The French painter Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault left this world at the age of 31, but it would be wrong to say he died young. He witnessed several social epochs – the bourgeois revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship, and the Bourbon…
Some online newspapers place warnings about shocking content above images that can startle sensitive people. I should have hidden all the photos from my article under a content warning as well. Once you take a close look at the central…
Around 1592, an aspiring painter arrived in Rome in search of fame and fortune. The Eternal City didn’t welcome him – just a typical self-proclaimed genius without a single coin in his holey pocket! Moreover, the guy had a terrible…
The master craftsman Daedalus, together with his son Icarus, lived in captivity on the island of Crete. Every ship that left the island was checked upon instructions from King Minos, so the father and son were forced to escape by…
Professor Henri Fuseli, who taught John Constable at the Royal Academy for some time, half-jokingly said this landscape artist’s works make him call for his great coat and umbrella. Constable loved English nature as it is, he never tried to…
The two pudgy angels — at the end of December, we see them everywhere: on calendars and organizers, on wrapping paper and greeting cards. These bonny infants are so serious! They don’t look like children enjoying the Christmas bustle… Let’s…
Today I was sorting through my postcards when a card with the painting Winter by Vilhelms Purvītis caught my eye… I’ll tell you about Purvītis and his Latvia. It’s also mine to some extent; I’ve been living here for almost…
Once, my good acquaintance – a well-educated woman, a pianist – came around for a chat. We were talking about music and then about art in general. I started to tell her about the impressionist works I had seen in…
There are several stages in understanding Degas’ oeuvre. At first, you think he was a connoisseur of delicate beauty (otherwise why did he constantly paint ballerinas?) Then you find different reproductions of his pictures, scrutinize them, and wonder: his ballerinas…
There is an interesting exhibit in the Musée Marmottan Monet – a little oil painting hanging alone on a wall. The bench put in front of this wall appears to invite the viewer to have a seat and think carefully…