Essential pigments for the landscape artist: green earths, malachite, verdigris, copper resinate, Prussian green, viridian, and emerald green.
Böcklin
A simple story of an unsuccessful attempt at abduction and rape becomes a compositional struggle. It also results in the death of Heracles.
How Ruggiero comes to the aid of Angelica, who has been kidnapped and left chained so can form the orc’s next meal.
Romantic views of castles in the mountains from Carl Friedrich Lessing, and more accurate accounts by Gustave Courbet and others.
Waiting the knight’s end, watching a sorceress, flying over a wheat field, or in front of a sleigh. Wherever they go they seem sinister.
How the Rückenfigur passed from Friedrich via JC Dahl to Thomas Fearnley, then was reborn with Gustave Caillebotte.
The sign of (human) death. Lots of skulls means mass death or apocalypse. Held by Hamlet, featured in vanitas paintings, and with Mary Magdalene.
Odysseus is lashed to the mast as his ship passes the Sirens without being lured away. He’s the only survivor after shipwreck, then is trapped with Calypso for seven years.
Queen Penelope and their son Telemachus were awaiting the return of Odysseus, whose ships ended up off the island of the Cyclops.
More paintings with strange incongruities, this time from Arnold Böcklin’s Sirens to the Surrealism of Paul Nash.
The Eclectic Light Company 