Mud during the Franco-Prussian War, in Nordic countryside, and enveloping everything including the dead during the First World War.
Brendekilde
Learning how to sew, gossiping over sewing, or sitting apart, professional seamstresses, Gauguin’s odd nude, and Vallotton’s sewing maid.
Paintings by Frits Thaulow, Emile Claus, Lesser Ury, Hans Andersen Brendekilde, Lovis Corinth, Tom Thomson and others. Brrrr!
Gleaning has Biblical origins, to let the poor get their own free supply of grain. Was it confined to the poorest, and did it remain a right, later in Europe?
Stone-picking to improve the soil. A series of paintings of the Sower, broadcasting seed by hand. Weeding the fields to help the crop grow.
Paintings of gardeners by Bazille, Sisley, Caillebotte, Pissarro, Grant Wood and others.
Landscape paintings by Daubigny, Sisley, Berkos, Astrup, Pissarro, Julian Onderdonk, Granville Redmond, Théo van Rysselberghe and others.
How the tradition of Christmas trees is relatively recent, family scenes of celebrating the day before Christmas, and how it also became a day to remember the poor and others less fortunate.
The Corydon Shepherd, those attending the Nativity, the Good Shepherd, Poussin’s flocks, Millet’s social realism, and Pissarro’s epitaphs.
Hands are rarely covered in paintings. Examples include outdoors in winter, armoured gloves for crossbows, a sommelier, and fashion.
The Eclectic Light Company 