Can a single painting tell the viewer a story which they don’t already know? Examples from Holman Hunt, Degas, Orchardson, Collier and Chierici.
Degas
How on earth could three workmen preparing the wooden floor of an artist’s studio be vulgar? And how could that change a realist into an Impressionist?
Both her entries to the Salon in 1877 had been rejected. Then she submitted this masterpiece to the jury for the American pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in 1878.
The deathbed, hospital beds through the ages, and what we apparently get up to when we take a friend to bed.
Where did milliners come from? How does it take 5 hours to choose a hat? What did Ouled Naïl women wear on their head? More wonderful paintings of hats and their owners.
During a visit to St Ives in Cornwall, he starts painting in oils, then moves to Paris where commercial and artistic success await.
Paintings of people watching plays, by Daumier, Degas, Renoir, Mary Cassatt, and others.
Paintings of scenes from plays by Degas, Seurat, Georges Clairin, and others.
Why would an artist compose a painting to hide the face? Examples by Degas, Anders Zorn, John Singer Sargent and others. It’s our faces that make us human.
Children playing, amateurs rehearsing, music outdoors, and Schubert himself at the piano: paintings by Manet, Degas, Thomas Eakins, Édouard Vuillard and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 