Category: Eye Candy for Today

Still Life with Roses and Fruit, Henri Fantin-Latour. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use Fullscreen link and Zoom or download arrow. Though I also admire Fantin-Latour’s mature work, I just love the painterly quality of this early still life — a wonderful study in brushwork and edges. To my thinking, there is a direct…

A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple, Hubert Robert. On Google Art Project, click in lower right of image for zoom controls. Original is in the Getty Museum. On the museum’s site they suggest Robert may have taken inspiration for the monumental scale of the temple from the prints of his contemporary…

Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl, Robert Campin. Commissioned by a contemporary 15th century Franciscan to portray himself praying in the company of Saint John, this is, like Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, another marvel of detail and glazing. It was in paintings like this that…

Rainy Day, Boston, Childe Hassam. “American Impressionism” (i.e. painterly realism) in the hands of one of its foremost proponents. On Google Art Project. Click in lower right of image for zoom controls. Original is in the Toledo Museum of Art.

Allegory of Winter, Jacques de La Joue the Younger. I love the invented atmosphere and the seemingly casual application of paint, particularly in the Rococo flourishes. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use “Fullscreen” link under the image.