Category: Gallery and Museum Art
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“Watercolour” at the Tate Britain
Watercolor, or watercolour, with an added “u” if you learned your English in England (grin), has a long history, perhaps going back to cave paintings that predate most of recorded history. Watercolor involves the creation of paint by suspending pigment in a water soluble binder, for a long time animal hide glues or plant sugars,…
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Van Gogh’s yellows turning brown
Much has been made of the advances over the centuries, and particularly in the last century or two, in paint chemistry, allowing artists to work with an ever-broadening array of pigments, and often providing much needed replacements for older, plant-based pigments that were fugitive over time. Not all advances in paint technology are for the…
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Caravaggio in Rome
Michelangelo Merisi, AKA Caravaggio, was one of history’s great painters. Born in Milan, his later assigned name come from his father’s association with the town of Caravaggio. Caravaggio spent a good part of his checkered life in Rome, where an exhibition of his work goes went on display on the 20th of February and runs…
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Francisco Pons Arnau
Francisco Pons Arnau was a Spanish Academic painter active in the mid 19th Century [Correction: late 19th, early 20th Centuries]. He became a follower of Joaquín Sorolla (see my recent post on Sorolla), and was influenced by Art Nouveau. He painted portraits, figures, landscapes and what might be called intimate landscapes — garden scenes with…
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Shakespeare portrait in New York
The “Cobbe” portrait of Shakespeare, named for the family estate where the painting was found, not for the artist (who remains unknown), stands on good evidence to be the only portrait of the Bard actually painted from life. The painting has crossed the Atlantic and is currently on display in New Amsterdam, er… I mean…
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Trove of Sorolla images
Similar to my opinion of John Singer Sargent, I think that the place of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida in the canon of great painters in art history is vastly understated. Sorolla has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the last 20 years or so. His popularity is continuing to rise, and resources for his images…