
Images: Edward Hopper
I had heard of Edward Hopper before, but it wasn’t until a summer or two after high school, when I … Continue Reading Images: Edward Hopper
I had heard of Edward Hopper before, but it wasn’t until a summer or two after high school, when I … Continue Reading Images: Edward Hopper
Take a look through some of the best paintings of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Is the general claim true, that in … Continue Reading Images: Gustave Courbet
Three weeks ago I’d barely heard of the painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Awhile ago I had noted down that … Continue Reading Images: Caspar David Friedrich
Picasso’s Blue Period–or basically anything he did before Cubism–has always struck me as more powerful than anything he did later, … Continue Reading Picasso’s Blue Sympathies
Manet’s 1862 painting The Old Musician is a great human riddle. Just what everybody is doing here, and why they’re … Continue Reading Manet the Mystic
The affront that many of Caravaggio’s greatest paintings presented to their first audience must have been astonishing: casting a local … Continue Reading Caravaggio’s Dirty Feet
From childhood through old age: Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1484) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1493) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” (1498) Albrecht Dürer, “Self-Portrait” … Continue Reading Images: Dürer’s Self-Portraits
Here are a few dozen faces I always go back to, from the collection of Greek & Roman sculpture I … Continue Reading A Gallery of Greeks & Romans
from Thomas Cahill’s Heretics & Heroes: …. [Michelangelo’s] next work displays a grasp of human anatomy seldom seen in the … Continue Reading The German Origins of Michelangelo’s Pietà
As I’ve written elsewhere: “Except for his earliest work, there were no grand subjects in Vermeer, and very little else … Continue Reading Vermeer’s Window on the Left, Vermeer’s Late Afternoon Light
A drawing from 2015 that I suddenly found again today:
For some reason the Mérode Altarpiece, painted in the late 1420s by Robert Campin, has become an obsession of mine. … Continue Reading The Mysteries of Mérode
No matter how poor he got, and no matter what of his belongings he had to sell to get by, … Continue Reading The Melancholy of William Blake
The Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s brutal self-portraits, many dating from before World War One, seem to presage all the carnage … Continue Reading The Brutal Paintings that Predicted the 20th Century
Among the earliest photos taken of Paris were those of Eugène Atget, beginning in the late 1800s. Here is only … Continue Reading The Earliest Photographs of Paris
I first came across Claude Lorrain’s fantasies of classical Greece and Rome on the cover of an old paperback of … Continue Reading Claude Lorrain’s Nostalgia for What Never Was
It’s too bad Nicholas Poussin’s Shepherds of Arcady/Et in Arcadia (Even in Arcadia, there am I) can’t get much attention … Continue Reading The Painting that Lit a Million Conspiracy Theories
from Thomas Cahill’s Heretics and Heroes: In a collection of travel essays published in 1925, Aldous Huxley had called Piero … Continue Reading Aldous Huxley Saves the Day
One of the great jazz standards of Medieval & Renaissance art, here’s only a selection of all the depictions of … Continue Reading Images: The Saint & the Lion
At least for me, John Singer Sargent’s “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” is one of the more haunting paintings. … Continue Reading One of the Most Haunting Paintings
The way I heard it, Salvador Dali saw a reproduction of Millet’s Angelus in his classroom during childhood, and it … Continue Reading Images: The Painting Salvador Dali Couldn’t Get Away From
Taken from John Richardson’s biographies of Picasso. Click on each to enlarge:
The French painter and model Victorine Meurent (1844-1927) appears in some of the most famous of Édouard Manet’s paintings. Click … Continue Reading Images: Manet’s Muse, Victorine Meurent
The number of Rembrandt’s self-portraits alone far outnumber the entire output of many artists. Here is only a fraction of … Continue Reading Images: Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits
Scroll through this selection of preliminary studies & photos of the canvas as it was worked on & completed. Pretty … Continue Reading Images: Watch Picasso’s “Guernica” Emerge