From cave paintings 36,000 years ago, through Paulus Potter in the Dutch Golden Age, to Oudry’s fables and racehorses of the early 19th century.
van de Velde
In 1826, the world’s first sailing regatta for leisure craft was held. Twenty-five years later, the America’s Cup was inaugurated. Paintings show the rising popularity of yachting.
Rubens as a landscape painter influenced by the Brueghels, and the changing horizons seen in Dutch Golden Age paintings.
Farmyards crowded with people and their animals, from Paulus Potter to some less well-known Impressionists such as Henri Rouart.
Early landscapes constrained the sky to a backdrop. With Rubens and the Golden Age landscape painters it became the subject in its own right.
Primary task to milk cows by hand, also make possible the eradication of smallpox. Paintings by Rubens, Potter, Vermeer, Gainsborough and others.
How Vertumnus tried to trick Pomona into loving him, then told her a threatening story. Neither worked: it was being himself that won her in the end.
In the hands, and brushes, of great artists, a religious set-piece becomes a succession of marvellous and highly innovative paintings.
Racing sandyachts 500 years ago, Punch and Judy shows, the painter who inspired Pissarro, and a firing squad: not what you’d expect on the beach.
Christmas holiday was one of the few occasions that brought people out of the warm to outdoor fairs and festivals.
The Eclectic Light Company 