Category: Eye Candy for Today

The Empress Eugénie, Franz Xaver Winterhalter In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use the zoom or download links below the image on their page. The painting’s finished feeling, when viewed from the proper distance, belies the painterly, almost casual and sketch-like handling when seen in detail.

Boulevard Montmartre: Mardi Gras, Camille Pissarro Image on WikiArt. Original is in the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a larger version of this image. Though different in many ways — a different boulevard, a different season, and certainly a different kind of procession — I couldn’t help but think of this…

The Letter of Introduction, David Wilkie Link is to Google Art Project; high-resolution downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; original is in the National Galleries of Scotland. Wilkie gives us a scene supposedly referenced from his own experience, as a young man presents what is evidently an insufficient letter of introduction to a disdainful older man.…

The Silk Merchant, Japan; Robert Frederick Blum Link is to Google Art Project, downloadable high-res file on Wikimedia Commons, original is in the Cincinnati Art Museum. After Japan opened relations with Europe and the U.S. in the mid 19th century, many European and American artists were dramatically influenced by imported Japanese art and culture; but…

A Watermill, Meindert Hobbema In the Rijksmuseum. The wonderful 17th century Dutch landscape painter Meindert Hobbema — who studied with Jacob van Ruisdael — gives us an idyllic view of a watermill, set amid trees and reeds bent in a breeze, perhaps in anticipation of a coming storm. Hobbema had a masterful touch with foliage,…