Does analysis of literary plots offer anything to the understanding of visual narrative in painting? A journey through some of the best painted stories in quest of the answer.
history of painting
When Sancho Panza is awarded the governorship of a local town and leaves the castle to assume office, the knight is left forlorn, and amenable to a young maidservant.
Four years older than Egon Schiele, Beeh was brilliant and expected to become a major artist. A century ago he died young, victim of seasonal flu.
Two famous hay wains, Goya’s stone cart, horses and carts assisting a heavy steam crane in Paris, and carrying goods in the centre of New York in 1911.
From two pairs of unicorns drawing the Duke and Duchess of Urbino to a horse-drawn fire engine racing through the countryside, how animals have drawn people everywhere.
Son of the first Wimbledon tennis champion, he developed a Post-Impressionist style in his paintings from 1907 to the time of his marriage in early 1912.
Can a single painting tell the viewer a story which they don’t already know? Examples from Holman Hunt, Degas, Orchardson, Collier and Chierici.
Until the 19th century, narrative paintings showed stories which the viewer already knew, ideally at the moment of change or transformation.
Don Quixote agrees to fly on a magic wooden horse on a mission to rid the duennas of their beards, but his squire is more reluctant. All most amusing for the Duke and Duchess.
A series of motifs telling stories from classical mythology was completed with a breathtaking ceiling in the Sun King’s Royal Chapel at Versailles.
The Eclectic Light Company 