All Essays
European Paintings
Working privately, Greuze managed to build an admiring audience for his expressive studies of emotion and of the complexities of modern life.
Katharine Baetjer
October 1, 2017
As early as the first century A.D., the Roman author Pliny the Elder acknowledged the appeal of unfinished works of art, stating that they are often more admired than those that are finished, because in them the artists’ actual thoughts are left visible.
Eva Reifert
August 1, 2016
[Labille-Guiard] was versed in a variety of artists’ materials, had exhibited twice at the Salon de la Correspondance, was an experienced teacher of aspiring young women artists, and had cultivated a wide acquaintance among academicians…
Katharine Baetjer
June 1, 2016
[Vigée Le Brun] contributed more than fifty pictures [to the Salon] and had reached the high point of her career when, after the march on Versailles, she fled the French Revolution.
Katharine Baetjer
May 1, 2016
Dutch and Flemish landscape paintings were rarely symbolic but were usually rich in associations, ranging from God and all of nature to national, regional, or local pride, agriculture and commerce, leisure time, and the sheer pleasure of physical sensation.
Walter A. Liedtke
December 1, 2014
Like Rembrandt, Sweerts interpreted biblical subjects in the light of his own experience.
Walter A. Liedtke
November 1, 2014
Gainsborough was an avid amateur player, and through his extensive correspondence with composer Carl Friedrich Abel, we learn of his love of the instrument, specifically his desire to “take [my] Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village when I can print Landskips and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease.”
Elizabeth Weinfield
June 1, 2014
Claude drew inspiration from his close, constant study of nature and changing effects of light.
Katharine Baetjer
February 1, 2014
Prague became, under Rudolf's guidance, one of the leading centers of the arts and sciences on the continent.
Jacob Wisse
November 1, 2013
To bolster the grandiose claims of his publications, Didot hired the preeminent painter of the era, Jacques Louis David, to edit the illustrations.
Elizabeth M. Rudy
January 1, 2012