Category: Eye Candy for Today

The Mast-tree Grove, Ivan Shishkin One of my favorites by the great Russian landscape painter. “Mast-tree Grove”, means a stand of trees suitable for making the masts of large sailing ships. I have to stand back in awe at the way he has handled a subject that could be reduced to sameness in the hands…

Bridge over a River, Santiago Rusiñol On Google Art Project, high-resolution downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons, original is in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – MNAC, Barcelona. Beautifully direct painterly realism by the Catalonian painter. See my post on Santiago Rusiñol.

The Seine, Henry Ossawa Tanner Original is in the National Gallery of Art, DC, zoomable version here; high-resolution downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons. Though not the subject matter for which he is best known, brilliant American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who spent most of his later career in France, painted a number of beautifully atmospheric…

Work Interrupted, William-Adolphe Bouguereau Image on Wikimedia Commons, original is in the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. Beautifully controlled values and subtle, reserved color in this fanciful depiction of a young woman distracted from her work of winding balls of wool by thoughts of romance — in the person of Cupid, who delicately dabs her…

Amsterdam City View with Houses on the Herengracht and the old Haarlemmersluis, Jan van der Heyden In the Rijksmuseum. Van der Heyden combined views of two different locations in Amsterdam — one of the canal and lock, another of the row of houses — to create his composition.