Easily told in words, stories are harder to paint. Here are five main methods used, explained and shown in examples from the masters.
narrative
Some of his earliest independent paintings, including two wonderful pairs based on legend and contemporary literature.
Orlando swims the Strait of Gibraltar, Ruggiero meets Mandricardo in combat, and Rinaldo leads a night attack outside Paris.
A Pennsylvanian, he wanted to be a great history painter. When returning from a visit to Italy, he stopped off in London, and stayed there almost 60 years.
Finest stories of the infidelity of wives, four in a bed, Isabella’s ingenious if fatal means of maintaining her chastity, and the madness of Orlando.
His most famous painting, ‘Work’, inspired by the ideas of Thomas Carlyle, and a possibly unique example of multiplex narrative after William Hogarth.
The leading Saracen knights are at one another’s throats, over stolen swords, stolen horses, even in which order they should fight one another to settle their disputes.
Bad girls whose beautiful voices lured sailors to their deaths, so that the women could eat them. Paintings by Etty, Moreau, Waterhouse, Rae, Nash and others.
Like all the worst men, satyrs were addicted to music, wine and women. Paintings by Piero, Claude, Rubens, Vedder, Moreau and others.
By 1852, he wasn’t making progress. The Pre-Raphaelite sculptor emigrated to Australia, and Brown thought seriously about going to India. Instead he painted ‘The Last of England’.
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