tidbits of family and society news were exchanged, the latest political and social events were discussed.

The main character of the painting is a woman playing billiards, which testifies to the liberal manners of Napoleon I's age, since before that only men were fond of this game. Boilly's fine observation and presentation of characteristic figures of different ages and social groupings, as well as his skill in conveying light, space, details of the interior and costume, rank him among the greatest genre painters of the 17th and 18th centuries.

[Oil on canvas, 56 x 81 cm]

Balthus - Nude in Front of a Mantel [1955]

Balthus - Nude in Front of a Mantel [1955], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Balthus painted landscapes, portraits, and interiors, but the female sitter in various states (daydreaming, reclining, or sleeping, often nude or partly clothed, and typically charged with erotic content) is the subject most frequently depicted in his oeuvre. Nude in Front of a Mantel is striking for the sculptural monumentality of the model, who looks as if carved from marble, and for the soft silvery light that bathes the figure and fills the room.

[Oil on canvas, 75 x 64.5 cm]