Paintings of summer storms from the dawn of landscape art and Giorgione, through Poussin and Vernet, to Palmer and Constable.
Morland
Gullible young women trafficked into prostitution, or were whole families squeezed out because of cold weather, crop failure including potato blight, loss of common land, and war.
They drew carts and ploughs, in preference to horses where power rather than speed was needed. Also for milk, beef and their hides processed into leather.
Turning harvested and threshed grain into food required it to be crushed into flour in mills, powered either by wind or water.
An introduction to a new series tracing the history of the countryside in fine paintings. Explains why some English country lanes have so many twisting bends.
Odysseus and Circe, the prodigal son, Gadarene swine, Sant Anthony, and in portraits: everything to see about pigs and their swineherds.
Paintings by Paulus Potter, George Morland, James Ward, Gustave Courbet, and others, showing plenty of pigs.
From cave paintings 36,000 years ago, through Paulus Potter in the Dutch Golden Age, to Oudry’s fables and racehorses of the early 19th century.
Once the mark of rural poverty, thatched roofs were common throughout the countryside of Europe. Here are some up to the 1890s.
Introduced to Europe from the New World in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I loved them, and Jan Brueghel the elder and his son included them in many of their paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 