Four months being bitten to death by midges, then a winter of immersing the model in a bath of tepid water. This masterwork didn’t come easy for anyone.
Pre-Raphaelite
Never shown to the public in traditional paintings, a vital layer which goes between paint and the support. White, colour, chalk or oil.
He became the most influential critic of painting in Britain, providing the Pre-Raphaelites with strong support. But that proved capricious, and eventually destructive to landscape painting.
Two painters: one married Charles Dickens’ daughter and stopped painting, the other became a prolific illustrator, including books by Dickens’ grand-daughter. The Victorian Web at work.
Visit Ford in Northumberland and you’ll see her murals in the old village school. Taught to paint by Rossetti, she is claimed as a Pre-Raphaelite. Was she?
Although born long after the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood dissolved, she continued its principles well into the 20th century.
There’s two ways to paint a coastal cliff: from the beach, or on the top. Surprisingly few landscape painters have opted for the latter. Here are some examples.
In memory of Richard Dadd: ten of his best, and thoughts about his life and work. Would we have been any better towards him even now?
In 1864, he was transferred to the newly-built Broadmoor Asylum. Despite that disruption, he continued to paint.
In which Dadd becomes a nineteenth-century Bosch on some seriously psychotropic drugs. It is a masterpiece like no other.
