Category: Gallery and Museum Art

Still life, that genre of painting with a name that seems a contradiction in terms, is, in itself, quiet. Still life never receives the attention paid to more prominent types of paintings. Dramatic interpretations of Biblical, history or literary scenes, genre painting, portraits and even landscapes, overshadow it easily. Still life is the Rodney Dangerfield…

So what to you do in the winter when the ground is covered in snow and the rivers are frozen over? Get out and enjoy of course. Though we have other, more familiar names associated with 17th Century scenes of gatherings on the ice of frozen rivers and streams in Dutch towns (notably Bruegel), Avercamp…

Jake Baddeley gives little information about himself on his website, save to call himself a symbolist painter and artist. Looking through his work, I see classical training, influences from the Surrealists and Magic Realists, and a fascination with the art and invention of the Renaissance. He uses a muted, controlled palette, with passages of restrained…

For those in the U.S. and Europe digging out, or still being covered in the titanium whites and cobalt blues of winter precipitation, I’ll relay a gentle reminder from American artist George Gardner Symons, noted for his beautiful winter scenes, that yes, snow can be beautiful, and yes, it eventually melts, and yes, Spring will…

Charles Le Brun was a major figure in 17th Century French Painting. Here, in his Adoration of the Shepherds (also here), he displays his skill with composition, color and light, using them to gently guide our eye through several aspects of a complex scene. The immediate focus, of course, is on the mother and child,…