Sometimes a painting or a sculpture breaks through your conscious mind and leaves an impression that lasts for years, perhaps even a lifetime. I’ve chosen five paintings that had that effect on me and ultimately changed the way I look at art. …
This painting is brimming with symbolism. It shows Venus reclining on a rug of blue fabric in the setting of a bower, where the goddess of Love takes shade beneath a tree.
Next to her stands her son Cupid. He is recognisable by the wings on his back and the…
The appeal of Vincent Van Gogh shows no signs of fading. The sense of Van Gogh’s artistic heroism is more than ever tied to a personal heroism, defined by his short tragic life, the intense work rate of his last few years, and the sickness that became evermore manifest. …
I have been looking at art for over twenty years now, at some points more seriously and studiously than at others.
In that time, I’ve discovered there is a danger of looking too closely: it can be is all too easy to forget the pleasures of art.
To redress the…
How do you see this image? Do you see a depiction of the formidable power of nature?
Or do you see an image of beauty, the gracefully balanced forms of the ocean and a distant mountain?
For me, the allure of this famous Japanese print is in the tension created…
When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he not only held his posture of standing with his head craned backwards, with his arm raised for hours at a time, but he also had to work in the technically challenging medium of fresco.
Fresco painting has two supreme qualities…
It is undoubtedly true to say that Van Gogh’s life was a troubled one. It ended in the artist’s suicide in 1890 when he was just 37 years old.
We have come to understand Van Gogh’s painting career as one riven with struggles and setbacks. …
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Lady with an Ermine in around 1490. It was made at least ten years before his most famous work, the Mona Lisa.
Both portraits show a female sitter in a three-quarter profile. Yet compared to the Mona Lisa, this painting is relatively little-known. …
This is a painting with a turbulent history.
It depicts the goddess Venus in her private chamber, stretched out on silk bedclothes whilst her mischievous offspring Cupid holds up a mirror so she can enjoy her own beauty (whilst we, the viewer, are meant to do the same).
In 1914…
By all accounts, Edward Hopper was a socially reclusive man. His wife Jo, who was gregarious by nature, recorded in her diary that “E. so seldom deigns to talk.” Another friend stated that Hopper often seemed like he “was on the verge of saying something. But he never did.”
To…
