From the start of the Eighty Years’ War with Habsburg Spain, through the Union of Utrecht, foundation of the East India Company, tulip mania, and abundant Rembrandts.
history of painting
Take a flat metal plate and paint on it using gouache or oils, then impress it onto a sheet of paper, and apply soft pastel to bring out the colour. That’s a painted monotype print.
After the Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular literary source for paintings before 1900, yet hardly anyone knows this epic today. The introduction to a new series.
Invented by Paracelsus, to have an afterlife they must marry a human. But that man must remain faithful to them, or they will die from Ondine’s Curse.
River gods from Rubens, Poussin, Coypel and Boucher, with Naiads from Walter Crane, JW Waterhouse, Henrietta Rae and others.
Pygmalion painted by Edward Burne-Jones and Gérôme, the painted frieze of the Parthenon, Eakins and the sculptor Rush, Lovis Corinth’s portrait, and a cheeky monkey by Watteau.
Two contrasting Virgins of the Lilies, a remarkable scene of the female figure of Death with a fearful gravedigger, a woman poet walking in the Elysian Fields, and other distinctive paintings.
After the Disaster Year of 1672, the art market collapsed. Dutch artists reverted to the more traditional, but their impact on secular themes, and genres including landscapes and still life has endured.
With ancient origins, and relatively unusual in wooden panels, round canvases became popular in the Renaissance. Examples by Raphael, Poussin, Tiepolo, Girodet, Richard Dadd and others.
Spectacular landscapes and details painted by John Ferguson Weir, Laurits Tuxen, Joaquín Sorolla, John Singer Sargent, Théo van Rysselberghe, and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 