Painting

Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris This nude was completed when Bonnard was almost 70 and is considered to be among his crowning achievements as an artist. Visually it is stunning; a shimmering vision of luminous colour and light on flesh. Though in the most banal of settings – a modern bathroom … Read more

London, Tate Stanley Spencer’s childhood in Cookham, a pleasant Thames-side village in Berkshire, was so blissful that he came to see these environs as a specially hallowed corner of creation. When he attended the Slade School of Art in London he did so as a day student, travelling back to Berkshire each evening (his contemporaries … Read more

Paris, Musée d’Orsay Considering this rich colourful Buddha, it is almost impossible to imagine that Redon’s early work was only in black. In the 1870s he began working in charcoal and then lithography, gaining fame among the Parisian literary avant-garde by creating shadowy, unsettling illustrations for fantastical books by the likes of Baudelaire and Poe. … Read more

London, Tate In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the Great War, George Grosz volunteered for the army. He was discharged on medical grounds in May 1915 but for the rest of the war he lived in fear of being recalled for military service. His military experiences, which included a short spell on … Read more

London, Dulwich Picture Gallery In October 1740, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI committed that most egregious dynastic sin and died without having produced a male heir. He had made provision for his daughter Maria Theresa to inherit the various Habsburg kingdoms and duchies spread over much of Europe but the question of the election … Read more

London, Tate Britain The story of King Cophetua is told in an early seventeenth-century ballad which later formed the basis for a short poem by Tennyson. One day, the king whilst idly looking out of his window saw among the beggars at the palace gate a girl of such exquisite beauty that he had her … Read more

Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum In 1869 Renoir and Monet had spent part of the summer painting together at a popular bathing spot, La Grenouillère near Bougival just outside Paris. A remarkable chemistry between them generated a special moment in the gestation of impressionism. In this painting, completed a year later, Renoir has used … Read more

Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum The subject of this portrait by Venetian painter Giorgione has been a source of intriguing speculation for centuries. Who is this dark-haired, young woman? Why is she depicted bare-breasted draped in a red fur-lined cloak before a branch of laurel? The only facts known are inscribed on the back of the painting. … Read more

London, Estorick Collection In 1910, together with several other Italian artists, Giacomo Balla signed two Futurist manifestos. Futurism was the creation of the poet Filippo Marinetti who, the previous year, had published the first of a number of manifestos in the French newspaper le Figaro. The movement wanted to set Italy free from the suffocating burden … Read more

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art Though various European art movements influenced Demuth, his style – with its expressive directness, sense of scale and urban, industrial feel – is distinctly American. The artist was part of the Modernist group – whose members including Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe – centered around photographer Alfred Stieglitz that in 1920s … Read more