I started 2024 with a new series telling the myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in paintings, and that continues into next year. While some of its stories are well-known, others may be less familiar if not obscure. The first episode includes the story of Jupiter and Lycaon, who tries to trick the god into cannibalism, for which he’s transformed into a wolf.

Jan Cossiers’ impressive Jupiter and Lycaon from about 1640 shows Jupiter’s eagle vomiting thunderbolts at Lycaon, who sits opposite the god. Lycaon’s head is thoroughly wolf-like already, as he hurriedly gets up from the table. Thunderbolts are seen behind the pillar in the background, and on the table is something resembling a modern burger bun.

Mediaeval folk mythology developed other tales of humans turning into wolves, although most were temporary transformations associated with cannibalistic episodes. They became progressively refined and popularised into the Gothic ‘horror’ stories of werewolves feeding on human blood, making Ovid’s account the origin of the werewolf.

1 Creation and Lycaon’s cannibalism

The year brought many artistic anniversaries, among them the bicentenary of the death of Théodore Géricault, famous for his vast painting of The Raft of the Medusa.

Towards the end of his brief life, Géricault compiled a series of ten portraits of people suffering from mental illness, then described as monomanias. He was introduced to these patients by one of the early practitioners of psychiatry, his friend Doctor Étienne-Jean Georget (1795-1828), who commissioned him to paint them to show to students as examples.

At the time, the pseudoscience of physiognomy remained popular, even among medical professionals. It claims that you can assess personality or character from a person’s outward appearance, particularly their face. In 1772, Johann Lavater codified what was at heart a pseudoscientific basis for racism and other forms of prejudice. Unfortunately, his writings were widely translated, and were enthusiastically adopted by many artists. Among more recent artists who used physiognomy in their painting are Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, William Blake and William Powell Frith.

Although intended as a finished portrait, Géricault’s Monomaniac of Envy (The Hyena), from about 1821-23, is surprisingly painterly beyond the woman’s face.

Commemorating the Death of Théodore Géricault: 3 Madness and Death

Another anniversary of note was the centenary of the death of Maurice Prendergast, whose paintings from his visit to Venice are vivacious and colourful.

Towards the end of his visit, Prendergast found a jostle of Umbrellas in the Rain (1899). They’re of any colour but dark grey, and form a brilliant arc across the painting.

In memoriam Maurice Prendergast who died a century ago

Jean-François Raffaëlli was nearly an Impressionist, but incurred the disapproval of Claude Monet by swamping their exhibitions with his paintings. In 1880, Raffaëlli showed thirty-seven, and Monet withdrew in response. The centenary of his death was an opportunity to look at his work with open mind and eye.

Although best-known for his portraits of the urban poor, The Abandoned Road (1904) is one of Raffaëlli’s finest paintings, showing where an old road running along the top of a sea cliff had been lost in a large landslip. The whaleback ridge in the foreground has an almost animal feel to it, and his use of figures and the village church gives the scene a grander scale.

Almost an Impressionist: Commemorating the death of Jean-François Raffaëlli 1
Almost an Impressionist: Commemorating the death of Jean-François Raffaëlli 2

Researching series is often a most rewarding experience, and in 2024 one of the most fascinating has been Sea of Mists, covering the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and the German Romantics.

Friedrich’s dark Seashore by Moonlight from 1835–6 is full of foreboding, perhaps of his own death. Three small fishing boats are shown at different distances from a rocky shore. Two small rowing boats are just visible in the gloom of the foreground, and there are black shadows of fishing gear. The horizon is lined by the bright reflection of the moon, the brightest tone in the whole painting, and moonlight glints on the central area of sea. The clouds are deep indigo, in smooth folds and curves threatening rain.

German Romantic painters, overview, including contents of this series

Another series came from a personal challenge to compile an alphabet of landscape paintings. Although this grew increasingly difficult towards the end, I think I got there without being over-ingenious. My personal favourite among them is F for flowers.

For Dennis Miller Bunker flowers were an integral part of the country fields he loved to paint. Wild Asters (1889) is a brilliant assembly of different types of mark, from the sinuous curves in the stream to the fine blotches of the aster flowers. Yet the following year the artist was dead from meningitis at the age of only 29.

Contents of the whole series
Flowers

Although I had shown several of JC Dahl’s paintings here previously, Sea of Mists was my first opportunity to look at his work more systematically, alongside that of his colleague and friend Friedrich.

Throughout his career, Dahl made copious oil sketches in front of the motif. He painted this tiny plein air sketch of Dresden at Night in 1845. How he did this in the dark without the aid of modern lighting I have absolutely no idea, but it’s one of the greatest technical accomplishments of nineteenth century painting.

JC Dahl 1818-1827
JC Dahl 1829-1856

Many artists struggle for years until they achieve greatness in a single painting. For Anna Palm de Rosa, who died a century ago, that came in a late night game of cards.

In the summer of 1885, the young Swedish painter Anna Palm visited the artist’s colony at Skagen in Denmark. One night she sketched two of the couples staying in the local hotel as they played cards by candlelight, in A game of L’hombre in Brøndum’s Hotel. There’s a silent tension as all four study their cards amid dense tobacco smoke making it literally atmospheric.

In memoriam Anna Palm de Rosa: painting the card game

Two hundred years ago, there were relatively few major collections of paintings that were open to the public. In Britain, John Julius Angerstein had assembled an art collection, and on 2 April 1824, the British government bought that for £60,000 to establish a national public collection housed in Angerstein’s former town house in London. On 10 May that year, London’s National Gallery first opened to the public, and two articles here celebrate that.

If you’re ever in London, the Wilton Diptych is a must-see. Painted some time between 1395-99, probably as a personal devotional for the king, it’s a jewel fashioned from egg tempera, probably some oils, and gold leaf. It’s one of those few paintings that’s truly breathtaking.

The National Gallery also has nine paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

Perhaps the most popular of all its paintings is his Still Life: Vase with 15 Sunflowers, known as the fourth version of this series, which has the most remarkable background of them all, with a unique metallic sheen that again has to be seen in the flesh.

Celebrating the 200th birthday of London’s National Gallery 1
Celebrating the 200th birthday of London’s National Gallery 2

Another high point of the year was the bicentenary of the birth of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose paintings illustrate his quest for truth in art.

In The Artist’s Model from 1895, Gérôme attempts the ultimate introspection: he painted himself making a sculpture he had previously painted in a painting as a sculpture. Visual references in the props, paintings seen within the painting, and polychrome sculpture provide a visual summary of his professional career.

His final painting of the personification of Truth, completed in 1896 as his reputation was fast vanishing, is his manifesto not only for his art, but for the new art of photography. He saw visual truth, as demonstrated in his meticulous realism, as the objective for painting. In that, he differed fundamentally from Impressionism, which he viewed as misrepresentation of the way that we see the world, thus visual untruth, unlike photography.

The Quest for Visual Truth: the bicentary of Jean-Léon Gérôme

One artist whose death I will be commemorating in 2025 was the subject of a pair of articles over a weekend, Lovis Corinth. For some years I had an unread copy of a monograph on his painting. As I have explored that more I have come to realise what a great master he was, and how close he came to death when he suffered a major stroke in December 1911. At first his doctors weren’t even confident that he would survive, and when he did regain consciousness, he couldn’t recognise his wife Charlotte. His left arm and leg were completely paralysed; as he had painted his entire professional career with his left hand, it looked as if that career was over.

His first major painting following his stroke returned to an earlier theme of Samson. This autobiographical portrait of The Blinded Samson (1912) expressed his feelings about his own battle against the sequelae of his stroke. In the Samson story, it shows the once-mighty man reduced to a feeble prisoner, forced to grope his way around. No doubt Corinth didn’t intend referring to its conclusion: with the aid of God, he pulled down the two central columns of the Philistines’ temple to Dagon, and brought the whole building down on top of its occupants.

Corinth’s successful rehabilitation and the resumption of his career was largely dependent on his wife Charlotte.

Lovis Corinth and Charlotte Berend: 1 Painting days of wine and roses
Lovis Corinth and Charlotte Berend: 2 Recovering from disaster

My final selection from the first half of the year is from another centenary, this time of the death of Emile Claus.

The Old Gardener (1885) is another of those paintings in which every last detail is perfect, from the backlighting against the darkness of the trees to his gnarled feet.

In Memoriam Emile Claus: Into the light 1
In Memoriam Emile Claus: Into the light 2