One of the most celebrated paintings by J.M.W. Turner depicts a ship that once played a role in a major battle in the early 19th century. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was at the height of his career when he painted this masterpiece. It’s one of the most fascinating of the 550 oil paintings in …
Artworks
When a new art movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century, it faced a lot of opposition from academic critics in France. The Impressionist artists produced artworks that focus on one’s perception of things rather than an exact depiction. Short and visible brushstrokes, often producing a sense of motion, are what defined …
There aren’t that many intact ancient Greek sculptures, and one of the most famous ones is missing a couple of features as well. Historians classify ancient Greek sculpture into 3 different periods, Archaic (650 to 480 B.C.), Classical (480–323 B.C.), and Hellenistic (323-30 B.C.). The best-known sculptures date back to this Hellenistic period, including this …
Sometimes, a painting embodies a group of people. Very few paintings in the history of art fit this description more than a work produced halfway through the 19th century. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most interesting facts about The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet, arguably the most famous Realism painting ever that …
When famous Realism artists emerged in France after the French Revolution of 1848, they wanted to portray the common man as he was. They went against the idealized paintings of Neoclassical artists and the often overly dramatized paintings of Romantic artists. These two art movements had been dominant during the first half of the 19th …
Many of the most important and iconic paintings in art history weren’t received all that well when they were first exhibited. This applies to this masterpiece Henri Matisse (1869-1954), one of the most influential French artists of the modern era. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most interesting facts about Le Bonheur …
The life of Francisco Goya (1746-1848), one of the most renowned Romantic artists in history, took a drastic turn for the worse in the early 1790s. A mysterious illness left him completely deaf, a condition that had a serious impact on his state of mind. Then Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1807 and he …
The late 1630s and early 1640s was a rough period for Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), an artist considered to be one of the greatest Baroque artists in history. Something didn’t go quite as planned while he was leading a project. This was a period in which he was already considered to be the leading artist …
A renowned Flemish artist shaped the direction of painting in the northern Renaissance in the early 15th century. Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) moved away from the idealized medieval style of painting to produce natural figures. He achieved that by using oil, a material that was still uncommon during this period. In this article, we’ll take …
It’s hard to believe but the man who introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and High Renaissance architecture to Rome was also a renowned painter. Donato Bramante (1444-1514) is world-famous for being the original designer of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but like many of his colleagues, he was multi-talented. In this article, we’ll take a …