An intimate portrait that refuses sentimentalism
The Child’s Bath shows a small child propped up on a woman’s lap — probably the child’s mother or nanny. The child’s feet are being washed in a bowl of water. One senses that the water is not cold but perhaps lukewarm so as not to sting the child’s toes.
The scene takes place within what is presumably a bedroom. An olive-green chest of drawers stands behind and floral wallpaper covers the walls. The carpet is made up of various shades of brown and red — perhaps it is a Persian rug. …
How this wistful depiction of the ancient temple tells a deeper story
The evening sun casts a golden light over the famous ruins of the Parthenon. Located at the Acropolis — an ancient citadel above the city of Athens — the Parthenon was built in the middle of the 5th century BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power.
The image was painted by Frederic Edwin Church, an American artist and member of the Hudson River School of landscape painters. This artistic fraternity recorded the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding mountain ranges, chronicling the disappearing wilderness and the expanding presence of modern civilization. …
A step on the path to abstract art and a brighter epoch
There is a story about Wassily Kandinsky, that one night in his studio in Munich, he happened to notice something strange about one of his works.
The painting was both recognisable and yet oddly changed, having been turned on its side. Kandinsky said that in this moment he saw a painting “of extraordinary beauty, glowing with an inner radiance.” The unexpected arrangement of colours impressed him and went on to provide a new inspiration for his own trajectory as a painter. Kandinsky — later referred to as the “Lord of Abstraction” — made good use of this happy accident.
What I think we can learn about Kandinsky from this story was that he was open to seeing his own art with complete open-mindedness. Up until this point in history, no artist had deliberately presented a pure abstract painting. The difference with Kandinsky was that he saw in the arrangement of colours and shapes on a canvas a subject matter in itself. …
Open your mind to peripheral thinking
The idea of ‘peripheral’ thinking is this: instead of taking a torchlight to explore a darkened room, try taking a lamp.
When there’s so much advice encouraging us to be endlessly more productive and more focused, it’s difficult to hang onto the idea that creativity often works best when the mind is relaxed.
The peripheral mind allows light to spread outwards, not in a fine beam but in a broad illumination. …
An image of grandeur and eminence that describes Christ’s victory over death
This painting shows Christ rising again on the third day after his death. The event of the Resurrection is one of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.
The artist, Piero della Francesca, has pictured Christ stepping out of his Roman-style sarcophagus. Piero followed the artistic tradition of showing Jesus with one foot on the upper ledge, as if he is literally climbing out of his tomb. He would remain on earth for forty days until the Ascension — the Christian belief of Jesus’s bodily ascent into heaven.
In the painting, Christ stands upright watching us with a compelling gaze. In one hand he holds a flag — a banner with a red cross, symbolising the victory of the Resurrection over death — whilst the other hand rests confidently on his knee. His body has real weight and substance; the way his robe hangs from his shoulder recalls a Greek god or a Roman emperor. …
Sculptural revolution expressed by a twist in the human body
How does a person look when they are stood upright? In Egyptian sculpture, the answer to this question emphasised the natural symmetry of the human body. The “correct” way to view an Egyptian sculpture was front-on, in order to see the natural balance of the idealised human figure, with even shoulders, symmetrical arm and level hips.
These traits passed onto Greek sculpture. Yet one of the most interesting aspects of the development of Greek sculpture was the inception of a new type of posture. …
Tips on how to begin your studies into the history of art
A question that I get asked a lot is: “How do I get started in learning about art history?”
In my experience, most people who develop an interest in the history of art have usually had their curiosity kindled by a meaningful interaction with a single work of art or perhaps the work of a specific artist.
As this initial interest develops, they begin to read articles and browse through books. The kinship with the world of art deepens, but along with it comes a sense that the history of art is complicated, perhaps even confusing. …
How a momentary encounter became the first photographic portrait
Our normal expectations of photography tend to focus on the instancy of the process. A photo is a snapshot, a frozen slice of time measured in fractions of a second.
This particular photograph is different. It was made over a much longer duration. Look to the bottom-left of the frame. There is a man having his shoes shined. That man — this picture — is the earliest known photograph of a recognisable human being. It was taken in Paris, France, in 1838 by Louis Daguerre.
It wasn’t that the man in question was the only person on the street. More than likely, the street was full of horses and carts and pedestrians going about their business. It was rather that the exposure time for the image was around ten minutes, which meant that everything else in the scene was moving too fast to be captured in any clarity. …
The power of simplicity in this baroque masterpiece
Look at this painting. What is going on in it? An ageing man is working at a wooden table. He has an ink quill in his hand and a book open before him. His work has been interrupted by a young boy. Their eyes are locked in an intense dialogue. The boy appears to be descending from above.
Look at the boy more closely. Can you tell how he hangs there? The way the light falls on his arms and shoulders makes his upper torso easy to see. The rest of his body, as it disappears into those swirling folds of white fabric, is less straight forward to determine. He is part human and part something else. …
A captivating exploration of light by the Dutch master
This painting, made by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in around 1662, shows a woman stood beside a window. It is most likely morning; her day begins with collecting water in a silver pitcher and basin with which she will wash herself.
Her arm reaches towards the window to open it. From her hand on the window frame there is a continuous line, wave-like, that runs across the image from left to right, through her shoulders to the jug and other objects on the table. The line is completed by the bundle of blue fabric on the right-hand side.
This undulating line is given geometric balance by the three rectangles that enter the image from the sides: the window, the table and the map on the wall. See how these rectangles break through the edges of the painting and create an interesting three-part frame around the figure of the woman. …
