Gandalf's Gallery

Gigo Gabashvili - The Market

2012-01-31T08:43:00.003Z

Gigo Gabashvili - The Market, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Gigo Gabashvili, who also painted under the pseudonym Gigo Gabaev, is widely considered to be the founder of the new Critical Realism School of painting in Georgian art. He was born in Tiflis in 1862 and like many other aspiring Georgian artists in the nineteenth century, went to St. Petersburg to study at the prestigious Academy of Arts. His first entry attempt in 1883 was unsuccessful, and he returned to Tiflis where he became Frants Roubaud’s assistant. As Roubaud’s assistant, Gabashvili travelled extensively gathering materials and studies for a series of paintings depicting scenes from the recent Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. With a glowing recommendation from his mentor, Gabashvili was accepted into the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, in 1886, where he won several accolades. He died in Tsikhisdziri, Adjara in 1936.

[Oil on board, 32.5 x 40.5 cm]

Fernand Piet - Market in Brest [c.1899]

2012-01-31T08:43:00.001Z

Fernand Piet - Market in Brest [c.1899], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Fernand Piet (1869 – 1942) was a French painter.

[Oil on canvas, 64.7 x 80 cm]

Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral Facade and Tour d’Albane, Morning Effect [1894]

2012-01-30T10:28:00.003Z

Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral Facade and Tour d’Albane, Morning Effect [1894], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Monet’s series paintings of the 1890s, multiple variations of a single motif conceived, executed, and exhibited as a group, are among his most inventive and remarkable works. In the winter of 1892 the artist spent several months studying and painting the façade of Rouen Cathedral in his native Normandy. From rooms facing the cathedral across a square, Monet concentrated on the analysis of light and its effects on the forms of the façade, changing from one canvas to another as the day progressed. Later he extensively reworked the thirty paintings of the cathedral series in his studio at Giverny. Their encrusted surfaces of dry, thickly layered paint evoke the rough texture of weathered stone, absorbing and reflecting light like the walls of the cathedral itself.

[Oil on canvas, 106.1 x 73.9 cm]

Johan Barthold Jongkind - River Scene [1860-80]

2012-01-30T10:28:00.001Z

Johan Barthold Jongkind - River Scene [1860-80], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This view is traditionally described as a depiction of the river Seine, but the specific site has not been identified. The painting once included a large ship on the right, which may have been part of a previous picture.

Jongkind was born in Latrop (Holland). He was influenced by Isabey. He lived partly in Holland, and partly in France. He specialised in landscapes. He was a friend of Boudin and influenced the young Monet.

[Oil on canvas, 52.1 x 80 cm]

Robert Henri - Cumulus Clouds, East River [1901-02]

2012-01-29T10:29:00.001Z

Robert Henri - Cumulus Clouds, East River [1901-02], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Robert Henri (Cincinnati, Ohio, June 25, 1865 – New York City, July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art. He began teaching at the New York School of Art in 1902, where his students included Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows and Stuart Davis. In 1905, Henri's wife Linda, long in poor health, died. In the spring of 1929 Henri was chosen as one of the top three living American artists by the Arts Council of New York. Henri died of cancer in the summer of 1929. He was honoured with a memorial exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1931.

[Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm]

Paul Cornoyer - Afternoon Madison Square [1910]

2012-01-29T10:28:00.001Z

Paul Cornoyer - Afternoon Madison Square [1910], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Paul Cornoyer was born in 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied there at the School of Fine Arts in 1881. His first works were in a Barbizon mode, and his first exhibit was in 1887. In 1889, he went to Paris for further training, studying at the Academie Julien, and returned to St. Louis in 1894. By the early 1890s, his work was more lyrical and tonal, and he applied this style to subjects such as cityscapes and landscapes. He died in East Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1923.

[Oil on canvas, 121.92 x 152.4 cm]

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agatha Attended by Saint Peter and an Angel in Prison [c.1640-45]

2012-01-28T09:46:00.003Z

Alessandro Turchi - Saint Agatha Attended by Saint Peter and an Angel in Prison [c.1640-45], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

According to an early Christian legend, when a 3rd-century Roman official of Sicily desired the Christian woman Agatha, and she refused to yield to his advances, he had her tortured, and even ordered her breasts cut off. At night in prison, she was visited by a vision of Saint Peter and an angel, and her breasts were miraculously restored. The grey stone of the prison wall was created by letting the slate show through, and it forms a background for the night scene, illuminated by a torch. As opposed to canvas and wood, slate gave a painting almost unlimited durability and the same kind of permanence as sculpture.

[Oil on slate, 34.7 x 49.5 cm]

Willem van Herp the Elder - Saint Anthony of Padua Distributing Bread [c.1662]

2012-01-28T09:46:00.001Z

Willem van Herp the Elder - Saint Anthony of Padua Distributing Bread [c.1662], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The friars on the left are Franciscan and the one in the centre has a Glory, and may be intended to depict Saint Anthony of Padua. The poor on the right, who receive bread from the Franciscans, include two pilgrims. In 1662 van Herp was paid 95 guilders for a painting of Saint Anthony of Padua distributing bread. This may have been the picture; the documented picture was subsequently sent to Spain by the Antwerp dealer, Musson. Van Herp (c.1614 - 1677) was probably born in Antwerp, where he spent his entire working life. He was a painter of narratives.

[Oil on copper, 80 x 114.3 cm]

Theo van Rysselberghe - Coastal Scene [c.1892]

2012-01-27T08:49:00.003Z

Theo van Rysselberghe - Coastal Scene [c.1892], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Van Rysselberghe adopted the pointillist style, creating a composition using countless tiny dots of complementary colours, after seeing the work of Georges Seurat. He formed a close friendship with Seurat's follower, Paul Signac, and in the early 1890s produced a series of deceptively simple, light-filled and densely worked seascapes as van Rysselberghe and Signac travelled and painted together. A distinctive feature of his work is the clusters of white dots sprinkled across the picture surface, as here, which give his paintings an animated, almost dancing quality. The dots also often form swirling decorative patterns, as in this work.

[Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm]

Erik Mogens Christian Vantore - Coastal Landscape Through A Window

2012-01-27T08:49:00.001Z

Erik Mogens Christian Vantore - Coastal Landscape Through A Window, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Son of the notable artist Hans Christian Hansen, Erik Mogens Vantore was born in Copenhagen in 1895. He first studied at Copenhagen’s Charlottenberg Art Academy, to which he was admitted at the unusually young age of 14. Vantore furthered his studies in Paris where he was influenced by the Post-Impressionists, particularly by Gauguin and the Nabis. After his return to Denmark, he continued to exhibit successfully in Paris while exhibiting annually at Copenhagen’s Charlottenberg Museum. Vantore achieved both academic and commercial success in his lifetime and his paintings may be found in the permanent collections of museums worldwide. His style is characterised by bravura brushwork, a saturated palette, innovative perspective and a compositional structure that impart freshness and vivacity to his carefully-observed subjects. He died in1977.

[Oil on canvas, 24.5 x 19 inches]

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885]

2012-01-26T08:50:00.003Z

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1885, Seurat went to paint the sea, staying for several weeks at Grandcamp, a Normandy village on the coast of La Manche. Fort Samson was a fifteen-minute walk from Grandcamp. In placing the line of the horizon in this painting a little higher than the middle, Seurat attains a correlation between the earth and the sky that best expresses a feeling of tranquility. The motifs of Seurat's landscapes did not seem fundamentally new in comparison with the old Impressionists. But the differences in both mood and the application of paint, are enormous. While Monet and Renoir painted with brushstrokes which could be large or small, aimed at any direction, existing separately or merging with neighbouring strokes, the methods proposed by Seurat presupposed greater homogeneity and orderliness. His painting immediately begun to be called both divisionist, since it was based on separated brushstrokes, or pointillist, because the strokes were individual dots of paint. Most often, it was called Neo-Impressionist, because of its complex relationship with the art of Monet and Renoir.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 81.5 cm]

Jacob Storck - View of a Harbour

2012-01-26T08:50:00.001Z

Jacob Storck - View of a Harbour, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jacob Storck (1641 - c.1688) was a Dutch Baroque Era painter.

[Oil on panel, 65.3 x 98 cm]

Dod Proctor - The Tall Girl 1929]

2012-01-25T09:03:00.003Z

Dod Proctor - The Tall Girl 1929], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dod Proctor (born Doris Shaw, 1892 - 1972) was a Cornish artist, and the wife of Ernest Proctor. From around 1922, Proctor painted a series of simplified, monumental images of young women of her acquaintance. They were typified by the volume of the figures, brought out by her use of light and shadow. During her life-time and after her death her work fell out of favour.

[Oil on canvas, 152 x 76 cm]

Childe Hassam - Tanagra (The Builders, New York) [1918]

2012-01-25T09:03:00.001Z

Childe Hassam - Tanagra (The Builders, New York) [1918], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolised all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind's reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation's muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam's orderly and prosperous world.

The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this "blond Aryan girl" provided a buffer against the unruliness of America's immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the painting (the lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screen) suggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamour of a new century.

[Oil on canvas, 149.2 x 149.0 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - House at Auvers [c.1890]

2012-01-24T10:24:00.003Z

Vincent van Gogh - House at Auvers [c.1890], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In May 1890, van Gogh moved from the south of France to Auvers, northwest of Paris, painting many of his finest pictures there in a feverish spurt of activity before his suicide in July. Houses at Auvers shows the landscape of early summer. The view from above creates a flattened tapestry of shapes in which the tiled and thatched roofs of the houses form a mesmerising patchwork of colour.

[Oil on canvas, 75.6 x 61.9 cm]

Edgar Degas - Horses in a Meadow [1871]

2012-01-24T10:24:00.001Z

Edgar Degas - Horses in a Meadow [1871], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 31.8 x 40 cm]

Mary Cassatt - A Woman and a Girl Driving [1881]

2012-01-23T09:10:00.003Z

Mary Cassatt - A Woman and a Girl Driving [1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cassatt (American, 1844–1926) settled in Paris in 1874 and became the only American to show her works with the Impressionists. She specialised in portraying women's activities. This canvas conveys the comfortable existence of women in her circle and her own support of female empowerment. Cassatt's sister, Lydia, who came to live in Paris in 1877, is seen driving a small carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, enjoying a familiar outing and taking charge of her own path, actually and symbolically. She is accompanied by Odile Fèvre, a niece of Edgar Degas. Lydia's independence and determined concentration are in contrast to the family's passive young groom, who observes from the backward-facing seat only where the carriage has been, not where it is going.

[Oil on canvas, 89.7 x 130.5 cm]

Jan van der Heyden - A View in Cologne [c.1660-65]

2012-01-23T09:10:00.001Z

Jan van der Heyden - A View in Cologne [c.1660-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The construction of Cologne Cathedral was begun in the middle of the 13th century, continued through the 14th and 15th centuries and was discontinued in the mid-16th century; it was only completed in 1842-80. Here, the unfinished cathedral is seen from the west. The crane on top of the tower was already in position by the second half of the 15th century, and was not removed until 1868. As the surrounding buildings and streets no longer exist, it is not possible to determine the accuracy of this view. Parts of the cathedral are incorrectly rendered.

Van der Heyden executed a few landscapes and still lifes, but was chiefly a painter of townscapes, notable for their exceptionally detailed handling. Imaginary views, anticipating the capricci (imaginary topographical scenes) of 18th-century Venetian painters, are common among his works - the figures are often by other artists. Van der Heyden was a native of Gorinchem, though his family had moved to Amsterdam by 1650. He was trained, according to his biographer Houbraken, as a glass painter. Before 1661 he travelled extensively in the southern Netherlands and in Germany, making drawings later used in his paintings. From the late 1660s van der Heyden was also engaged in projects to improve street lighting and fire-fighting in Amsterdam.

[Oil on oak, 33.1 x 42.9 cm]

Sergey Vasilkovsky - Spring Day in the Ukraine

2012-01-22T10:36:00.003Z

Sergey Vasilkovsky - Spring Day in the Ukraine, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Sergey Vasilkovsky (1854 – 1917) was a Russian painter.

Charles-François Daubigny - Spring Landscape [1863]

2012-01-22T10:36:00.001Z

Charles-François Daubigny - Spring Landscape [1863], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

As did Monet a few years later, Daubigny (Paris, February 15, 1817 - Paris, February 19, 1878) owned a small studio boat in which he travelled along the Oise and the Seine on the lookout for motifs. The pictures painted from the river often have a panoramic element. Daubigny liked to complete even large paintings out of doors; they thus make a more live impression than most of the works by the Barbizon painters. The Impressionists held him in high esteem as their precursor. He, in turn, as a member of the jury in the Salon, defended their works.

[Oil on canvas, 133 x 240 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Afternoon [1739-41]

2012-01-21T09:38:00.003Z

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Afternoon [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is the third in a series of four paintings known as Les Heures du Jour (The Hours of the Day). Two women watch a man and a woman playing backgammon. Gaming was a popular pursuit among the leisured classes of 18th-century France.

[Oil on copper, 28.8 x 36.7 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Evening [1739-41]

2012-01-21T09:38:00.001Z

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Evening [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This picture of contemporary women disporting themselves at a stream is poking fun at the commonly depicted subject of Diana and her maidens. Diana was goddess of the moon.

[Oil on copper, 28.8 x 36.8 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Morning [1739-41]

2012-01-20T09:50:00.001Z

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Morning [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The four paintings in this series - Morning, Midday, Afternoon, and Evening are also known as Les Heures du Jour (The Hours of the Day). They were painted by February 1741 when engravings of them by Nicolas de Larmessin III were presented to the Academie in Paris. It appears that this painting had been exhibited in the Salon of 1739.

[Oil on copper, 28.3 x 36.4 cm]

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Midday [1739-41]

2012-01-20T09:49:00.001Z

Nicolas Lancret - The Four Times of Day: Midday [1739-41], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Three women and a man who have been picking flowers in a garden have stopped by a sundial, inscribed XII. Two of the figures are checking their watches. Lighthearted pursuits were typically shown in the genre scenes of artists like Watteau, Pater and Lancret.

[Oil on copper, 28.6 x 36.9 cm]

Albert Chevalier Tayler - The Mirror

2012-01-19T08:54:00.003Z

Albert Chevalier Tayler - The Mirror, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Albert Chevalier Tayler (Leytonstone, Essex, 1862 – 1925) was an important English artist who specialised in portrait and genre painting, but was also involved in the plein air methods of the Newlyn School. He was a member of the British Royal Academy of Painters, and he studied at Heatherley's School of Art, Royal Academy Schools and with avant garde painters in Paris. He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire.

Meindert Hobberma - The Haarlem Lock, Amsterdam [c.1663-65]

2012-01-19T08:54:00.001Z

Meindert Hobberma - The Haarlem Lock, Amsterdam [c.1663-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Haarlem Lock (Haarlemmersluis) and the Herring-Packers' Tower (Haaringpakkerstoren) are seen from the west side of the Singel Canal, at its junction with the Brouwersgracht. None of the buildings shown has survived. The tower was part of the town's fortifications and dated from the 15th century; its spire was added at the beginning of the 17th century. The view shows the area before alterations of 1661-62, but may have been painted later. Hobbema was living in the Haarlemmerdijk, the corner of which is shown here in the left background, by late 1668. The painting is the only known townscape by Hobbema. Thus the lack of comparable works makes dating the picture difficult; a date of about 1663-65 has been suggested.

[Oil on canvas, 77 x 98 cm]

Axel Fridell - Interior With Napoleon [1925]

2012-01-18T10:44:00.001Z

Axel Fridell - Interior With Napoleon [1925], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Axel Fridell (Falun, 1894 - Stockholm, 1935) was a Swedish graphic artist and painter. In addition to graphics, he painted in oil, including self-portraits, interiors with figures and landscape motifs from the Stockholm area or Falun, often light and fluffy in nature and with a light and bright colouring. When Fridell died in 1935, just 40 years old, he had in almost two decades, managed to reach the artistic heights that it has taken such as Anders Zorn an entire lifetime to achieve. The cause of death was disseminated lung cancer. He died at St. Erik’s Eye Hospital on Sunday afternoon of May 26, 1935.

[Oil on wood, 45.5 x 55 cm]

Thomas Le Clear - Interior With Portraits [c.1865]

2012-01-18T10:43:00.001Z

Thomas Le Clear - Interior With Portraits [c.1865], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

By about 1865 American artists were beginning to understand the implications of photography for the art of painting. This canvas reportedly was commissioned by the elder brother of the two children (James and Parnell Sidway) posing in the skylit studio. The paraphernalia of painting are upstaged by the photographer and his gear and the landscape is a mere prop, not an awe-inspiring view. Yet Le Clear does not simply tell a story of photography's triumph over painting. At the time the painting was made, James Sidway, a volunteer firefighter in his mid-twenties, had recently died in a hotel fire; his older sister, Parnell, had died in adolescence, more than fifteen years earlier. Thus, Le Clear may be lauding painters who, unlike photographers, could capture more than the moment at hand, invent narrative, and even restore life to individuals who had passed.

[Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 102.9 cm]

Victor Schivert - The Figurine

2012-01-17T08:58:00.003Z

Victor Schivert - The Figurine, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Victor Schivert (Jassy, 1863 - Munich, 1929) was a Romanian artist.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 55 cm]

Felice Casorati - Girl on a Red Carpet [1912]

2012-01-17T08:58:00.001Z

Felice Casorati - Girl on a Red Carpet [1912], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Felice Casorati (December 4, 1883– March 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusual perspective effects. Casorati was born in Navara and showed an early interest in music and art. To please his parents he studied law at the University of Padua until 1906, but his ambition to be a painter was confirmed in 1907 when a painting of his was shown in the Venice Biennale. After 1930 the severity of Casorati's earlier style softened somewhat and his palette brightened. He continued to exhibit widely, winning many awards, including the First Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1938. He was also involved in stage design. He died in Turin in 1963.

Edmund Charles Tarbell - New England Interior [1906]

2012-01-16T10:13:00.003Z

Edmund Charles Tarbell - New England Interior [1906], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862–1938) was the leading figure in the group of painters that came to be called the Boston School. He was both an alumnus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and an important teacher there. Between his studies at the Museum School as an aspiring young artist and his appointment as the school's chief instructor of painting in 1890, he honed his education in Paris. There he familiarised himself with both the academic tradition and the new Impressionist style. Like his friend Frank Benson, Tarbell first earned success with brilliant outdoor studies of his family, sunlit scenes of leisure that brought him national acclaim.

At the end of the 1890s Tarbell began to bring Impressionism inside, creating images of elegant women in interiors suffused with light. At first Tarbell drew inspiration from the cropped asymmetry of Edgar Degas's scenes of dancers, but New England Interior and other works like it mark a definitive shift in his art. Rather than using modern painting as his model, Tarbell began to turn to the art of the past. He especially admired the seventeenth-century Dutch masters Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. His interiors, like theirs, often include doorways open to other rooms and paintings within the painting. But Tarbell did not create historical scenes - his models wear contemporary clothes and the settings are modern, often furnished with antiques, Japanese prints, and copies after Old Master paintings. In works like New England Interior Tarbell inculcated the present with the values of the past, employing careful craftsmanship and creating exquisite beauty.

[Oil on canvas, 77.15 x 64.13 cm]

Eastman Johnson - Negro Life at the South [1859]

2012-01-16T10:13:00.001Z

Eastman Johnson - Negro Life at the South [1859], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) fills a scene set in a Washington, D.C., backyard with African Americans who enact virtually every phase of family life: courtship and marriage, motherhood, training the young, and listening to the elderly. Focusing on the black community, he marginalises the white visitor at the right. Johnson seems to have sought a measure of ambiguity in recounting his tale. Such open-ended story lines would characterise many postwar paintings of everyday life. Although the location is urban, he called the painting Negro Life at the South, which invited viewers to see the tenements as outbuildings on a plantation. On the eve of the Civil War, apologists for slavery could read Johnson's narrative for signs of easy living and family solidarity despite forced servitude. Abolitionists could interpret the dilapidated buildings and humbly dressed people as symbols of slavery's oppression of blacks.

[Oil on canvas, 36 x 45.25 inches]

Jean Corot - Woman Gathering Faggots [c.1871-74]

2012-01-15T09:51:00.001Z

Jean Corot - Woman Gathering Faggots [c.1871-74], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 72.1 x 57.2]

Mark Senior - Runswick Bay

2012-01-15T09:50:00.001Z

Mark Senior - Runswick Bay, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Mark Senior (English, 1862 - 1927) was a well-known Yorkshire post-Impressionist artist and teacher who was born in Hanging Heaton, Batley in 1862, but lived all his life in Ossett after marrying Alice Brook, the daughter of Ossett mungo manufacturer Thomas Brook in 1886. In the 1890s, Mark Senior established a pattern which was to govern the rest of his working life. Around Easter, the whole family would pack and remove itself to Runswick Bay on the North Yorkshire coast, until October. Here they initially rented a small cottage, but later, in 1919, a larger cottage ‘Hillside’ was built by Senior on land purchased from Gertrude Hudson, one of Senior's pupils.

[Oil on canvas, 79 x 79 cm]

Jean Charles Cazin - Riverbank with Bathers [c.1882]

2012-01-14T10:10:00.003Z

Jean Charles Cazin - Riverbank with Bathers [c.1882], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jean Charles Cazin (Samer, May 25, 1840 - March 17, 1901) was a French landscape painter and ceramicist. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889. His charming and poetical treatment of landscape is the feature in his tonalism painting which in later years has given them an increasing value among connoisseurs.

[Oil on canvas, 131.2 x 147 cm]

William Glackens - The Shoppers [1907–08]

2012-01-14T10:10:00.001Z

William Glackens - The Shoppers [1907–08], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject of the painting is a slice of middle-class New York life: well-dressed women shopping for clothes in a department store. The three principal figures are all portraits. The woman standing at centre is Edith Glackens, who is shown inspecting a piece of lingerie offered by a saleswoman. Edith's companion at right is Florence (Mrs. Everett) Shinn. The woman at left, seated at the counter with her back turned to the viewer, represents another family friend, Lillian G. Travis, who was noted for her beautiful auburn hair. Mrs. Travis was an old schoolmate of Edith's from the Art Students League and a frequent visitor to the Glackens's Washington Square apartment. Glackens' paean to feminine consumerism stresses the expanding role that department stores played in the lives of leisured, middle-class women in early-twentieth-century New York (both Edith and Florence Shinn were from moneyed families). In fact, the painting's setting may well be the Wanamaker department store that had only recently opened near Washington Square.

[Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches)

Paul Cezanne - The Large Bathers [c.1906]

2012-01-13T08:58:00.001Z

Paul Cezanne - The Large Bathers [c.1906], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Near the end of his life Paul Cézanne painted three large canvases of female nudes disporting in a landscape. They derive in part from pastoral images of female bathers, such as the goddess Diana and her maidens, long favoured in French art. These works seem to have been, for Cézanne, the culmination of a lifetime of exploration on the nude, his final testament within the grand tradition of French narrative painting on the nature of the human condition. They differ greatly from one another, these three paintings (the others are in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania, and the National Gallery, London). The Philadelphia version, perhaps because of its unfinished state, is both the most exalted and the most serene. The women command a great stage, very much like goddesses in some grand opera production, with the arched trees acting as the proscenium. They are completely at ease, and for all the motion and activity there is a profound sense of eternal calm and resolution, as well as a quality of monumentality achieved through the most lucid and unlaboured means.

Alexandre Calame - The Lake of Thun [1854]

2012-01-13T08:57:00.001Z

Alexandre Calame - The Lake of Thun [1854], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Calame painted the Lake of Thun, near Interlaken, several times. The snow-covered mountain is apparently the Blümlisalp. The painter's record-book shows that the picture was originally commissioned in 1852 by H. Vaughan. Calame was born in Vevey, and studied in Geneva from 1829 under Diday. He lost an eye at an early age. He was a landscape painter and specialised in Alpine scenery.

[Oil on canvas, 59.1 x 78.1 cm]

Thomas Faed - Last of the Clan

2012-01-12T09:03:00.001Z

Thomas Faed - Last of the Clan, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Thomas Faed (Gatehouse of Fleet, June 8, 1826 - London, August 17, 1900) was a Scottish painter. He received his art education in the school of design, Edinburgh and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1849. He went to London three years later, was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1861, and academician in 1864, and retired in 1893. He had much success as a painter of domestic genre, and had considerable executive capacity.

Edgar Degas - Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando [1879]

2012-01-12T09:02:00.001Z

Edgar Degas - Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando [1879], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The acrobat Miss La La caused a sensation when she performed at the Cirque Fernando in Paris. Here she is shown suspended from the rafters of the circus dome by a rope clenched between her teeth. Degas sought out such striking modern subjects, concentrating on figures in arresting poses. In January 1879 he make a series of drawings at the Cirque Fernando including a pastel study of Miss La La (London, Tate Gallery), which culminated in this painting. We view the spectacle as the audience would have done, gazing up at the daring feat taking place above. The painting was exhibited at the fourth Impressionist exhibition held in April 1879.

[Oil on canvas, 117.2 x 77.5 cm]

David Emile Joseph de Noter - In the Kitchen [1856]

2012-01-11T10:06:00.001Z

David Emile Joseph de Noter - In the Kitchen [1856], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

David de Noter (1825 – 1875) was born into a family of artists in Brussels. His father, Jean-Baptiste, was a painter of city scenes and interiors, and his uncle, Pierre Francois, was a sculptor, painter and designer. David's brother, Raphael, also became a painter; and the style and subjects done by the brothers share similar qualities. During the 1860’s, de Noter lived and worked in Paris and was known to have shared a studio with J. Goupil in 1864 and at Le Vésinet in 1867. At some point during his career, he toured North Africa, in particular, Algeria.

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 98 cm]

Alfred Henry Maurer - In a Cafe [1905]

2012-01-11T10:05:00.001Z

Alfred Henry Maurer - In a Cafe [1905], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Alfred Henry Maurer (New York City, April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. Leaving Paris shortly before World War I, he returned to his father's house only to be denied support. For the next seventeen years Maurer painted in a garret in his father's house and was able to gain no critical acclaim. It is extremely difficult to run across any of Maurer’s paintings as most of his work is still privately owned. Maurer took his own life by hanging, several weeks after his father's death.

[Oil on canvas, 90 x 79.5 cm]

Axel Nilsson - Still Life with Onions

2012-01-10T08:53:00.001Z

Axel Nilsson - Still Life with Onions, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Axel Nilsson (1889 - 1981) was a Swedish artist.

[Oil on panel, 44 x 39 cm]

Adolphe Monticelli - Still Life, Fruit [c.1878-82]

2012-01-10T08:52:00.001Z

Adolphe Monticelli - Still Life, Fruit [c.1878-82], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A glass, a bottle (or carafe), a knife and a plate of fruit are seen on a table. Most of Monticelli's still life paintings were made between 1875 and 1885, with the majority being finished in the period from 1879 to 1882. The patterned tablecloth shown here is also present in the artist's Still Life, Oysters, Fish.

[Oil on wood, 45.7 x 61 cm]

Lillian Genth - Adagio [1900-09]

2012-01-09T10:00:00.003Z

Lillian Genth - Adagio [1900-09], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Lillian Genth (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1876 - New York City, 1953) is known for her paintings of female nudes in landscapes, which she painted at her summer home in the Berkshires. However, later in her career (1928), she abandoned that subject matter for scenes of her travels that included Spain, North Africa, Japan, China, Fiji, Bali, New Guinea, and Thailand where she was commissioned to paint a portrait of the King.

Lillian Mathilde Genth is an anomaly in the history of American Art. For an artist to have received so much attention, both critical and public, during her career and then to fall into almost complete obscurity is difficult to understand. How is it that an artist who received major national and international awards and citations, and who was included in over 230 exhibitions in a thirty year period, can become a mere footnote in the history of American art?

[Oil on canvas, 89.1 x 73.9 cm]

Horace Vernet - The Angel of Death [1851]

2012-01-09T10:00:00.001Z

Horace Vernet - The Angel of Death [1851], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (Paris, June 30, 1789 - Paris, January 17, 1863) was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist Arab subjects. One well known and possibly apocryphal anecdote maintains that when Vernet was asked to remove a certain obnoxious general from one of his paintings, he replied, "I am a painter of history, sire, and I will not violate the truth," hence demonstrating his fidelity to representing war truthfully.

[Oil on canvas, 146 x 113 cm]

Ken Howard - Mousehole, Summer

2012-01-08T10:56:00.001Z

Ken Howard - Mousehole, Summer, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Mousehole, is a village and fishing port in Cornwall, England. Mousehole, along with Marazion, was until the 16th century one of the principal ports of Mount's Bay. Before its decline as a major commercial centre, Mousehole also had a number of fairs and markets, including the charter for a market on Tuesdays, with a fair for three days at the festival of St Barnabas, granted to Henry de Tyes in 1292.

Today, Mousehole hosts a vibrant variety of festivals and community activities. Tom Bawcock's Eve is a unique celebration held on December 23 each year to celebrate the ending of a famine in the 16th century by local resident Tom Bawcock. This festival is also the origin of Star Gazey Pie, a mixed fish, egg and potato pie with fish heads protruding through the pastry. Mousehole also holds a small maritime festival every two years called Sea, Salt and Sail.

Edward Seago - On the Beach at Great Yarmouth

2012-01-08T10:55:00.001Z

Edward Seago - On the Beach at Great Yarmouth, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Born in Norwich on March 31, 1910, Edward Seago, the son of Brian and Mabel, and the younger brother of John, was inextricably linked to the counties of East Anglia by virtue of his life and ancestry. Throughout his life, Seago was consistently plagued by the effects of a rare and mystifying condition of the heart, paroxysmal tachycardia, with which he was first diagnosed as a young boy of eight. Ironically, it was during the extended periods of forced leisure when the boy was rendered house-bound that he was able to realise his great passion and potential for painting. Seago later reflected upon these periods as being ‘spells of sheer delight’ as he was able to practice his precociously sensitive observation of nature and the countryside. Left to his own devices, he learned how to extract from his environment much of the subject matter for his art. After months of illness, he died in London on January 19, 1974.

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865]

2012-01-07T09:55:00.003Z

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This view of the artist's studio was probably painted in Paris. During this period Cézanne divided his time between his native Aix-en-Provence and Paris, and the picture evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. On the right a single flower stands in a vase on a table. A canvas stretcher is visible behind the stove, and a palette and what may be a small picture hang on the wall at the left. The first owner of this work was Cézanne's boyhood friend, the writer Emile Zola.

[Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 cm]

Aelbert Cuyp - The Small Dort [c.1650-52]

2012-01-07T09:55:00.001Z

Aelbert Cuyp - The Small Dort [c.1650-52], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dordrecht (Dort) is seen in the background from the south-east, with the Grote Kerk in the centre, and the Vuilpoort, one of the town's water-gates (demolished in 1864) on the left.

[Oil on oak, 66.4 x 100 cm]

Pieter de Hooch - A Musical Party in a Courtyard [1677]

2012-01-06T09:31:00.003Z

Pieter de Hooch - A Musical Party in a Courtyard [1677], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The woman on the left is playing a viola da gamba. The houses seen across the canal are similar to those on the Keizersgracht, Amsterdam. The left-hand one bears a tablet with the date 1620 and is in the style of Hendrick de Keyser (1565 – 1621). The painting is characteristic of de Hooch's Amsterdam period. In contrast to the middle-class interiors of his Delft paintings, he now focuses on more sophisticated domestic settings and elegant figures.

The son of a stonemason, de Hooch (1629 – 1684) was born in Rotterdam. According to Houbraken, he was trained by Nicolaes Bercham, one of the leading Dutch painters of Italianate landscapes, who was mainly active at Haarlem. By 1653 de Hooch was in Delft in employment as a servant and a painter. His works of the 1650s may be indebted to the perspectival studies of Carel Fabritius, who was in Delft by 1651. By 1663 de Hooch had moved to Amsterdam; his later paintings record fashionable life in the city, and utilise a darker and richer range of colours derived from Nicolas Maes.

[Oil on canvas, 83.5 x 68.5 cm]

Willem Duyster - Two Men Playing Tric-trac, with a Woman Scoring [c.1625-30]

2012-01-06T09:31:00.001Z

Willem Duyster - Two Men Playing Tric-trac, with a Woman Scoring [c.1625-30], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The men are playing tric-trac (a form of backgammon), and a woman is scoring on the side of the board with a piece of chalk. It is not clear whether this is a simple scene from everyday life, or a representation of gambling as a symbol of idleness and mortality.

[Oil on oak, 41 x 67.6 cm]

Hubertus van Hove - Distribution of Charity in the Alms-House [1857]

2012-01-05T10:38:00.003Z

Hubertus van Hove - Distribution of Charity in the Alms-House [1857], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Hubertus van Hove was born on May 3, 1814 in The Hague where he studied at the Academy under his father, Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove (1790-1880) and Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen. In 1854 he moved to Antwerp where he worked with Leys. His earlier work included landscapes, but he turned increasingly to seventeenth-century interior scenes reminiscent of de Hooch. He died in Antwerp on November 14, 1865.

[Oil on panel, 57 x 79 cm]

Adolph Menzel - The Dinner at the Ball [1878]

2012-01-05T10:38:00.001Z

Adolph Menzel - The Dinner at the Ball [1878], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

After the 1860s, Menzel was a regular guest at the large gatherings in the Berlin Stadtschloß (City Palace). He recorded his impressions as paintings, of which The Dinner at the Ball is the most complex. The company is shown from a high viewpoint during a pause in the dancing. In a vibrant play of colour, Menzel captures small, individual incidents in the midst of Gründerzeit (c. 1871–1890) pomp, showing with subtle irony the difficulty of maintaining the correct posture while eating, the chattering of voices, and the overall sense of animation. The throng seems to be without a focal point, but the composition is held together by the movement of the entire crowd towards the viewer. There is no place for detail in this work that is, while sketchy, more of an atmospheric whole.

As in earlier interiors, the room is divided and layered by the refraction of the lights at numerous points in the mirrors and chandeliers. The interiors, chandelier light, and magnificent clothes of Menzel’s late work balance his contemporaneous street and factory scenes like The Iron Rolling Mill and mark his increasing interest in painting large crowds of people. As so often elsewhere, what looks like meticulous attention to detail on Menzel’s part turns out to be illusory: neither are the rooms accurately portrayed nor are there any actual portraits of particular individuals in the crowd. The painting conveys a picture of Wilhelmine society whose lustre Menzel was brilliantly able to convey, and yet whose ambivalence he did no more than register as an apparently neutral chronicler.

[Oil on canvas, 71 x 90 cm]

Ludolf Bakhuizen - A Beach Scene with Fishermen [c.1665]

2012-01-04T09:06:00.003Z

Ludolf Bakhuizen - A Beach Scene with Fishermen [c.1665], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is a relatively early work by Bakhuizen and shows the influence of Hendrick Dubbels (1621–1707). This seascape was probably painted in the mid-1660s. Bakhuizen is best known for his seascapes, usually with rough water.

[Oil on oak, 34.2 x 48.5 cm]

Jacob Maris - A Beach [late 1870s or 1880s]

2012-01-04T09:06:00.001Z

Jacob Maris - A Beach [late 1870s or 1880s], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Maris conveys a powerful sense of isolation in this image of a lone fisherman on a wind-swept beach. The only other signs of human presence are two empty boats pulled out of the water onto the sand. The top two-thirds of the canvas are given over to scudding clouds. Jacob Hendrick Maris was born in The Hague, and was the elder brother of Matthijs and Willem Maris. He studied in The Hague and Antwerp. From 1866 to 1871 he was in Paris; then he settled in The Hague. He died in Carlsbad.

[Oil on canvas, 42.5 x 54.5 cm]

Moses van Uyttenbroeck - Landscape with Mythological Figures [1628]

2012-01-03T10:44:00.003Z

Moses van Uyttenbroeck - Landscape with Mythological Figures [1628], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

It is not clear whether Uyttenbroeck intended to represent a particular mythological subject here. The scene has been described as the Nurture of Bacchus, but it could equally well be a rustic love scene such as that of Daphnis and Chloe. The artist is not known to have visited Italy. The classical buildings and the two columns on the right could be based on one of the many engraves views of Roman monuments available in the Netherlands.

[Oil on oak, 56 x 86.4 cm]

Jacob Hendrick Maris - Landscape with Wind Mills [1890-95]

2012-01-03T10:44:00.001Z

Jacob Hendrick Maris - Landscape with Wind Mills [1890-95], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Jacob Hendrick Maris (The Hague, 1837 – Carlsbad, 1899) was the elder brother of Mattijs and Willem Maris. He studied in The Hague and Antwerp. From 1866 to 1871 he lived in Paris and then he settled in The Hague.

[Oil on canvas, 46 x 73 cm]

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - A Flood [c.1870-75]

2012-01-02T10:00:00.001Z

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - A Flood [c.1870-75], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A river runs from the left of the picture to the bottom right corner. The restricted colour range is typical of Corot's late work. The predominance of greys combined with the numerous reflections on the surface of the river help to obscure the meeting of land and water. This late, possibly unfinished, painting was first described in Robaut's 1905 catalogue of Corot's work as Le Cap Boisé, (The Wooded Headland).

[Oil on canvas, 54 x 65.1 cm]

Jan Steen - A Man Blowing Smoke at Drunken Woman [c.1660-65]

2012-01-02T09:59:00.001Z

Jan Steen - A Man Blowing Smoke at Drunken Woman [c.1660-65], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The woman has fallen asleep with a glass in one hand and a pipe in the other. The two men seem to mock her state, and the picture may be intended to illustrate the saying 'De Wijn is een spotter' (Wine is a Mocker). This picture was probably painted in the early 1660s. Steen often painted pictures on the theme of female drunkenness.

[Oil on oak, 30.2 x 24.8 cm]

Dante Bertini - Standing Nude

2012-01-01T10:03:00.003Z

Dante Bertini - Standing Nude, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Born in Mantua, this notable Italian painter first studied with the renowned figural painter, Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca, in Verona. Bertini specialised in genre paintings, landscapes and still-lives painted in a fluid style and with a characteristic soft and harmonious palette. This beautifully-composed figural work showcases Bertini’s bravura brushwork and expresses the artist’s lyrical appreciation of his young subject.

[Oil on canvas, 19.5 x 14.5 inches]

Domenico Beccafumi - The Story of Papirius [c.1550]

2012-01-01T10:03:00.001Z

Domenico Beccafumi - The Story of Papirius [c.1550], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This unusual subject has recently been identified as the story of the boy Papirius, who accompanied his father to the senate, and was sworn to secrecy concerning the debate. Questioned by his mother (left), he claimed they had discussed whether it would be better for men to have two wives, or women two husbands. The next day, she rallied the matrons of Rome to petition the senate that women might have two husbands.The senators were astonished and outraged until Papirius intervened to unravel the mystery (centre). The jovial classical subject is of a kind favoured for the decoration of domestic interiors in the Renaissance period. Beccafumi included many identifiable Roman monuments among which are the Colosseum (centre) and Castel Sant' Angelo (right).

[Oil on wood, 74 x 137.8 cm]

Kyffin Williams - Welsh Chapel Above Deiniolen [1972]

2011-12-31T10:37:00.001Z

Kyffin Williams - Welsh Chapel Above Deiniolen [1972], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Sir John "Kyffin" Williams (Llangefni, Anglesey, May 9, 1918 – Pwllfanogl, September 1, 2006) was a Welsh landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll on the Island of Anglesey. Williams is widely regarded as the defining artist of Wales during the 20th century. His works typically drew inspiration from the Welsh landscape and farmlands. His works appear in many galleries all over Britain and is on permanent exhibition in Oriel Ynys Mon, Anglesey. He was President of the Royal Cambrian Academy and was appointed a member of the Royal Academy in 1974. He was awarded the OBE for his services to the arts in 1982 and a KBE in 1999.

Millard Sheets - Tenement Flats [1933-34]

2011-12-31T10:36:00.001Z

Millard Sheets - Tenement Flats [1933-34], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighbourhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The artist failed to show that just to the left of this view a cable car line called Angels Flight offered a ride up the steep hill. In the painting a lone figure trudges up steps toward once elegant Victorian mansions that had degenerated into boarding-houses. Millard Sheets (Pomona, California, 1907 - Gualala, California, 1989), an up-and-coming young California artist, enjoyed drawing and painting the people and houses of this colourful neighbourhood. Here he shows women who have finished washing and hanging out their laundry in the days before electric appliances lightened these chores. Now the women stop to gossip while leaning on stair rails, or sit in the shade to avoid the hot afternoon sun.

[Oil on canvas, 102.1 x 127.6 cm]

Alphonse Mucha - Svantovit Celebration on the Island of Rügen [1912]

2011-12-30T09:46:00.003Z

Alphonse Mucha - Svantovit Celebration on the Island of Rügen [1912], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivancice, Moravia, which is near the city of Brno in the modern Czech Republic. It was a small town, and for all intents and purposes life was closer to the 18th than the 19th century. Though Mucha is supposed to have started drawing before he was walking, his early years were spent as a choirboy and amateur musician. It wasn't until he finished high school, needing two extra years to accomplish that onerous task that he came to realise that living people were responsible for some of the art he admired in the local churches. That epiphany made him determined to become a painter, despite his father's efforts in securing him respectable employment as a clerk in the local court.

When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, he was still influential enough to be one of the first people they arrested. He returned home after a Gestapo questioning session and died shortly thereafter on July 14, 1939.

[Egg tempera on canvas, 610 x 810 cm]

Adolphe Ladurner - The Winter Palace, part of the White (Armorial) Hall [1838]

2011-12-30T09:46:00.001Z

The Winter Palace, part of the White (Armorial) Hall [1838], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adolphe Ladurner (1798 - 1856) was a French painter.

[Oil on canvas, 69 x 96 cm]

Alan Cotton - North Cornwall, Ebb Tide at Yoel Mouth

2011-12-29T09:23:00.001Z

Alan Cotton - North Cornwall, Ebb Tide at Yoel Mouth, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Born in Redditch, Worcestershire in 1936, Alan Cotton began painting as a small child with brushes made from his mother’s hair. After attending the local Grammar School he went on to Redditch and Bournville Schools of Art. He then joined the Painting School of Birmingham College of Art and then on to the University of Birmingham. In the late sixties he moved to Devon and there began a series of large paintings of the Hartland Coastline in North Devon many of which have found their way into public collections.

[Oil on canvas, 71 x 91 cm]

Dewey Albinson - Northern Minnesota Mine [1934]

2011-12-29T09:22:00.001Z

Dewey Albinson - Northern Minnesota Mine [1934], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dewey Albinson was the son of Swedish immigrants. He began painting at the age of fifteen and studied at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), the Art Students League in New York, and abroad. Although he lived in various parts of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Albinson seemed to favour Minnesota in his works. In addition to his choice of Minnesota as a subject of his art, Albinson was also involved in the arts of Minnesota. He was Director of the St. Paul School of Art (now the Minnesota Museum of American Art) from 1926-29, a member of the Public Works of Art Project in 1933 and served as the director of the state educational division for the Works Progress Administration in 1935.

[Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127.2 cm]

Nils von Dardel - Young Man and Girl [1919]

2011-12-28T10:30:00.003Z

Nils von Dardel - Young Man and Girl [1919], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Nils von Dardel (Bettna, 1888 - New York, 1943) was a Swedish artist. Von Dardel led a self-destructive, itinerant and hectic life. Many of his later paintings are portraits of people he met on his travels. Around the time of the outbreak of World War II, the Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm mounted a retrospective of his work; this was his final popular breakthrough in his native country.

[Watercolour, 47 x 31 cm]

Eric Detthow - Still Life with Blue Pitcher and Wine Glass [1924]

2011-12-28T10:30:00.001Z

Eric Detthow - Still Life with Blue Pitcher and Wine Glass [1924], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Eric Detthow (1888 - 1952) was a Swedish artist.

[Oil on panel, 27 x 35 cm]

Henry Bacon - First Sight of Land [1877]

2011-12-27T10:54:00.003Z

Henry Bacon - First Sight of Land [1877], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Late-nineteenth-century Americans' familiarity with modern tourism was abetted by the advent of regular transatlantic routes, faster and more comfortable vessels, and reduced fares. Here, Bacon (American, 1839 – 1912), who made many transatlantic crossings, tells a story of shipboard life on the luxurious French mail steamer the Péreire. The prominent mast indicates that even steam-powered liners used auxiliary sails to take advantage of good winds and reduce fuel consumption. The well-dressed young passenger, who has cast aside her tartan lap robe and book and risen from her chair, proclaims that women were venturing abroad in greater numbers during the 1870s than ever before to finish their education and prepare for marriage. Bacon offers only a fragmentary, open-ended narrative: because the book is a salmon-covered paperback associated with French publishers, the woman may be returning to America, yet her excitement suggests she is arriving in Europe.

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 50.5 cm]

Vincent Van Gogh - First Steps [1889]

2011-12-27T10:54:00.001Z

Vincent Van Gogh - First Steps [1889], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In autumn and winter 1889–90, while a voluntary patient at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after Millet, an artist he greatly admired. He considered his copies "improvisations" or "translations" akin to a musician's interpretation of a composer's work. He let the black and white images, whether prints, reproductions, or, as here, a photograph that his brother Theo had sent "pose as subject," then he would "improvise colour on it." For this work of January 1890, Van Gogh squared up a photograph of Millet's First Steps, which he then transferred to the canvas.

[Oil on canvas, 72.4 x 91.2 cm]

Theodore Gudin - Storm in the Sea [1832]

2011-12-26T09:03:00.001Z

Theodore Gudin - Storm in the Sea [1832], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Baron Jean Antoine Théodore de Gudin (Paris, August 15, 1802, - Boulogne-sur-Seine, April 11, 1880) was a French painter of the 19th century. He especially painted navy scenes, and was a pupil of Girodet-Trioson. Gudin was one of the first Peintres de la Marine, at the court of Louis-Philippe and Napolean III.

[Oil on canvas, 32 x 47 cm]

Michelangelo - The Entombment [c.1500-01]

2011-12-25T09:45:00.003Z

Michelangelo - The Entombment [c.1500-01], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This unfinished painting shows Christ's body being carried to his tomb. There is some disagreement over the identity of the various figures represented. Saint John the Evangelist is usually shown in red with long hair, and may be the figure on the left carrying Christ. The others are probably Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathaea who gave up his tomb for Jesus. The kneeling figure to the left is probably Mary Magdalene and the woman at the back right is a Holy Woman (Mary Salome). The Virgin is prepared in outline in the bottom right corner.

The picture came from a collection in Rome, and is thought to be connected with payments made to Michelangelo between 1501 and 1502 relating to an altarpiece for Sant Agostino in Rome which he failed to deliver. This would explain the unfinished state of this painting.

The Entombment is generally accepted to be by Michelangelo, since the treatment of the figures links closely with other works by him of this period. The kneeling figure on the left appears to meditate on something in her raised hand. A drawing by Michelangelo in the Louvre, Paris, is clearly a preparatory study for this figure and shows her with the crown of thorns and the nails with which Christ had been crucified.

[Oil on wood, 161.7 x 149.8 cm]

Paulus Constantin La Fargue - The Grote Markt at The Hague [1760]

2011-12-25T09:45:00.001Z

Paulus Constantin La Fargue - The Grote Markt at The Hague [1760], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The market square (Grote Markt) is shown from the Prinsengracht. On the extreme left is the Groot Boterhuis (the former butter market), on the wall of which are various sale bills. In the centre, beyond the houses (most of which have been rebuilt), are the tower and roof of the choir of the Grote Kerk (St Jacobskerk).

La Fargue (1729-1782) was born and worked in The Hague. In 1768 he was recorded as a pupil at the Academy there. He was a landscape and topographical painter. He was the most prolific member of a family of topographical artists which also included his brothers Jacob Elias, Isaac Louis and Karel, and his sister Maria Margaretha. As well as paintings, he made topographical watercolours and series of etchings and book illustrations.

[Oil on mahogany, 57.6 x 75.9 cm]

Paul Hugues - Women in the Park

2011-12-24T09:07:00.003Z

Paul Hugues - Women in the Park, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Paul Hugues (1891 – 1972) was a French painter and sculptor.

Claude Monet - Women in the Garden [c.1866]

2011-12-24T09:07:00.001Z

Claude Monet - Women in the Garden [c.1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 255 x 205 mm]

Alfred Sisley - The Seine at Port-Marly [1875]

2011-12-23T10:52:00.003Z

Alfred Sisley - The Seine at Port-Marly [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Sisley was fascinated by the river Seine and its small boats and barges. In 1875 he turned his attention to a stretch of the river to the west of Paris, painting the towns of Port-Marly and Marly-le-Roi, where he lived from 1875 to 1877. The small boat in the foreground is piled with sand cleared from the river bed to keep the channel open for the many barges that sailed between Le Havre and Paris. The farm buildings were on an island in the middle of the Seine between Bougival and Port-Marly. Sisley probably painted the scene from a boat on the river, just as Monet, active at the same time, had a floating studio at Argenteuil. Sisley signed the painting a second time after his original signature was covered by its first owner's frame.

[Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 65.1 cm]

Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Parting of Hero and Leander [1837]

2011-12-23T10:52:00.001Z

Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Parting of Hero and Leander [1837], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837. The ancient Greek grammarian and poet Musaeus is most famous for his poem on the lovers Hero and Leander. Leander swam the Hellespont to join Hero. When he drowned, she flung herself into the sea.

[Oil on canvas, 146 x 236 cm]

Peter Ilsted - Interior with Two Girls [1904]

2011-12-22T09:03:00.003Z

Peter Ilsted - Interior with Two Girls [1904], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Peter Ilsted (1861 - 1933) was a leading Danish artist and printmaker. Ilsted was a great success in his lifetime and won many awards and accolades for his work. His achievements in mezzotints were revolutionary. Some of his mezzotints, most of which were created in black as well as colour editions, are considered among the greatest ever made.

[Oil on canvas, 49 x 43 cm]

Clement Rollins Grant - Beautiful Music

2011-12-22T09:03:00.001Z

Clement Rollins Grant - Beautiful Music, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Primarily known as a figure and landscape painter, Clement Rollins Grant was born in Freeport, Maine in 1848. At the age of eighteen, he travelled to Europe, spending time in Great Britain and France. Grant worked in Portland, Maine, before establishing a studio at 12 West Street in Boston by 1882. He was a member of the Boston Art Club, where his works were exhibited between 1877 and 1905. He died in 1893 in Boston, Massachusetts.

[Oil on canvas, 43.5 x 53.5 cm]

Jean-Baptiste Corot - The Solitude, Recollection of Vigen, Limousin [1866]

2011-12-21T09:59:00.001Z

The Solitude, Recollection of Vigen, Limousin [1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This canvas is one of a group of "souvenirs" (recollections) that Corot painted towards the end of his life in which he combined an observation of the French woodland landscape with recollections of various places in Italy. In these works Corot aimed to express the emotions aroused by the contemplation of nature rather than to depict a specific place. Solitude was painted a few months after the death of his great friend Constant Dutilleux and the painting is imbued with an air of melancholy expressed through a harmonious combination of greens, blues and greys. The woman in the centre of the composition is a modern reinterpretation of the personification of Melancholy, seemingly evoking a Golden Age that has now passed. Exhibited at the 1866 Salon, Solitude was acquired by the Empress Eugenia de Montijo for her private collection.

[Oil on canvas, 95 x 130 cm]

Nikolay Nikolaevich Karazin - Russian Troops Taking Samarkand in 1868 [1888]

2011-12-21T09:58:00.001Z

Russian Troops Taking Samarkand in 1868 [1888], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Nikolay Nikolaevich Karazin (Kharkov, 1842 - Gatchina, 1908) was a Russian military officer, painter and writer. He is mostly known for his paintings depicting wars and exotic places. Karazin became known mostly as a painter and illustrator. He painted many large canvases devoted to battles and especially military actions in Turkestan. He was a prolific book illustrator and one of the most notable authors of the postcards.

[Oil on canvas, 179 x 310 cm]

Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street Church, Boston [1908]

2011-12-20T08:59:00.003Z

Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street Church, Boston [1908], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Arthur Clifton Goodwin has been called the painter par excellence of Boston. In a career spanning twenty-nine years this gifted, self-taught artist not only painted Boston in every mood and every weather, but following his 1921 move to New York he also painted the parks and skyscrapers of that metropolis.

Goodwin was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1864 and was raised in the Chelsea section of Boston. He worked as a banker and a paper salesman before deciding at the age of thirty-nine to be a professional artist. After a failed marriage, Goodwin returned to Boston in 1928. Kronberg persuaded him to come to Paris to study the French Impressionists, but on May 19, 1929 on the eve of his departure, Goodwin died. Friends discovered him in his room in the North End, his suitcase packed and his tickets in his pocket. While not allied with any particular school or movement, Goodwin achieved a unique place in American art history as a painter of cityscapes characterised by strong color and an assured, painterly manner.

[Oil on canvas, 30 x 34 inches]

Childe Hassam - Old House [1917]

2011-12-20T08:59:00.001Z

Childe Hassam - Old House [1917], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches]

Ivan Aivazovsky - Parade of the Black Sea Fleet

2011-12-19T10:11:00.001Z

Ivan Aivazovsky - Parade of the Black Sea Fleet, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Throughout his lifetime, Aivazovsky (Feodosiya, July 29, 1817 - Feodosiya , May 5, 1900) contributed over 6,000 paintings to the art world, ranging from his early landscapes of the Crimean countryside to the seascapes and coastal scenes for which he is most famous. Aivazovsky was especially effective at developing the play of light in his paintings, sometimes applying layers of colour to create a transparent quality, a technique for which they are highly admired.

Although he produced many portraits and landscapes, over half of all of Aivazovsky’s paintings are realistic depictions of coastal scenes and seascapes. He is most remembered for his beautifully melodramatic renditions of the seascapes of which he painted the most. Many of his later works depict the painful heartbreak of soldiers at battle or lost at sea, with a soft celestial body taunting of hope from behind the clouds. His artistic technique centers on his ability to render the realistic shimmer of the water against the light of the subject in the painting, be it the full moon, the sunrise, or battleships in flames. Many of his paintings also illustrate his adeptness at filling the sky with light, be it the diffuse light of a full moon through fog, or the orange glow of the sun gleaming through the clouds.

[Oil on canvas, 131 x 249 cm]

Alexey Korin - Barge Haulers [1897]

2011-12-19T10:10:00.001Z

Alexey Korin - Barge Haulers [1897], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Alexey Korin (1865 - 1923) was a Russian painter. The main themes of his painting were Russian landscapes, genre-scenes, portraits, and interiors. The paintings of Alexey Korin are contained in the the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum as well as in numerous museums and private collections.

[Oil on canvas, 84 x 174 cm]

Helen Bradley - Our First Morning in Blackpool

2011-12-18T09:42:00.003Z

Helen Bradley - Our First Morning in Blackpool, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Helen Bradley (November 20, 1900 – July 19, 1979) was an artist born in the village of Lees, England. Her oil paintings vividly depict Lancashire life as it was between 1900 and 1910. Helen was born at 58 High Street, Lees. She began to paint when she was in her sixties. She painted mainly with her hands and fingers. Her paintings now fetch tens of thousands at auction. A series of books illustrated with these naive paintings topped the bestseller lists in the early 1970s. She died shortly before she was due to be honoured with an MBE.

Claude-Oscar Monet - Snow Scene at Argenteuil [1875]

2011-12-18T09:42:00.001Z

Claude-Oscar Monet - Snow Scene at Argenteuil [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Monet spent most of the 1870s in the town of Argenteuil, which is on the Seine just to the north-west of Paris. During this period, leisure activities such as boating made the town increasingly popular with day-trippers from the capital. The exceptionally snowy winter of 1874-75 inspired Monet to paint 18 views of Argenteuil under the snow. Many of them, like this work, focus on the boulevard Saint-Denis where Monet was living. The scene shows the boulevard running towards the Seine, looking away from the railway station. It is a relatively large work, which sacrifices details in favour of atmosphere. Its predominantly monochrome palette of blues and greys conveys to perfection the bleakness of an overcast winter's afternoon.

[Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm]

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Moorish Bath [1870]

2011-12-17T09:49:00.001Z

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Moorish Bath [1870], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Antti Favén - The Break [1941]

2011-12-17T09:48:00.001Z

Antti Favén - The Break [1941], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

George Antti Favén (Helsinki, May 20, 1882 - Stockholm, October 17, 1948) was a Finnish painter.

[Oil on canvas, glued on board, 81 x 63 cm]

Robert Alott - Southern Capriccio [1891]

2011-12-16T09:07:00.003Z

Robert Alott - Southern Capriccio [1891], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Robert Alott (Graz, 1850 - Vienna, 1910) was an Austrian artist.

[Oil on canvas, 95 x 118 cm]

Isaac Levitan - Evening Bells [1892]

2011-12-16T09:07:00.001Z

Isaac Levitan - Evening Bells [1892], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Isaac Levitan (Wirballen, August 30, 1860 - Crimea, August 4, 1900) was a classical Russian landscape painter. Levitan's work was a profound response to the lyrical charm of the Russian landscape. Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific. Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness, his last works are increasingly filled with light. They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature.

[Oil on canvas, 87 x 108 cm]

Ascan Lutteroth - Mazzorbo, near Venice

2011-12-15T10:04:00.001Z

Ascan Lutteroth - Mazzorbo, near Venice, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Ascan Lutteroth (Hamburg, 1842 - 1923) was a German artist.

[Oil on canvas, 34 x 42 cm]

Hans Hansen - Urban Landscape [1890-1900]

2011-12-15T08:48:00.001Z

Hans Hansen - Urban Landscape [1890-1900], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Watercolour and gouache, 80.8 x 60.2 cm]

Dorothea Sharp - In a Hillside Meadow

2011-12-14T09:45:00.001Z

Dorothea Sharp - In a Hillside Meadow, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Dorothea Sharp was born in Dartford in Kent in 1874 but it was not until the age of twenty-one that she began her artistic education in earnest. She soon moved to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the work of the Impressionists, which is evident in the spontaneous style and strong sense of colour and light that she is so well known for. Techniques, such as outlining figures with bright colours, were also adopted by Sharp after seeing the paintings of Matisse and van Gogh. In the mid 1940s she returned to London where she lived until her death in 1955.

[Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 61 cm]

Harold Harvey - Out to Sea

2011-12-14T09:44:00.001Z

Harold Harvey - Out to Sea, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Harold Harvey (Penzance, Cornwall, May 20, 1874 - May 19, 1941) was a British artist. He exhibited at the Newlyn Gallery and major provincial galleries, and had his first London show in 1913. Harvey’s last decade displayed all the remarkable abilities he had developed, and the wide range of his subject matter which included interiors, portraits, landscapes, religious themes, and the industrial landscape of Cornwall. In 1938 he featured in an article in Picture Post about the artistic colony at Newlyn. He continued painting up to his death.

[Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm]

Nikolai Bogatov - Beekeeper [1875]

2011-12-13T08:59:00.003Z

Nikolai Bogatov - Beekeeper [1875], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Nikolai Bogatov (1854 - 1935) was a Russian painter.

Adolph Menzel - Theatre du Gymnase, Paris [1856]

2011-12-13T08:59:00.001Z

Adolph Menzel - Theatre du Gymnase, Paris [1856] , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel, (Breslau, December 8, 1815 – Berlin, February 9, 1905) was often compared to his French contemporaries, usually in the search for a German counterpart to the French Impressionists, even perhaps for a precursor. However one-sided this view may have been, his Théâtre du Gymnase cannot be dissociated from thoughts of theatre scenes by Daumier and, above all, Degas, although the latter did not even exist when Menzel painted this work. Menzel had visited Paris for the first time one year previously and ever after called it “Babel.” The notion of an excited but anonymous audience in the confusing artificial light leaves less opportunity for narrative detail than in Menzel’s later scenes of town life. But already in this work, there is no clear central focus of attention: from the actors playing a musical comedy in contemporary dress to the stalls and the boxes, everything seems to be peripheral.

[Oil on canvas, 62 x 46 cm]

Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lepine - The Pont de la Tournelle, Paris [1862-64]

2011-12-12T10:09:00.003Z

Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lepine - The Pont de la Tournelle, Paris [1862-64], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Pont de la Tournelle is in the middle distance, and towards the right is the apse of the cathedral of Notre-Dame. The tower in front of the Pont de la Tournelle is the remains of the Pont de Constantine, before the Pont Sully was built in its place. Lépine painted this view many times and at different stages in his career.

[Oil on canvas, 13.7 x 24.4 cm]