Why do Canaletto’s gondolas not have shadows? Where did CĂ©zanne get his shadows wrong, and why, and what colour are shadows really?
Category Archive: Life
Was painting ‘invented’ by the maid of Corinth? What is ‘shadow play’, and how have painters extended it to religious works? A short history of shadows in painting.
A remarkable series showing skilled workers at their workplaces, then a visit to Italy, where he painted 3 mummified corpses in the catacombs. Also his finest landscape.
Social realism in the stony fields of Denmark, a wonderful view of Jerusalem, and his friend LA Ring facing a passing critic – and more.
One more outstanding landscape, and a series of figurative works, one of which may show his aspirations for the future.
Armida has succeeded in causing havoc among the crusaders. As one disaster succeeds another, and with both Tancred and Rinaldo missing, Godfrey is forced to attack Jerusalem.
The best orator of Rome, and a great poet and writer. He became caught up in the struggle between Caesar and Pompey, and eventually fell foul of Antony. Great paintings too.
Invented by the alchemist Paracelsus, these water nymphs became popular in the 19th century with prose poems and a novella. Here they are in paint, by Turner, Waterhouse, Gauguin, Schiele, and others.
A common convention in paintings of classical myth, the river god was a bearded old man with a put pouring forth water, often seen with a Naiad, his daughter.
His breakthrough came in 1884, with the first of a series of social realist paintings. It was a hard life in the Danish countryside, and death is never far away.
The Eclectic Light Company 