Category Archives: 2020

Have you heard of Gustaf Fjæstad? If you have, you’re probably Swedish. Fjæstad was a Swedish painter who lived between 1868 and 1948. He’s celebrated in Sweden but little known outside his home country. Fjæstad’s trademark was the winter scene. He painted snow-covered forests, frozen lakes, and glistening winter skies. In 1912 the Brooklyn Daily […]

Goya’s Black Paintings (1819-1823) form some of the bleakest images in Art History. When he painted the series of 14 paintings he was old, severely deaf, and dying. There was no commercial motivation in their creation. He painted them directly onto the walls of his farmhouse just outside Madrid, la Quinta del Sordo (The Deaf […]

It’s nearly Halloween so I thought I’d share some terrifying works from Art History in the lead up to 31st! Today we have Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ from 1781. This is a dark, titillating, and shocking painting that has become an icon of horror. It’s inspired a number of filmmakers and is most famously quoted […]

I adore Édouard Manet’s flower paintings. They are rarely talked about because his other works (Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, The Bar at the Folies-Bergère) are so sensational and progressive – credited with being the first ‘modern’ paintings. His large-scale masterpieces have eclipsed the quiet beauty of his still life paintings. But these little gems […]

This painting deserves to be better known and with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is time to examine it once more. I first showed this painting in a lecture 8 years ago. It’s called ‘The Banjo Lesson’ (1893) and it’s by Henry Ossawa Tanner. Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first successful […]

When Norman Rockwell released ‘The Problem We All Live With’, it sent deep shock-waves throughout America. Rockwell was known for his humorous, conservative and safe images of everyday American life for the Saturday Evening Post. He was incredibly popular and a cherished artist throughout the country. In 1963 he left the Post to join Look […]

Why is St. Francis of Assisi important when studying Art History? St Francis, a friar that lived between c.1182 and 1226, changed the way people responded to the Christian message. He brought the stories of the Bible to the Italian masses in a radical and original manner – through preaching, drama, acting and storytelling. He […]

I’m delighted to announce that my recent online art history lecture, ‘The Art of Isolation: Edward Hopper’s Masterpieces’ raised £820 for Age UK! To all those who attended this special fundraiser talk on 1st May – thank you. Age UK conduct brilliant work at the best of times. Now the coronavirus has struck, calls to […]

The Rückenfigur is a kind of compositional device. It means ‘figure from the back’ in German. The Rückenfigur is commonly associated with the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich who used it in the 19th Century, most famously in his 1818 painting ‘Wanderer above a Sea of Fog’. Scores of artists have used this compositional […]