Fourteen major painters whose anniversaries I’ll celebrate or commemorate during this New Year, from George Bellows to Jacques-Louis David.
Potter
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.
In Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, animals charmed by Orpheus, the story of Rebecca and Eliezer, and accompanying the three Magi to the Nativity.
From Hannibal crossing the Alps with his war elephants, through the temptation of St Anthony, to the circus and an imaginary India.
The fairy tale of the Frog Prince, the fable of The Frogs who Demand a King, frogs at the Fall of Man, and dangling from a kite tail above Strasbourg.
Odysseus and Circe, the prodigal son, Gadarene swine, Sant Anthony, and in portraits: everything to see about pigs and their swineherds.
The changing colours of trees and their leaves, celebrated in paintings from Paulus Potter in 1652 to Paul Signac in 1903.
In earlier paintings, unicorns are usually intended to be real animals. They also have symbolic associations with chastity which lasted longer.
The greatest bard, musician and poet in classical Greek myth. Paintings from Paulus Potter, Poussin, Jan Brueghel the Elder and others.
Paintings by Paulus Potter, George Morland, James Ward, Gustave Courbet, and others, showing plenty of pigs.
The Eclectic Light Company 