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.
Larsson
the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness.
Although not featured in classical myths, cats have several symbolic associations and their own fables. From a kept woman to a harem, and basking in the sunshine.
From Samuel Palmer in 1830, through Sisley’s Terrace at Saint-Germain, to van Gogh’s pink orchards, a festival of Spring blossom.
More paintings with strange incongruities, this time from Arnold Böcklin’s Sirens to the Surrealism of Paul Nash.
Two paintings by van Gogh, and others show open fires and stoves heating homes and other places up to 1930.
From Rubens’ double-portrait with Isabella Brant, and Rembrandt’s with Saskia, to Paul Signac’s wife with a parasol and Ferdinand Hodler’s wife Berthe Jacques.
More paintings by those brave enough to tackle children on their own, from William Merritt Chase and Carl Larsson to Pierre Bonnard.
As tried by Pissarro, Degas, Carl Larsson, Gauguin, Anders Zorn, Charles Conder, and Louis Welden Hawkins.
Born into poverty in Stockholm, he worked as an assistant to Carl Larsson before training in Sweden and Paris. One of the fathers of Modernism.
