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And When Did You Last See William Frederick Yeames?
William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918), who died a century ago today, is one of the many painters who is now known by a single work: in his case And when did you last see your Father? (1878). As a...
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Surprise, surprise: Paintings with a twist 1
When reading a novel or watching a movie, many of us enjoy a surprise or twist in the plot. There are whole genres, such as detective fiction, in which such surprises are expectations, and the word...
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Surprise, surprise: Paintings with a twist 2
In the first of these three articles about surprise in narrative paintings, I traced the development of techniques to add a surprising twist to stories told in single paintings, from Duccio in about...
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Surprise, surprise: Paintings with a twist 3
In the second article of this series, I looked at the depiction of surprise in narrative painting during the nineteenth century, when it seems to have flourished. Even relatively minor narrative...
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Pandora and her box 1, to Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Most classical myths were told in paintings during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with narrative masters such as Rubens often painting them two or more times. Very few remained almost...
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Pandora and her box 2, Alma-Tadema to Odilon Redon
The ancient Greek myth of Pandora had been almost unknown in paintings until the nineteenth century. During the 1870s, it suddenly became a popular theme for paintings in both Britain and France, but...
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Berthold Woltze and his problem pictures
Sometimes my eye is caught by a single painting by an artist I haven’t come across before. This takes me to look at their other work, and not infrequently a welcome surprise. On this occasion, it took...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1
If one of the aims of studying history is to gain an understanding of the past, art history has failed miserably to accomplish that for the late nineteenth century. Whether viewed in the Salon, the...
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The painted politics of Édouard Debat-Ponsan
This week’s dip into the missing artists archive brings a painter whose fine academic finish mixed pastoral scenes with strong political messages, and whose grandson was an architect of modern France’s...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 2
By the end of the Paris Salon of 1853, the young Gérôme had cause to celebrate. He was receiving good reviews, and his lightweight, amusing narrative paintings were going down well with the public. As...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 3
The third of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s history paintings shown at the Salon of 1859 sadly vanished after being sold in 1951, and is now known only from a monochrome photograph which I have been unable to find...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 1: The Fables of Ovid
The great Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto was probably born in late September 1518, the first child in a family which was to grow to 21. His father, whose surname was actually Comin, was a dyer in...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 4
By 1862, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) had reached the height of his narrative powers, exhibiting a succession of narrative paintings, several of which had been turned into prints and were selling...
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The Franco-Prussian War: Depicting defeat
Painting in Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century was centred on Paris. A lot happened in other countries too – the Pre-Raphaelites for one – but the major movements of the time all...
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The Franco-Prussian War: Destruction of Paris
Following a series of disastrous defeats of the French Army, on 19 September 1870, Prussian forces had taken control of the country around Paris, and put the capital under siege. With the surrender of...
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The Franco-Prussian War: Aftermath
The provisional French government had been very circumspect about capitulating at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in late January 1871, because of their fears of insurrection. The dangers of this...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 2: Tradition and success
After Jacopo Tintoretto had completed his series of paintings showing the Fables of Ovid in the palace at San Paternian, he turned to what was to be his mainstay throughout his career: religious scenes...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 5
For Gérôme, the Third Republic brought new challenges to which he had to rise. He had found favour with Napoleon III and his court, and had received Imperial commissions. His history paintings of...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 3: Washing and Genesis
In 1548, with his Miracle of the Slave (E&I 46) (discussed in my previous article), Tintoretto had made a success of his first really large-scale commission, bringing him renown throughout Venice....
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 6
The first decade of the Third Republic had been a stormy period in France, and by the 1880s the old guard royalists were in decline, and the civic powers of the Republic were expanding to include the...
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