Increasingly popular during the 19th century, stories of people going from rags to riches have seldom appeared in paintings. Here are Cinderella and Robin Hood, and an explanation.
Millais
Come leaf-peeping with painters from Samuel Palmer in the Weald of Kent, to Julian Alden Weir’s autumn rain.
Many of our lives start and end in them, and between we spend at least a third of our life in bed. Paintings from Delacroix to Ravilious.
Like eyes and the rest of the face, hands are most usually seen uncovered in figurative paintings. These paintings show gloved hands which have special purposes and meaning.
One of the most frequently painted of the classical deities, this is out of all proportion to her tiny role in the pantheon. From Ricci to Waterhouse.
The daughter of a Jamaican slave, William Morris’s wife, three Greek cousins known as the Three Graces – all muses and models for Pre-Raphaelites.
Great Pre-Raphaelite women didn’t stand behind their partners, but in front of them, as their muses and models. Masterpieces with two stories to tell.
Beards on Father Time, river gods, God the Father, ancient mariners, and lots and lots of artists, especially the Nabis.
Father Time, a grey-haired old man with a beard, wearing ultramarine blue, and holding a scythe and hourglass.
Why did the Pre-Raphaelites want to return to the ‘purity’ of painting before Raphael? Did they succeed?
