Between 1905 and 1916, he often painted his models in front of a mirror, and played games with their reflections.
figures
Most of Degas’ painting are of and about women. Using some of his finest works, this explores how he portrayed ‘the modern woman’, from ironing to the brothel.
The majority of portraits and genre paintings of women washing clothes are thoroughly demur, without the slightest innuendo.
Painters of the early northern Renaissance founded modern Western landscape painting, and developed the first examples of staffage.
When a landscape artist finds it hard to paint figures well, there is one good solution: work with a figurative painter. The results can be spectacular.
One of the first dedicated landscape specialists who met the rising demand for ‘views’, his figures reveal his true interest in his motifs.
Like Poussin, most of his works are strongly narrative in intent. Did he paint any pure landscapes, or are all his figures actors in his stories?
Would such a great narrative painter really paint landscapes which lack a story?
How Colin Campbell Cooper and George Bellows used figures in their paintings of New York City in the early twentieth century.
His sketches and studies are wonderfully painterly, but was he painting what he saw, or what he envisaged?
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