Two last Pre-Raphaelite artists, Evelyn De Morgan and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, brought narrative painting to a close in the twentieth century.
Collier
In the latter half of the 19th century, a new narrative form developed, primarily among British painters: the open narrative, or problem picture.
A selection of paintings of Yoric (Hamlet), Touchstone, and Shakespeare’s other fools, and a few from others including the great Polish Stańczyk.
Snakes and serpents in myth, legend and religion are thoroughly sinister and bad, with one curious exception. A journey across centuries of images.
Full of memorable lines such as “All the world’s a stage” and songs like “It was a lover and his lass”, a favourite comedy and well painted.
Well known from language, the scarlet woman should be easy to read in paintings. But all that is scarlet isn’t who you’d expect.
Can a single painting tell the viewer a story which they don’t already know? Examples from Holman Hunt, Degas, Orchardson, Collier and Chierici.
Fine paintings from 1921, by John Collier, Christian Krohg, Félix Vallotton, Maurice Denis and others.
Paintings of the Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince only became popular late in the nineteenth century. Do they conform to the standard plot type?
Telling a story using shadows, and the nineteenth century controversy over the colour of shadows.