He specialised in ‘light genre’ paintings, not-to-serious domestic scenes, painted in fine detail, and was praised by Ruskin.
realism
Aphrodite fully clothed, and a polar bear on the ice of the Arctic – just two of the later paintings of this Victorian artist.
He became extremely popular, with his genre scenes containing animals, particularly dogs. A selection from the early years of his career.
Mud as painted in the Danish countryside, and in Norway. But the last word goes to war: both in the Franco-Prussian and First World Wars.
Mud was a common problem in the streets of cities, and on all the roads, tracks and paths of the country. Why isn’t it seen more in paintings before 1850?
The painting’s reception, and how it changed 19th century painting, with Courbet, Lhermitte, Naturalists, and Tom Lea III.
He developed from the style and optics of Vermeer’s paintings, limiting depth of field to develop bokeh. And he painted ‘problem pictures’ too.
To see his art, look not at Fantin’s groups of human figures, but at these crowds of flowers and fruit.
In the late 1890s, Sorolla painted two works showing the new science and technology of medical histology, and more scenes on the beach.
Fine naturalist paintings from this Spanish master, showing the hard lives of fishermen, a young woman arrested for killing her child, religious ceremony, and prostitution.
