Curtains in Raphael’s remarkable trompe l’oeil, concealing a nude, opened by the peeping tom, revealing a lost lover, and as separator between players and spectators.
Knaus
How the rich paid to walk on planks to cross muddy streets, and hussars helped ladies over mud ruts, children at play, roads in London and Leeds, and a cheeky ploughboy.
Degas’ Miss La La, a clown feeding a baby, cruelty to performers and animals, the misery of the Saltimbanques, and the melancholy of clowns.
Odysseus and Circe, the prodigal son, Gadarene swine, Sant Anthony, and in portraits: everything to see about pigs and their swineherds.
More paintings with strange incongruities, this time from Arnold Böcklin’s Sirens to the Surrealism of Paul Nash.
Paintings by Paulus Potter, George Morland, James Ward, Gustave Courbet, and others, showing plenty of pigs.
Mud was a common problem in the streets of cities, and on all the roads, tracks and paths of the country. Why isn’t it seen more in paintings before 1850?
From a strange rustic nude by Millet, in the 1880s and 90s the Goose Girl was a popular motif. Examples from Lhermitte, Bouguereau, and others.
Life behind the scenes of a circus was less than idyllic. Owners often cared little for performers, and animals were treated cruelly. Painted insights from Degas, Renoir, and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 