Paintings by Helen Allingham, Willard Metcalf, Pierre Bonnard, JW Waterhouse, Nikolai Astrup, and others.
Astrup
How Hogarth developed his painting and print narrative series from rough drawings. Examples of prints made after paintings by Mary Cassatt and Nikolai Astrup for different reasons.
Christmas trees cut in the woods, or bought in a seasonal market. Queen Marie and ordinary families gathered round, and finally falling asleep exhausted.
The harvest painted by Anna Ancher, Lhermitte, Adrian Stokes, Nikolai Astrup, John Linnell, Félix Vallotton, PS Krøyer, Gérôme, and others.
Three views by the elusive Elisabeth Grüttefien, and the paintings of Nikolai Astrup, the only artist among these who lived in the fjords for much of his life, and was buried there.
In narrative, including Degas’ ‘Waiting’, as a sign of wind, as an arc of colour, or simply to tell the viewer that it’s raining.
Milkmaids milking cows in the shed, a farmer threshing and winnowing grain, churning butter, and a young couple courting by the back-ends of cows.
Keeping the aspidistra flying in the homes of the respectable middle classes, in paintings from Carl Larsson to Paul Signac and Harriet Backer.
Mud during the Franco-Prussian War, in Nordic countryside, and enveloping everything including the dead during the First World War.
Soldiers on the front in the First World War, a young woman slaving as a seamstress, Dickens’ miserly Scrooge, and Polish ‘exiles’ in Siberia – those we should be thinking of this Christmas.
The Eclectic Light Company 