Stone-picking to improve the soil. A series of paintings of the Sower, broadcasting seed by hand. Weeding the fields to help the crop grow.
Ring
Back to the Baltic coast, with landscape paintings by Lovis Corinth, Laurits Andersen Ring, Ants Laikma, and Karl Isakson.
This is the time to get out and admire the blossom on the trees, with the aid of Samuel Palmer, Millais, Millet, Sisley, and above all Vincent van Gogh.
Associated with the countryside of northern Europe, hedges are the product of enclosures made in the 18th century.
Pontoise by Pissarro, Paul Nash’s Berkshire Downs, Rosa Bonheur’s teams of oxen ploughing, and Grant Wood’s Iowa prairie.
Cicero and the tomb of Archimedes, a theatre at Taormina, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, Antonello’s oil paintings, and urban poverty.
The sign of (human) death. Lots of skulls means mass death or apocalypse. Held by Hamlet, featured in vanitas paintings, and with Mary Magdalene.
Wetlands in Ukraine, Denmark, on Teufelsmoor in Lower Saxony, south of Budapest, and along the coast of Sweden with Bruno Liljefors and others.
Optical principles are straightforward, but can become extremely complex in practice. Examples from Jan van Eyck to Hodler and Signac.
Trees in blossom from Sérusier, Bonnard, Waterhouse, van Rysselberghe, Nikolai Astrup and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 