Plans to celebrate anniversaries of major painters, series on narrative paintings, and more, for the coming year.
Chassériau
An odd story about the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks and his youthful indiscretion becomes a poem by Byron, and finally burlesque titillation.
Paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Jordaens, Chassériau, von Stuck and Lovis Corinth give slightly different accounts of this story.
Although intricate in their detail, none of these paintings is larger than 90 cm in either dimension – and several are quite painterly in a miniature way.
A pupil of the great Chassériau, he spent several years touring the Middle East with French diplomatic missions. Here are his paintings.
Ovid’s fictional letter made it clear how the legend of Phaon was absurd. Yet it has been painted repeatedly ever since.
Mentor to Gustave Moreau, his brief career showed his brilliance. Claimed by Ingres to be ‘the Napoleon of painting’.
After some false starts, he finally re-established his reputation at the Salon, but was that work a political allegory?
He still couldn’t repeat his earlier success in the years running up to the Franco-Prussian War. But some paintings have been under-appreciated.
He took the Salon of 1864 by storm, but was barely noticed with 2 more paintings the following year. Why?
