Paintings starting with JMW Turner in 1844, through Monet in 1871, Winslow Homer, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Tom Roberts, Pissarro, and Childe Hassam.
Bastien-Lepage
By 1880, an artist’s colony was forming in this village on the southern edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and attracted painters from all over the world.
From dice shooters in a rough tavern, through Bastien-Lepage’s Little Chimneysweep, to poverty in Catania, and destitution in Paris.
How the rich paid to walk on planks to cross muddy streets, and hussars helped ladies over mud ruts, children at play, roads in London and Leeds, and a cheeky ploughboy.
Gullible young women trafficked into prostitution, or were whole families squeezed out because of cold weather, crop failure including potato blight, loss of common land, and war.
By William Blake, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Edward Burne-Jones and others, Edward Stott, Albin Egger-Lienz, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Kazimierz Sichulski.
Life in the country has its idyllic moments: a worker lying in the sun and flowers, a meal with violin music, country dancing, and courting, even among the cows.
Painted by Jules Breton, Jean-François Millet, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Léon Augustin Lhermitte and others during the late 19th century.
The humble vegetable that enabled Europe’s population boom in the 19th century. When diseased by blight, it resulted in more than a million deaths.
Mow the grass, scatter it about, gather it in windrows, cock it, scatter then windrow it again, until it’s dry and ready to stack. How to make hay the hard way.
The Eclectic Light Company 