
The work is a three-quarter length portrait of Johanna Martens (1599—1639), the wife of Antonie van Hilten (1586—1670), Secretary of State of Utrecht (dignified by...

The work is a three-quarter length portrait of Johanna Martens (1599—1639), the wife of Antonie van Hilten (1586—1670), Secretary of State of Utrecht (dignified by...

The sitter is likely the 20-year-old Maria Trip. She hailed from an extremely wealthy family involved in the arms trade. Here, she displays her affluence in full...

Philips Lucaszoon was a senior official with the Dutch East India Company. He had returned to the Netherlands in 1633. Rembrandt (1606—1669) painted this portrait...

In the 1630s, Thomas de Keyser was the most fashionable portrait painter in Amsterdam, and his work was popular with the middle and upper classes of that city. As one of...

The regentesses Clara Abba, Elisabeth van Duynen, and Agatha Munter administered Amsterdam’s leper house, a charitable institution. Dutch painter Ferdinand Bol...

Rembrandt painted Oopjen Coppit (1611—1689), the wife of Maerten Soolmans (see the post from 8th December), when she was pregnant with her first child at the age of 23....

The portraits of Maerten Soolmans and his wife Oopjen Coppit (I’ll post separately), two masterpieces painted in 1634, when Rembrandt was just 28 years old, have been...

Catharina Hooft became famous at a very early age, when she was painted by the Dutch Golden Age master Frans Hals (1582/3—1666). In this triumph of characterisation, the...

Frederic Leighton (1830—1896) was one of Victorian Britain’s most renowned painters. Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire he received academic training in various European...

A nymph, naked except for a thin strip of seaweed draped across her lower body, opens a large oyster shell, where the little baby lies asleep. Herbert James Draper, A...

Le Crépuscule, or Dusk, was one of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s most acclaimed works. It is the first in a series of canvases representing the four Times of Day: the...

The Catalogue of the 1860 National Exhibition of Fine Arts describes this work in the following excerpt: ‘The goddess of Love can be seen standing on a shell held by a...

Aurora, or Dawn, was one of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s most acclaimed works. It is the first in a series of canvases representing the four Times of Day: the others...

The famous Haarlem based painter and engraver Hendrick Goltzius (1558—1617) has painted an informal portrait of his friend, the textile merchant Jan Govertsen van der...

The subject for which William Joseph McCloskey (1859—1941) is most readily known is the tissue paper-wrapped citrus fruits, lemons and oranges. McCloskey was a native of...

John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836—1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes. The compositional motif was first created...

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt. Arthur Streeton, Lilac, 1932, Private collection. Source:...

Arvid Frederick Nyholm (1866—1927) was born in Stockholm in 1866 and studied art at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. In 1891 he immigrated to the United States,...

Claude Monet’s lifelong affinity for the landscape of Normandy and its dramatic coastline can be traced back to his childhood. The son of a commercial officer who worked...

This is the magic of Renoir’s Paris. ‘The Grands Boulevards’ is full of bright colours that are characteristic of Impressionism. The painting illustrates a busy Paris...

The setting of this work is the river Seine at the Clichy Bridge near Asnières, a suburb north of Paris where Vincent van Gogh painted on several occasions with his...

“Woman with a Parasol” was painted outdoors, en plain air, probably in a single session of several hours’ duration. The picture is full of spontaneity and naturalness,...

“Dans la prairie” was painted towards the end of Monet’s stay at Argenteuil in 1876. Monet’s wife Camille reading a book submerged by the vivid cornucopia of foliage....

Irises were among Claude Monet’s favourite flowers, and he cultivated many different species, planting them in both his flower garden and his water garden. This is one...

Lilla Cabot Perry (1848—1933) was one of the first American artists to embrace Impressionism. She studied in Boston and then Paris, where in 1889 she encountered the...

In the beginning of the 20th century Sir John Lavery (1856—1941) was already an internationally acclaimed artist in the UK and France, renowned for female portraits that...

English painter and engraver John Martin (1789—1854) combines landscape and historical painting to illustrate a dramatic story from the Bible’s Old Testament. When...