Shepherds and shepherdesses painted in stories, from classical myth, through the Bible and Christ’s nativity, to epic poetry, including Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Bénouville
Paintings showing women spinning from around 1000 CE to the early 20th century, by Eakins, Tanner, Courbet, van Gogh, Breton, and others,
A precocious painter who was a favourite of Napoleon III, he taught at the École des Beaux-Arts for 25 years. Many of his students became Naturalists. Coincidence? Here’s his story and work.
Paintings of gladiatorial combat and martyrdom in the Colosseum had also been quite different before Gérôme’s ‘Ave Caesar’. Examples from Artemisia Gentileschi and others.
More paintings of surprise, by Gericault, Gérôme, Regnault, Bastien-Lepage, Morelli, and others.
She has been a symbol of French nationalism, of the revanchism following the Franco-Prussian War, and then of early feminism: some wonderful paintings of Joan’s divine visions.
The Eclectic Light Company 