Inspired by Émile Zola’s novels, Nordic painters including Krohg, and Werenskiold, American Charles Ulrich, Gandolfo in Sicily, and others. How Roll’s painting of a strike led to Zola’s ‘Germinal’.
Geoffroy
The urban poor, painted by Raffaëlli, George Breitner, Fernand Pelez, Christian Krohg, Geoffroy, Henningsen in cities across Europe.
From those run and staffed by religious orders around 1600 to the 19th century’s revolution in nursing, and dazzlingly white interiors with radiators.
Boudin’s beach paintings heralding Impressionism, the turn of the plough, the flax harvest, stave churches, an early mermaid, Turner’s white rabbit, and more.
Soldiers on the front in the First World War, a young woman slaving as a seamstress, Dickens’ miserly Scrooge, and Polish ‘exiles’ in Siberia – those we should be thinking of this Christmas.
The greatest painter of children, school and childhood in the European canon. Paintings from ‘Les Miserables’ to the classrooms of the Third Republic.
Led by progressive administrations in the French Republic and Scotland, secular classes improved discipline and improved their pupils.
Carrying infants, including Moses, figs with a few asps, the master’s dinner, Manet’s luncheon on the grass, snacks, banquets, and fruit.
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, Gérôme’s gladiators, Émile Claus and Luminism, Boudin on the beach, and into the skies with Hans Thoma’s herons.
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 Eclectic Light Company 