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Interiors by Design: Nursery and Children’s Areas

By: hoakley
29 May 2025 at 19:30

In the days before contraception and family planning, when infant and child mortality were very high, many families had many babies and younger children, even though few would be expected to survive to have their own children. Households that could afford the space were able to dedicate rooms to the children, and sometimes their sheer number required it. This week’s paintings of interiors afford a glimpse at those central to the world of the child.

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Eduard Ritter (1808–1853) (circle of), Brave Girls, Bad Boys, School Class in Tyrol (date not known), oil on canvas, 62.5 x 77.5 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In the country, local schools were often held in a dedicated room in or adjacent to the teacher’s house, as seen in this undated painting by one of Eduard Ritter’s circle. Brave Girls, Bad Boys, School Class in Tyrol was probably painted between 1835-1849, during the reign of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria who is shown in one of its portraits. The children are enjoying a rich range of fruit, and there’s no shortage of paper, even if some is being used to make hats rather than for writing. Its elderly schoolmaster looks delightfully benign, and the stem on his smoking pipe is the longest I have ever seen.

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Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans (1816–1889), Children (date not known), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Pierre Olivier Joseph Coomans’ Children most probably dates from the late 1860s, with the artist’s two daughters Diana (1861-1952) and Héva (1860-1939) at play in the dark corner of a room. One is taking a swing at her sister’s articulated wooden doll in an apparent bid to continue dismembering it, the other is seated on an animal skin. Coomans’ daughters and a son all became successful painters.

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Giuseppe Sciuti (1834–1911), The Joys of the Good Mother (1877), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Giuseppe Sciuti’s marvellous depiction of The Joys of the Good Mother, also known as The Geography Lesson, from 1877, shows three children from a close-knit family. The baby is feeding at mother’s breast, while the oldest is learning to read with her, and (with the assistance of a nurse in traditional dress) the middle child is learning about their country, Italy.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema and his wife Laura Theresa were both accomplished painters, and took delight in painting their two daughters from his first marriage, Anna (1864-1940) who also became a fine painter, and Laurense (1865-1940) who was a prolific novelist and poet.

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Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), The Tea Party (date not known), oil on canvas, 121.9 × 91.4 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema’s early painting of The Tea Party shows her step-daughter Laurense playing peacefully with her dolls in a corner of the girls’ room. Its walls are decorated with her drawings, and a comic-like story that may have been drawn by her step-mother.

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Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912), This is Our Corner (Portrait of Anna Alma Tadema (1864-1940) (front) and Laurense Alma Tadema (1865-1940)) (1873), oil, 56.5 x 47 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s double portrait This is Our Corner from 1873 shows Anna in front of Laurense in their bedroom.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Children Playing Parlor Croquet (c 1888), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

William Merritt Chase was also devoted to his family, and painted his children frequently as they grew up. However, if his Children Playing Parlor Croquet is correctly dated to about 1888, it must show the daughters of others. These two girls have taken over a room to play the indoor version of this game, which was popular at the time.

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Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911), The Nursery (1889), oil on canvas, 110.7 x 138.5 cm, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1889, Fritz von Uhde and his family were living in an apartment in the city of Munich, Germany, that was large enough to provide their three young daughters with The Nursery. The woman seen knitting at the right is likely to be a nanny or relative, as the artist’s wife had died three years earlier.

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Helen Allingham (1848-1926), In the Nursery (date not known), watercolour, further details not known. The Athenaeum.

Helen Allingham’s undated In the Nursery shows a young woman employed as a nurse to a middle-class family, in their dedicated nursery. The fire has a guard, which would have been unusual in rooms used by adults. On the mantelpiece are what appear to be fans, probably part of the Japonisme that swept Europe and America during the late nineteenth century. Rocking chairs remain popular for helping infants and young children to sleep, of course.

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Georgios Jakobides (1853–1932), Παιδική Συναυλία (Children’s Concert) (1894), oil on canvas, 176 × 250 cm, Εθνική Πινακοθήκη-Μουσείο Αλεξάνδρου Σούτζου National Gallery of Greece, Athens, Greece. Wikimedia Commons.

It’s not clear whether the rather barren room shown in Georgios Jakobides’ Children’s Concert from 1894 is dedicated to these children. Given the cacophony they’re making with their musical instruments, it seems unlikely that any adult would want to be within earshot of them.

Interiors by Design: Cupboards and dressers

By: hoakley
15 May 2025 at 19:30

Some of our most popular furniture is primarily intended for storage and display. This article looks at paintings of cupboards, and their specialist relatives sideboards and (Welsh) dressers. Although of ancient origins, cupboards reached a peak during the Dutch Golden Age, when the middle classes became highly acquisitive. Dressers have been traditional in some areas, including Wales, and Brittany in France, while sideboards came of age in the nineteenth century dining room.

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), The Laundress (1761), oil on canvas, 40.6 x 32.7 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Wikimedia Commons.

The cupboard standing behind Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s Laundress (1761) was commonplace in many European households, and is here in the dilapidated servants’ area, probably in a cellar, where this provocative and flirtaceous young maid is washing the household linen. This was painted for Greuze’s patron, Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, when the artist was enjoying great success at the Salon. His reputation faded after 1780, and he lost everything in the French Revolution, dying a pauper.

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Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), Cinderella (1863), watercolour and gouache on paper, 65.7 x 30.4 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

Edward Burne-Jones’ Cinderella from 1863 shows her reverted to her plain clothes after the ball, but still wearing one (the left) glass slipper. She is seen in a scullery or similar area, with a dull, patched, and grubby working dress and apron. Behind her is a densely packed display of blue crockery in the upper section of a large dresser.

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Eastman Johnson (1824–1906), Not at Home (c 1873), oil on laminated paperboard, 67.1 x 56.7 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

A decade later in New York, the American genre artist Eastman Johnson painted an open narrative work that only makes any sense when you know its title of Not at Home (c 1873). This apparently shows the interior of the artist’s home, where there’s a small dresser in the parlour with a more modest display of plates and mementos.

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Briton Rivière (1840-1920), Cupboard Love (1881), oil on canvas, 143 x 112 cm, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, England. Wikimedia Commons.

Briton Rivière’s Cupboard Love, from 1881, is a visual and verbal pun. The phrase refers to affection in return for gain, shown well in the two dogs whose interest lies in the food which the young woman is about to produce from the heavy wooden cupboard behind them.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Studio Interior (c 1882), oil on canvas, 71.3 x 101.9 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

William Merritt Chase’s many paintings of his studio became something of a shop window for prospective customers. In his Studio Interior from about 1882, a fashionably dressed young woman is glancing through a huge bound collation of Chase’s work, sat by a grand carved wooden sideboard, decorated with almost outlandish objects including a model ship, a lute, and sundry objets d’art.

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Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923), Kissing the Relic (1893), oil on canvas, 103.5 x 122.5 cm, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa / Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

Some cupboards have highly specialised roles, such as that in Joaquín Sorolla’s Kissing the Relic from 1893. At the end of Mass in the church of Saint Paul in Valencia, close to Sorolla’s childhood home, the congregation have been invited to kiss a reliquary containing an alleged relic of a revered saint, drawn from the cupboard behind the priest.

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Laurits Andersen Ring (1854–1933), At Breakfast (1898), oil on canvas, 52 x 40.5 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Wikimedia Commons.

Laurits Andersen Ring’s wife Sigrid sits reading the newspaper Politiken At Breakfast (1898), with a modern sideboard behind her. This houses a mixture of tableware and personal mementos rather than serving as a buffet.

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Carl Larsson (1853–1919), Getting Ready for a Game (1901), oil on canvas, 68 x 92 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Courtesy of Nationalmuseum, via Wikimedia Commons.

Further north in Sweden, Carl Larsson’s wife Karin is Getting Ready for a Game (1901) as she prepares a tray of refreshments in her dining room. At the left is a tall glass-fronted display cabinet containing glassware, while at the right is a simple sideboard with separate shelving to display decorated crockery.

Free-standing cupboards are nothing compared to those you can walk into.

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Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), Woman Searching through a Cupboard (1901), oil on canvas, 78 × 40 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Félix Vallotton’s Woman Searching through a Cupboard (1901) uses its gloomy repoussoir to frame a woman crouching low over its contents. On the shelves above her are thick bundles of papers, such as those used in law and public administration.

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Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), Interior, Woman in Blue Searching in a Cupboard (1903), oil on canvas, 81 x 46 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Image by Oakenchips, via Wikimedia Commons.

A couple of years later, in his Interior, Woman in Blue Searching in a Cupboard (1903), Vallotton painted his wife Gabrielle from behind as she stood searching in a free-standing cupboard of books.

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Elizabeth Nourse (1859–1938), Breton Interior (c 1907), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH. Image by Wmpearl, via Wikimedia Commons.

Elizabeth Nourse’s painting of a Breton Interior from about 1907 shows a well-stocked dresser beside this young girl’s bed. As dressers were unusual in bedrooms, this combination suggests the family home is very cramped, and the child has to sleep in the same room as the family eats.

Reading Visual Art: 210 Parrot B

By: hoakley
14 May 2025 at 19:30

Parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and the humble budgerigar (a small parakeet) have long been popular domestic pets in Europe, and are featured in many paintings. In this second look at a selection of paintings including these birds, I start with still lifes from the Dutch Golden Age.

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Pieter Boel (–1674), Still Life with a Globe and a Parrot (c 1658), oil on canvas, 313 x 168 cm, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

From the days of the Northern Renaissance, artists in the Low Countries had pursued the accurate depiction of optical effects in their paintings. Pieter Boel’s Still Life with a Globe and a Parrot from about 1658 continues that tradition, with its outstanding three-dimensional effects in the plate and goblet in the foreground.

The globe shows the Pacific Ocean and the north-west coast of America, with the ‘Dutch’ East Indies at its left edge. The bas-relief plate shows a scene from mythology, in which male and female deities are riding in a chariot. The two porcelain bowls at the far right appear Chinese, and there’s a white parrot or cockatoo, together with a small dog at the bottom left corner.

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Jakob Bogdani (1658–1724), Capuchin squirrel monkey, two guinea pigs, a blue tit and an Amazon Saint Vincent parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears in a landscape (c 1710-20), oil on canvas, 54.7 x 107 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

After Hungaro-British painter Jakob Bogdani (1658–1724) moved to London via Amsterdam in 1688, he painted several works featuring animals and birds. Those included Capuchin squirrel monkey, two guinea pigs, a blue tit and an Amazon Saint Vincent parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears in a landscape towards the end of his career, in 1710-20.

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Johann Amandus Winck (1748–1817), Still life with a Parrot, Game Fowl, Guinea Pigs and Fruit (date not known), oil on copper, 20.9 x 27.3 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Johann Amandus Winck’s Still life with a Parrot, Game Fowl, Guinea Pigs and Fruit must have been painted in the late eighteenth century.

Parrots also appear in some more curious contexts.

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Agostino Carracci (1557–1602), Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon (1598-1600), oil on canvas, 101 x 133 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Painters have long been attracted to the spectacle of humans who look different. In Agostino Carracci’s case, he combined three strange examples in his Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon, completed between 1598-1600, not long before his death. From the left are Tiny Amon (Rodomonte) the dwarf, Arrigo Gonzalez the hirsute (Hairy Harry) from the Canary Islands, and Mad Peter (Pietro the buffoon). Accompanying them are a large parrot, a couple of dogs, and two monkeys.

Since then, parrots and their relatives have continued to appear sporadically in paintings.

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Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), The Turkish Page (1876), oil on canvas, 106.7 × 148 cm, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1876, Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase painted a young boy carefully posed with a parrot, in Chase’s Munich studio. Duveneck’s The Turkish Page, above, is technically brilliant, and an ambitious work for someone within seven years of starting their training. It was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York the following year, but had a mixed response. Viewers found its still life approach lost narrative, and were puzzled by the depiction of the child. By the time it was displayed at the Pennsylvania Academy in its 1893-4 exhibition, changing taste brought it acclaim, and it sold.

Chase’s version, below, was surprisingly different in many respects. I leave it to you to decide which you prefer, although I think the parrot seems happy with both.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), The Turkish Page (Unexpected Intrusion) (1876), oil on canvas, 104.8 × 94.5 cm, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH. Wikimedia Commons.

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Henry Tonks (1862-1937), Summer (1908), oil on canvas, 94 x 94 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Mrs F.J. Weldon 1931), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tonks-summer-n04565

Henry Tonks’ Summer (1908) is a dazzlingly rich and intricate view of the garden at Arfleet, near Corfe Castle, Dorset, England. Using a real mother and her son as models, the boy’s rocking horse and a cockatoo are unusual objects to see in an English garden in summer.

Wings over Water 1930 by Frances Hodgkins 1869-1947
Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), Wings over Water (1930), oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Geoffrey, Peter and Richard Gorer in memory of Rèe Alice Gorer 1954), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hodgkins-wings-over-water-n06237

The expatriate New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins painted Wings over Water during the winter of 1931-32. It shows a view from her rooms in Bodinnick, Cornwall. Carefully placed in the foreground is a still life consisting of three large seashells with floral and plant arrangements. Sitting on the fence in the middle of the view is her landlady’s parrot, beyond which is the expanse of the nearby River Fowey.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Woman with Parrot (1910), oil on canvas, 104 x 122 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Finally, for Pierre Bonnard parrots came by chance. His Woman with Parrot is set in le Midi in 1910, with intensely bright and hot colours, against which the large blue parrot, some pots, and foliage make contrast. This was painted in Saint Tropez during Bonnard’s visit in September that year, and was based on an experience that the artist wrote about in a letter to his mother, in which he had passed a young dark-haired girl with an enormous blue parrot. As you do.

Landscapes of Spain: The nineteenth century

By: hoakley
10 May 2025 at 19:30

On Christmas Eve 1734 Europe came close to losing many of its greatest paintings, when the Royal Alcázar of Madrid caught fire. At the time it housed much of the Spanish royal collection; although some were lost, many survived to form the core of the Museo Nacional del Prado, which opened to the public in November 1819. Since then a steady succession of aspiring painters have made their way to Madrid to study the works of Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and others in the Prado.

Although few of its masterworks depict landscapes, the Prado has drawn many landscape artists who have also taken the opportunity to paint Spanish views. This weekend I show a small selection of landscape paintings made of the interior of the country by visitors and natives.

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Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), Spanish Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees (1857), oil on canvas, 116.8 × 200 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

The French animalière Rosa Bonheur seems to have visited the Pyrenees, the mountain range forming the north-east border of Spain, on at least two occasions. Her Spanish Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees from 1857 incorporates one of her most spectacular landscapes, some of which were painted in collaboration with her father. At the time mules like these were still an important means of trade over the Pyrenees, via traditional routes over passes that had been used by animals and humans for millennia.

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Martín Rico y Ortega (1833–1908), View of the Village of El Escorial with the Church of Saint Barnabus (1852-58), watercolour on laid paper, 11.1 x 18.1 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

While Martín Rico was studying at the prestigious Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, he painted a series of watercolour landscapes of his home town and its environs. Among them is this View of the Village of El Escorial with the Church of Saint Barnabus (1852-58). This appears to have been painted in front of the motif, and for the rest of his career, Rico was an enthusiastic painter en plein air.

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Martín Rico y Ortega (1833–1908), Guadarrama Landscape (1858), oil on canvas, 69 x 100 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

Rico progressed to oils by 1858, when he painted Guadarrama Landscape, shown at that year’s National Exhibition. This rugged area is now a national park, and is to the north-east of El Escorial. The mountains shown are the Sierra de Guadarrama. This dramatic view shows the influence of his Professor of Landscape Painting at the Academy, who was a renowned Romantic.

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Martín Rico y Ortega (1833–1908), Near Azañón (1859), oil on canvas, 82 x 160.5 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

His landscape painted Near Azañón in 1859 places a Wanderer figure in arid country in his native Spain. Unusually, this Wanderer faces the viewer rather than looking away. This is in the province of Guadalajara in central Spain.

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Martín Rico y Ortega (1833–1908), Country View (1861), media and dimensions not known, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

Country View from 1861 is another of his landscapes from the early years of his career, before he discovered Venice and devoted his later life to painting its canals.

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Antonio Muñoz Degrain (1840–1924), Landscape of El Pardo as the Fog Clears (1866), oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

Antonio Muñoz Degrain’s early Landscape of El Pardo as the Fog Clears from 1866 is set in El Pardo Mountain Reserve, the hunting grounds of the Spanish royal family, where one of its rangers is taking his horse to water. The mountain in the background is Guadarrama, which is surprisingly alpine and rugged. This is close to the location seen in Rico’s Guadarrama Landscape above.

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Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904), The Alhambra in Granada (1868), oil on canvas, 72.1 × 91.5 cm, Sammlung Schack, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1867, Franz von Lenbach and a student of his travelled from Munich to Madrid to copy the Masters there for his patron Baron Adolf von Schack. The following year, von Lenbach painted two works in Granada: The Alhambra in Granada (1868) is a magnificent sketch including the backdrop of the distant mountains, and appears to have been painted in front of the motif.

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Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838–1874), Granada Landscape (1871), oil on canvas, 80 x 45 cm, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

Mariano Fortuny’s Granada Landscape from 1871 is a plein air oil sketch painted when the artist was living in Granada between 1870-72.

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Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918), Landscape Near Madrid (1878), oil on canvas, 71 × 50 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Ferdinand Hodler travelled from Geneva in Switzerland to Madrid in 1878 to study the works of the masters there for several months. While he was there his landscapes became brighter, higher in chroma, and increasingly artistic rather than just representational, as shown in this Landscape Near Madrid (1878).

William Merritt Chase, Sunny Spain (1882), oil on canvas, 49.5 x 74.3 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Sunny Spain (1882), oil on canvas, 49.5 x 74.3 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.

When the great American landscape artist and teacher William Merritt Chase was in Europe in the summer of 1882, he painted Sunny Spain (1882).

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Edmund Wodick (1816–1886), Granada (1886), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

The German artist Edmund Ludwig Eduard Wodick painted this view of Granada in 1886; shortly afterwards he developed pneumonia and died at the age of 69. He located himself just outside the city walls, looking across at the Alhambra and its towers, down towards the lush green plain and the snow-capped peaks in the far distance.

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Hernandez Miguel Vico (1850-1933), Alhambra and Cuesta de los Chinos (date not known), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

This is a contrasting view of the Alhambra painted by Hernandez Miguel Vico, a local artist. The Cuesta de los Chinos is the steep road seen here, and forms one of the pedestrian accesses to the palace.

Urban Revolutionaries: 12 Parks

By: hoakley
2 May 2025 at 19:30

As cities grew during the nineteenth century, what had been countryside in and around them was swallowed up by housing and factories. In the first couple of decades, livestock grazed and cows were milked within a couple of miles of the centre of London.

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Benjamin West (1738–1820), Milkmaids in St. James’s Park, Westminster Abbey beyond (c 1801), oil on panel, further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The American history painter Benjamin West painted this view of Milkmaids in St. James’s Park, Westminster Abbey beyond in about 1801. Two cows and attendant milkmaids are providing a supply of fresh milk for the crowds in this royal park with Buckingham Palace on its edge. This remains 57 acres (23 hectares) of grass, trees and lakes.

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John Linnell (1792–1882), Evening, Bayswater (1818), oil on panel, 38.3 x 58.1 cm, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Wikimedia Commons.

John Linnell’s Evening, Bayswater from 1818, only two centuries ago, shows what was then a rural part of London, out to the west of what’s now Paddington Station, in more peaceful times before this area was assimilated into the growing city. Although it has retained some garden squares, this became a densely populated area during the nineteenth century.

Kensington Gardens: Vicinity of the Pond ?1907 by Paul Maitland 1863-1909
Paul Fordyce Maitland (1863–1909), Kensington Gardens: Vicinity of the Pond (c 1907), oil on canvas, 25.4 x 45.4 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Cyril Andrade 1928), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/maitland-kensington-gardens-vicinity-of-the-pond-n04398

Kensington Gardens: Vicinity of the Pond, painted by Paul Fordyce Maitland in about 1907, shows the Oval Pond in the middle of these gardens, another of the royal parks in London, to the west of the Serpentine Lake in the adjacent Hyde Park.

Over the same period, central Paris was extensively rebuilt, but preserved some of its green spaces, including the gardens of the Tuileries Palace.

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), The Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning (1899), oil on canvas, 73.3 × 92.1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), The Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning (1899), oil on canvas, 73.3 × 92.1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Camille Pissarro’s Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning from 1890 is an aerial view, with the trees in full leaf, in their brilliant fresh green foliage.

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Hans Andersen Brendekilde (1857–1942), Summer Day in Villa Borghese in Rome (1922), oil on canvas, 51 x 41 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Hans Andersen Brendekilde painted this Summer Day in Villa Borghese in Rome late in his career, in 1922. It shows this large public park, which was originally landscaped in ‘English style’ from a former vineyard. It was bought by the city and made properly public in 1903, and has since hosted many events, including part of the 1960 Olympic Games.

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Tina Blau (1845–1916), Prater Gardens (date not known), oil on wood, 25.5 x 32 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

The Austrian Post-Impressionist landscape painter Tina Blau painted her favourite park, Vienna’s Prater Gardens, as its trees were just starting to change colour one autumn, probably around 1890. The Prater covers an area of 1,500 acres (600 hectares) and was opened to the public in 1766.

On the other side of the Atlantic, expansion of cities occurred slightly later, but preserved some notable parks.

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Author not known, New York and Surrounds (1885-1890), Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

This map of New York City and its environs in about 1885-90 shows Central Park on Manhattan Island and Prospect Park, then on the southern edge of Brooklyn.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Park in Brooklyn (Prospect Park) (c 1887), oil on panel, 41 x 61.3 cm, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. The Athenaeum.

William Merritt Chase’s view of Prospect Park, Park in Brooklyn from about 1887, shows housing at the edge. This now has an area of 526 acres (200 hectares), and was originally laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, and completed in 1873.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), View from Central Park (1889), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Olmsted and Vaux were also responsible for the first and most famous New York park of them all, Central Park, now 843 acres (341 hectares). Chase’s View from Central Park shows the park in 1889, and relegates the large buildings of Manhattan to its distant skyline.

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Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1858–1924), Central Park, 1900 (1900), watercolour, pastel, and graphite pencil on paper, 38.7 x 56.1 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Maurice Brazil Prendergast’s view of carriages in Central Park, 1900 (1900) shows how crowded it could become in fine weather.

These and many other views of urban parks have one feature in common: those who took advantage of them were seldom working class. Enjoying these small enclaves of countryside inside cities was almost exclusively for the middle class, who had the time and opportunity. There were also few such parks in industrial cities.

Commemorating the centenary of John Singer Sargent’s death: 3 Venice

By: hoakley
8 April 2025 at 19:30

John Singer Sargent’s move to London in 1886 had proved a commercial success, and he painted portraits of the rich and famous until he closed his studio there in 1907.

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John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), The Ladies Alexandra, Mary, and Theo Acheson (The Acheson Sisters) (1902), oil on canvas, 273.6 x 200.6 cm, The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England. Wikimedia Commons.

His group portrait of The Ladies Alexandra, Mary, and Theo Acheson, normally simply known as The Acheson Sisters, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902, where it was both very popular and favourably received. And at first sight, it is indeed a delight, as they sit around the front of a huge urn decorated with floral garlands, one of the ladies reaching up to pick oranges from a tree just above the urn. Even the late Queen Victoria would, I am sure, have approved. However, there are hidden references that link back through earlier portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds to Nicolas Poussin’s previous paintings of bacchanalian orgies.

John Singer Sargent, Rio dell Angelo (1902), watercolour, 24.8 x 34.9 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Rio dell Angelo (1902), watercolour, 24.8 x 34.9 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.

Meanwhile, the other John Singer Sargent continued his travels across Europe and beyond. A visit to Venice in 1902 brought this stunning watercolour of Rio dell Angelo, where he provides his response to the Impressionists’ question on the colour of shadows.

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John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), William M. Chase (1902), oil on canvas, 158.8 × 105.1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

The same year, Sargent visited New York, where he painted this portrait of his friend and fellow artist William Merritt Chase in his fifties. He’s immaculately dressed with a carnation in his button-hole, and the tools of his art in hand.

John Singer Sargent, Scuola di San Rocco (c 1903), watercolour on paper, 35.6 x 50.8 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), Scuola di San Rocco (c 1903), watercolour on paper, 35.6 x 50.8 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.

The following year, Sargent was back in Venice to paint this watercolour of Scuola di San Rocco assembled from a virtuoso series of marks and gestural strokes of the brush.

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John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), An Artist in His Studio (1904), oil on canvas, 56.2 x 72.1 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Wikimedia Commons.

When he broke free of his studio for the summer of 1904, Sargent travelled to the Alps for his first season of serious plein air painting there. He stayed in the Italian mountain town of Purtud, to the south-west of Mont Blanc, where there was a group of Italian artists doing the same thing. Among them was Ambrogio Raffele (1845-1928), probably the best and most experienced of the group; Sargent became particularly friendly with him, and in An Artist in His Studio (1904) shows Raffele at work in his room there.

This painting is a paradox, in that Sargent shows an accomplished plein air painter working not in front of his motif, but in his bedroom. It’s plausible that Raffele is painting a larger version of the small sketch seen at the lower left of the large canvas.

John Singer Sargent, Unloading Boats in Venice (1904), watercolour on paper, 25.4 x 35.3 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Unloading Boats in Venice (1904), watercolour on paper, 25.4 x 35.3 cm, Private collection. WikiArt.

When he reached Venice, Sargent’s watercolours became even more gestural, as shown in this view of Unloading Boats in Venice (1904).

John Singer Sargent, Group with Parasols (A Siesta) (c 1905), oil on canvas, 55.2 x 70.8 cm, Private collection (sold in 2004 for $23.5 million). WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Group with Parasols (A Siesta) (c 1905), oil on canvas, 55.2 x 70.8 cm, Private collection (sold in 2004 for $23.5 million). WikiArt.

The following summer Sargent turned his attention to his fellow travellers as they crossed the Alps on their way south. He sketched his friends during their siesta, in this Group with Parasols painted in oils in about 1905.

John Singer Sargent, Siesta (1905), watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper, dimensions not known, Private collection. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Siesta (1905), watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper, dimensions not known, Private collection. WikiArt.

Here they are again in watercolour, in Siesta from the same year.

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John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), La Carmencita (c 1905), other details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

A decade after her dancing career had gone into decline, and fifteen years after his first painting of her, Sargent produced a completely different portrait of La Carmencita (c 1905). Now his virtuoso brushstrokes capture her motion. His inspiration was no longer Manet, but Giovanni Boldini and his ‘swish’.

John Singer Sargent, Bedouin Camp (1905-6), watercolour on paper, 25.4 x 35.7 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Bedouin Camp (1905-6), watercolour on paper, 25.4 x 35.7 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York. WikiArt.

In further time out of his studio, Sargent travelled to North Africa, where he painted this Bedouin Camp in 1905-6.

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John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Arab Woman (1905-06), watercolour and gouache on off-white wove paper, 45.7 x 30.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

This portrait of an Arab Woman from 1905-06 is another fine example of his watercolour sketching.

John Singer Sargent, In a Levantine Port (1905-6), watercolour and graphite on paper, 30.6 x 46 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York. WikiArt.
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), In a Levantine Port (1905-6), watercolour and graphite on paper, 30.6 x 46 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York. WikiArt.

At times, Sargent’s brushstrokes appear so casual that it’s almost as if he was just doodling with pigment, as in the blue shadows In a Levantine Port (1905-6). But they coalesce into the image that Sargent clearly had in his mind all the way along, and pop out at the viewer.

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