Henry Scott Tuke - At the Metal Merchant [1888]

Henry Scott Tuke - At the Metal Merchant [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Bukowski's Autumn Classic Sale, Stockholm - Oil on canvas, 137 x 104 cm]

Carlos de Haes - Dutch Mill [c.1884]

Carlos de Haes - Dutch Mill [c.1884], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 25.4 x 38.4 cm]

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]