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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 1
It is not unusual to paint a narrative series, but as I have shown with such series by Thomas Cole and Hogarth, these tend to be relatively short compared with the images in, say, a graphic novel. The...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 2
This article concludes my account of the series of eighteen oil paintings which make up the first part of Louis Janmot‘s epic Poem of the Soul, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, France. Louis Janmot...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 3
This third article in the series covering Louis Janmot‘s (1814–1892) epic narrative series of paintings, Le Poème de l’âme (Poem of the Soul), shows the first half of the second group, drawn in...
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The Story in Paintings: Louis Janmot’s epic, Le Poème de l’âme – 4
This fourth article completes the final drawings in the second part of Louis Janmot‘s (1814–1892) epic narrative series of paintings, Le Poème de l’âme (Poem of the Soul). The previous drawings traced...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 1 Gathering storm
Plenty of nineteenth century art was ‘difficult’, not just the works of William Blake (at the start) and Odilon Redon (at the end). This article, the first of a new series, looks at the distinctive...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 2 Distant rumbles
The finished paintings of Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) before 1864 showed promise, but despite his aim of radically changing history painting, they were hardly revolutionary. Nor did they have much...
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The Story in Paintings: Nessus and Deianeira, the point of view
I have always thought that there is a preponderance of abduction and rape scenes in narrative painting. Although some – such as the rape of Europa – have resulted in wonderful works of art, they surely...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 3 The thunderclap
By 1864, Gustave Moreau had determined that he was going to paint a new type of history painting, but three attempts to produce a major work for the Salon had each run into difficulties and been...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 4 After the storm
Gustave Moreau’s Oedipus and the Sphinx had been the talk of the Salon in 1864, but the following year his two entries were lost in the noise surrounding Manet’s Olympia. Moreau needed to do much...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 5 Before the war
In 1867, two of Gustave Moreau’s paintings were shown at the Exposition Universelle: Orpheus and The Young Man and Death. Neither won any awards or recognition there, so he pressed on preparing his...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, to 1890
Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) has proved to be one of the most influential German painters of the early twentieth century. Prolific across several contrasting genres, he is now best known for figurative...
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Tyger’s eye: the paintings of William Blake, 16 – A miscellany
This article considers some of Blake’s watercolours which I find particularly appealing or interesting, but which have so far not been covered properly in previous articles. I consider them in...
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Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 1
Stories change over time. Trying to tell such changing stories in essentially linear media, such as printed or even electronic books, is not easy for the author or the reader, and often involves...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 6 Back in favour
Once Gustave Moreau had recovered from the traumas of the Franco-Prussian War, he completed some unfinished paintings, and got started on his next major works. He had been invited to join the select...
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Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 2
In the last article, I laid out the two main stories concerning Herod, Herodias, Salome, and John the Baptist: that from the Gospels, and that given in Wilde’s play. Each consists of a chain of writing...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, 1891-1897
By 1890, Lovis Corinth was financially independent, had his own studio in Königsberg, the city near his home village, and was starting to become a successful artist. His Pietà (1889, tragically...
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Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 3
In the previous article, I built a composite story to provide scene-by-scene comparison between the traditional Biblical account of Herod, Herodias, Salome, and John the Baptist, and the new version...
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Hesiod’s Brush, the paintings of Gustave Moreau: 7 Salome’s success
Gustave Moreau had a successful Salon in 1876. I have already considered two of the paintings which he showed there, Saint Sebastian and the Angel and Hercules and the Lernean Hydra. The other two were...
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Changing Times: Lovis Corinth, 1898-1900
Lovis Corinth didn’t just spend his time in Munich drinking red wine and champagne, but experimented in his painting and evolved his mature style. In 1897, he moved studio within Munich, and started to...
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Analysing and telling changing narrative in Storyspace 4
So far, I have related my collection of images of paintings to the two main storylines about Herod, Herodias, Salome, and John the Baptist. In this article, I am going to add several different art...
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