Middle class collectors came to like paintings of interiors, sometimes without any figures at all. Others were Orientalist, or told open-ended narrative.
painting
A prolific painter of everything from landscapes to mythology, he trained in Karlsruhe, travelled widely, but struggled to establish his art in the years to 1885.
Mow the grass, scatter it about, gather it in windrows, cock it, scatter then windrow it again, until it’s dry and ready to stack. How to make hay the hard way.
Human in their upper body, and fish from the waist down, these aren’t sirens at all, but have their own mythology in many traditions.
When the centaur Nessus tried to abduct Hercules’ wife, he was impaled by an arrow. He set up the later death of the hero, who was destroyed by poison in his own arrow.
Paintings continue with three sketches by Honoré Daumier, and set pieces by Hispaleto, telling the misadventures of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
Enormously popular across Europe, Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’ led to some fine narrative paintings, but why so few even in the 19th century?
Examples of interiors by Gerard ter Borch, who liked open-ended narrative, Gabriël Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, and Jan Vermeer.
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.
Wedding paintings by Rubens, Watteau, Delacroix, Frith, and Naturalists from the time that photography was creating a new market.
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