Giovanni Segantini Arcadian Dreams Articles The Punishment of Lust Born in Switzerland in 1858, his mother died when he was eight and he moved with his father to Milan. It seems as though he was then abandoned by his father and he spent the rest of his childhood with relatives in Milan. At 15 he […]
Giovanni Segantini: The Punishment of Lust – 1891 Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery During the early 1890s Segantini became interested in the theme of motherhood. From a positive viewpoint he painted works looking at aspects of Christian motherhood (in which some pagan overtones are present) but he also produced paintings which dealt with the punishment and […]
Paul Gauguin: Vision after the Sermon – 1888 Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh In a letter to Van Gogh (in Arles), dated 22 September 1888, Gauguin writes: ‘I have just painted a religious picture, very badly done but it interested me and I like it. I wanted to give it to the church at Ponte-Aven. Naturally […]
George Frederick Watts: Hope – 1886 London, Tate Britain Hope is one of the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity) traditionally represented as women. In 1886 George Frederick Watts completed two versions of his take on one of the Virtues, the subject of many images since antiquity and the Renaissance. He sold the original version […]
Gaetano Previati: The Dance of the Hours – 1899 Milan, Fondazione-Cariplo The immediate inspiration for the painting was a short ballet *The Dance of the Hours* which appeared at the end of the third act of the opera La Gioconda, composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. It was first performed in Milan in 1876. But the iconography […]
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: The Sacred Grove Dear to the Arts and Muses – 1884 Lyon, Musée des Beaux Arts Commissioned in 1883 by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for the main staircase of the museum, this huge painting, on canvas, first appeared at the 1884 Paris Salon before installation in Lyon in August […]
Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Lake Keitele – 1905 London, National Gallery I first saw this painting about fifteen years ago – not long after it was purchased by the National Gallery in 1999. I caught sight of it across a room full of Post Impressionist masterpieces; its distinctive originality immediately drew me towards it. A decade or […]
Akseli Gallen-Kallela Arcadian Dreams Articles Lake Keitele Selected Works 1884 The Boy and the Crow, Helsinki, Athenaeum Art Museum 1885 Old Woman with a Cat, Turku Art Museum 1896 Defence of Sampo, Turku Art Museum 1897 Lemminkäinen’s Mother, Helsinki, Athenaeum Art Museum 1904-05 Lake Keitele series. Featured work London, National Gallery 1909-10 Kilimanjaro series Chronology […]
Gustave Moreau: Oedipus and the Sphinx – 1864 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art The tale of Oedipus has most of the classic ingredients one would expect of one of the Greek myths: tragedy, cruelty, mistaken identity, mysterious monsters, and, underlying it all, a Delphic prophecy wreaking a terrible burden on the hero. Oedipus was […]
Fernand Khnopff: The Abandoned City – 1904 Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels In common with Burne-Jones, Khnopff experienced a profound nostalgia for the Medieval world. For Khnopff this anti-materialistic, nostalgic yearning was centred on Bruges, home to a glorious artistic past and the city where he spent his early childhood. The city had lost its […]