Trees are prominent features of every continent apart from Antarctica, and even our more densely urban areas find room for a few of them. From our origins in East Africa to the city parks of New York, London and Tokyo, humans and trees have lived together. As a result, trees feature in a great many paintings. This series explores how they have been depicted in European and North American art from before the Renaissance to the early twentieth century.

Like many artists since, Peter Paul Rubens made studies of trees to support his studio paintings in oils. This one, known simply as Landscape, is a careful and quite detailed sketch in gouache (opaque watercolour) of a group of trees on the bank of a small river, painted during the last five years of his life. The evidence from the tree in the mid-right is that he constructed them anatomically, by putting in the structural curves and lines of the branches, then laying down areas of foliage, a method developed during the Renaissance and still widespread today.

This practice of painting studies from life was recommended by the great landscape artist and teacher Pierre Henri Valenciennes (1750-1819), who wrote in his book Elements of Practical Perspective for the Use of Artists:
“Be sure to make several painted studies of beautiful trees, whether standing alone or in groups. Pay close attention to every detail of the bark, moss, roots, branches, and the ivy that surrounds and clings to them; above all, make good choices and study the variety of wood, bark, and foliage, which is of the utmost importance.” (Second edition, 1820.)

Landscape specialists like John Constable painted studies of trees throughout their career, to inform finished works.

He learned to create plein air sketches in oils, which he used extensively for ‘skying’ particularly around Hampstead Heath near London, and for remarkable studies of trees, such as this ash, seen in its autumn colours. Here he too has taken the time to construct the tree anatomically, and to detail its foliage.

This continued through the middle of the nineteenth century, when landscape painting was evolving towards Impressionism.

Camille Corot’s The Toutain Farm, Honfleur from about 1845 appears to be a finished studio painting, perhaps intended for the Salon. Its trees are marvellous and all but obscure and upstage the farmhouse beyond. Their sinuous limbs reflect his structured approach to painting their canopies with a catalogue of ways the trunk can give rise to branches. The canopy itself is shown in careful detail, although at the upper left it seems more vague and sketchy.

Europe has a rich and varied flora of tree species, and one of the challenges in painting its landscapes has been to capture their distinctive characteristics.

Jacob van Ruisdael gave insight into the stages in the life and looks of oak trees. In Road through an Oak Forest (c 1646-7) he captures the later life of a stag-headed oak on the left, which lost its crown long ago, a flush of new growth on a fallen trunk, and another still clinging onto life despite a great split at its base. Judging by the girth of their trunks, the oaks shown here are around 400 years old, making it likely they were saplings in the thirteenth century, possibly even earlier. They form a remarkable window in time back to the late Middle Ages.

Camille Pissarro’s Big Walnut Tree in Spring, Éragny from 1894 celebrates a species that is a source of binder in oil paint, in walnut oil, although it’s used far less frequently than linseed. Its wood is also sought after, making this tree a long-term investment for the landowner’s heirs.

Vincent van Gogh’s Cypresses (1889) are some of the best-remembered of all. As he moved style on beyond Impressionism, his swirling brushstrokes form solid but thoroughly living trees. These are most probably Italian cypresses, which are characteristic of the landscape around the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum where he was living at that time, and throughout Provence.

In his Olive Grove (1889), those swirling strokes of foliage complement the tortuous curves of the branches and gnarled blue-grey trunks.

Paul Cézanne’s oil paintings of trees, although abundant, show his emphasis on patterned brushstrokes in what is known as his constructive stroke. This isn’t true of his watercolours, as shown in Almond Trees in Provence (1900), where each tree rises in a flare of brilliant colours.

Cézanne’s constructive stroke became more prominent and started to dominate the structure of his oil paintings after 1890. In Large Pine and Red Earth (1890–5) it’s used throughout the foreground foliage and vegetation, and has even started to appear in some patches on the trunk.

Finally, Théo van Rysselberghe’s Pine by the Mediterranean Sea (1916) appears almost as substantial as the bleached rocks below it. Contrast between the lit segments and those in cast shadow behind is wide, as is seen on the shores of the Mediterranean.

I hope you will join me in exploring these and many other fine portraits of trees over the coming weeks.

Yesterday’s article examined Peter Paul Rubens’ masterwork Peace and War (1629-30), which he gave to King Charles I of England at the end of his diplomatic mission in London. Rubens returned to his busy workshop in Antwerp, and for the remaining decade of his life devoted himself to painting some of his greatest and most personal works.

His personal life changed greatly too: when he returned to Antwerp, he married the sixteen year-old Hélène Fourment, having lost his first wife four years earlier. In 1635, he bought a country estate near Antwerp, the Steen, which was to be his base until his death, and the subject of several of his finest landscape paintings over those years.

With Europe nearing the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Rubens was only too delighted to be commissioned to paint one of his final narrative masterpieces for Ferdinand de’ Medici, then the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Tuscany had been largely uninvolved in the war, and this time Rubens had no diplomatic mission to accomplish. He could afford to be frank in his story, and we are fortunate in having the artist’s own description of the painting as a reference.

The central figures in The Consequences of War (1637-38) are Venus and Mars. The god of war is advancing forcefully having just rushed from the temple of Janus, moving from left to right, with his sword bloodied and held low. His head is turned back to look at Venus, whose left arm is caught around his right, and who is clearly trying unsuccessfully to restrain him. Standing against the right thigh of Venus is a winged Cupid, child of Mars and Venus.

Drawing Mars forward is Alecto, her hair now looking more like that of a Fury but with few snakes visible, who bears a torch in her right hand. Monsters near her personify pestilence and famine, inseparable partners of war at that time. On the ground below Alecto is a woman with her back towards the viewer: she is Harmony, whose lute has been broken in the discord brought by war.

Nearby, also on the ground, is a mother with her child in her arms, symbolising the effect of war on families and their rearing. At the lower right corner is an architect clutching his instruments, indicating how fine buildings are thrown into ruin by war. Under the right foot of Mars is a book, showing how war tramples over the arts.

On the ground to the left of Cupid is a bundle of arrows or darts: these are not Cupid’s arrows of desire, but when bundled up would form the symbol of Concord; thus war breaks Concord. To their left is the caduceus and an olive branch, attributes of Peace, also cast aside.

The woman at the left in a black gown is the personification of Europe, whose globe, symbolising the Christian world, is carried by a putto behind her. Having endured the ravages of war for so long, her clothing is torn and she has been robbed of her jewels.

Venus and Mars are, in myth, well-known lovers. Venus is failing to restrain Mars from charging off to war, and in doing so, he is breaking their bond of love. This element of the composition had evolved over a long period, coming originally from Titian, and referring to another of Venus’ lovers, Adonis.

Titian’s Venus and Adonis from 1554 shows Venus trying, again in vain, to prevent Adonis from going off to hunt, where he was to be killed by a wild boar. This was a favourite motif of Titian’s: no less than seven versions have been attributed to him from the period between 1553 and about 1560.

Rubens’ early painting of Venus and Adonis from about 1610, now in Düsseldorf, adopts a similar compositional approach, with Adonis facing the viewer and about to move to the right, but Rubens turns Venus’ body to face the viewer more.

His much later Venus and Adonis from about 1635, now in the Met in New York, reverses the image as if it had been made from a print, and turns Adonis so that his back is towards the viewer. He is now about to move beyond the picture plane, away from the viewer. For The Consequences of War, Rubens keeps Venus in a similar position, but turns Mars to move straight along to the right in a more forceful and unconstrained action.

The figure of Europe has an even more contemporary reference, to a nearly identical woman in the centre of Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents (c 1638). She too is in distress, although here she is not a personification in the way that she is in The Consequences of War.

Perhaps the most telling comparison is with Rubens’ The Triumph of Victory (c 1614), made when he was young and the finest painter in Flanders. The Treaty of Antwerp had been signed in 1609, and the city was flourishing in the Twelve Years’ Truce which ensued.

Painted for the Antwerp Guild of St George, its organisation of archers, Mars dominates, his bloody sword resting on the thigh of Victoria, personification of victory. She reaches over to place a wreath of either oak or laurel on Mars, and holds a staff in her left hand. At the right, Mars is being passed the bundle of crossbow bolts that make up the attribute of Concord.

Under the feet of Mars are the bodies of Rebellion, in the foreground, who still holds his torch, and Discord, on whose cheek a snake is crawling. The bound figure resting against the left knee of Mars is Barbarism.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, with the experience that his work as a diplomat had brought, Rubens had expressed a completely different view of war. His Peace and War (1629-30) and The Consequences of War (1637-38) should hang in the office of every head of state, from the White House, to the Kremlin Senate, to 10 Downing Street, and the Ryongsong Residence in North Korea.

Lest anyone forgets.

Seventeenth century Europe was ravaged by war. Between 1618 and 1648, much of what is now Germany suffered the Thirty Years’ War, with widespread famines, epidemic disease, and the slaughter of battle. This spilled over to the Netherlands and Belgium, and beyond. Warfare at that time used weapons which individually had limited killing power, but wherever there was war, largely mercenary armies stripped the land of food and supplies, laying waste to large tracts of countryside, and bringing infectious diseases to kill many of the local population.

In the midst of that, some of the old Masters managed to flourish, among them Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), arguably the greatest narrative painter in Western art, and an accomplished international diplomat.

Rubens was no stranger to the consequences of religious persecution, conflict, and war. His Protestant parents had fled Antwerp for Cologne before his birth, he returned to Antwerp with his widowed mother in 1589 to be raised as a Catholic, and from 1600 he travelled throughout Europe, including Italy, Spain, France, England, and the Low Countries.

In 1629, he returned from a period in Madrid where he had worked with Diego Velázquez, then spent a little time back in his workshop in Antwerp before travelling to London, where he stayed until April the following year. A relatively peaceful country during the war on the European mainland, England’s stable period during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign had ended with her death in 1603; two years later Guy Fawkes and conspirators had tried to blow up the House of Parliament, and the Civil War broke out in 1642.

Rubens was now in his early fifties, internationally successful, and able to choose his own motifs. He had developed his sophisticated visual language of narrative over three decades of painting stories. Acting as envoy to King Philip IV of Spain, he was trying to agree peace between Spain and King Charles I of England. Among his tools was one of his greatest narrative paintings, Minerva Protects Pax from Mars or Peace and War, painted when he had been in England and left there as a gift to its king.

Rubens’ painting, now in the National Gallery in London, is crowded with more than a dozen figures drawn from classical myths. Until you have identified them and understood their roles and meaning, its reading remains elusive.

Its central figures are those of Ceres, here in the role of Pax, personification of peace, and Minerva behind her. In attendance are Mars, Hymen, Plutus, and Alecto, with sundry Bacchantes, a satyr, putti, and the attributes of Bacchus and Mercury. It’s like an away day from Olympus, or part of an index to Ovid.

Ceres and Minerva are at the heart of the painting. Rubens shows Ceres expressing milk from her left breast, which arcs into the mouth of her son Plutus, the god of wealth, who is grasping her left arm.

The figures of Ceres and Plutus are almost identical to those of Venus and Cupid in Rubens’ earlier Venus, Mars and Cupid (c 1633), which introduces ambiguity to her figure. However, in this painting Cupid is shown with wings, and his traditional bow and arrows. In Peace and War, the infant is clearly not Cupid as he has neither wings nor bow and arrows: there he is Plutus.

Being the goddess of agriculture, grain crops (hence cereal), and maternal relationships, Ceres stands for values strongly associated with the benefits of peace: bread rather than starvation, fertility rather than barrenness and pestilence. Her son Plutus represents the growth of wealth in times of peace.

Although the figure immediately behind Ceres might be mistaken for a man (Mars, perhaps), her staff and helmet are characteristic of Minerva, the goddess with a curiously mixed portfolio of wisdom, industry, and war, a hangover from her part-Etruscan origins. Immediately above her is a winged putto carrying a caduceus, a short staff with wings at the top and entwined snakes, normally an attribute of Mercury, but also associated with commerce. That putto leans forward to place a laurel wreath, the crown of the victor and a symbol of peace, on Ceres’ head.

Minerva is pushing away the bearded figure of Mars, god of war, who is wearing his characteristic black armour. Rubens painted Mars not infrequently, and was flexible with his age and appearance, which vary according to context. With Venus and Cupid above, he is a young, clean-shaven man.

In Venus and Mars (1632-35) he appears more like an ageing general than a warrior, and Venus is also past the beauty of her youth. Perhaps they had succumbed too often to the temptations of Bacchus, seen behind brandishing an empty glass.

At the far right of Peace and War is Alecto, the Fury responsible for dealing with the moral offences of humans, usually by driving them mad. Rubens refrains from giving her snakes in her hair, but emphasises madness, the madness of war.

On the opposite (left) side of the painting is a Bacchante holding her tambourine (tympanum) aloft, and another bearing earthly riches at her left side. A satyr crouches low over a leopard, and proffers a cornucopia filled with fruit to the figures at the right.

This group is associated with Bacchus. Although he is not present, his chariot is normally drawn by leopards or similar big cats, and he is accompanied by Bacchantes. This is shown well in Lovis Corinth’s marvellous painting of Ariadne on Naxos (1913) below.

Bacchus’ age and appearance are remarkably variable. In Ruben’s later Bacchus (1638-40), he is old and grotesquely obese, but still accompanied by his big cats.

This painting was completed not long before Rubens’ death from the consequences of gout, and may be the artist’s personal reflection on the result of sustained familiarity with Bacchus.

On the other side of the cornucopia from the Satyr is a small group of children, and a winged putto or Cupid, led by Hymen, who bears his characteristic torch. The god of marriage has led the products of marriage to the fruit of peace and plenty. These figures were painted from the children of one of King Charles’ diplomats, Sir Balthasar Gerbier, who was both an artist and Rubens’ host while he was in England.

Rubens’ story is clear: push war and its associated madness away, and you will enjoy peace, prosperity, and a thriving, well-nourished population.

King Charles made peace with France and Spain, but couldn’t get on with his own parliament; he therefore ruled England without a parliament for the “eleven years’ tyranny”. Collapse of power was inevitable after that: he faced Scottish and Irish rebellions, then in 1642 found himself in a civil war. He was executed on 30 January 1649.

Rubens returned to Antwerp in 1630, where he painted a second masterwork on the subject of peace and war, the centrepiece of tomorrow’s article.

The legendary hero Perseus was the son of Danaë, conceived when Zeus/Jupiter impregnated her in a shower of gold. He had been sent by Polydectes on a mission to bring him the head of Medusa, and on his return with that secured in a kibisis, he stopped off in Ethiopia, where the princess Andromeda was awaiting sacrifice to the sea monster Cetus.

Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda (1553-59) shows the height of the action, remaining largely faithful to Ovid’s account of this story. All three actors are present, with Andromeda still shackled and Perseus attacking Cetus from the air using a sword with a curved blade.

Paolo Veronese’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda followed soon afterwards, in 1576-78. His composition is similar to Titian’s, and equally faithful to the text, but his additional attention to the details of Perseus and Cetus brings this to life.

In the ninth painting in Edward Burne-Jones’ series, The Doom Fulfilled (1888), Perseus is swathed in Cetus’ coils with their almost calligraphic form, brandishing his sword and ready to slaughter the monster and bring its terror to an end.

In the early twentieth century, the former Nabi artist Félix Edouard Vallotton painted a series of narrative works, including his Perseus Killing the Dragon, from 1910, a thoroughly contemporary interpretation that is exceptionally free with Ovid’s account.

As with most classical myths, several variants of the story have developed over time. All painted accounts that I have seen follow the action-packed version in which Perseus slays Cetus with his sword, but some literary versions report that the sea monster was turned to stone by Medusa’s face, which would have made far duller paintings.

A more recent variant has the hero flying to Andromeda’s aid not with his winged sandals, but on the back of the winged horse Pegasus.

By the time that Rubens came to paint Perseus and Andromeda in about 1622, the newer revised version including Pegasus seems to have become popular. Andromeda is at the left, unchained from her rock where she had been placed as a delightful morsel for Cetus, which has just been killed by Perseus and now lies at the lower edge with its fearsome mouth wide open. Perseus is in the process of claiming Andromeda’s hand as his reward, for which he is being crowned with laurels. Although he clearly flew in on Pegasus, he is still wearing his winged sandals, and holds the polished shield reflecting Medusa’s face and snake hair.

Piero di Cosimo uses multiplex narrative to show most of the story in his large Andromeda Freed by Perseus (c 1510-15). Centred on the great bulk of Cetus, Perseus stands on its back and is about to hack at its neck with his curved sword. At the upper right, Perseus is shown a few moments earlier, as he was flying past in his winged sandals. To the left of Cetus, Andromeda is still secured to the rock by red fabric bindings, not chains, and is bare only to her waist.

In the foreground in front of Cetus are Andromeda’s parents stricken in grief. Near them is a group of courtiers with ornate head-dress. But in the right foreground the wedding party is already in full swing, complete with musicians and dancers.

Perseus’ reward for rescuing Andromeda and saving the kingdom of Ethiopia was naturally the hand of the princess in marriage. There was only one obstacle, that she had already been promised to Phineus, who was clearly no match when it came to killing sea monsters. Whether or not Phineus was invited, he and his friends turned up at the wedding of Andromeda and Perseus, and trouble soon broke out. The punch-up turned lethal when the weapons came out, and Perseus decided it was time to show Medusa’s face to the unwelcome guests.

Sebastiano Ricci’s Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa (c 1705-10) shows the final moments of the battle, as Phineus cowers next to two of his henchmen who have almost completed the process of changing into stone. Although not shown here, Athena herself turned up to make sure that no one got the better of Perseus.

Edward Burne-Jones worked on many sketches and preliminary designs for his series, among which were gouache and gold layouts to show how his paintings would fit into their carved surrounds in his patron’s Music Room.

This design shows an outline of the whole series, which had originally been intended to include Phineus and the wedding. The scenes shown are, from the left, Atlas Turned to Stone, The Rock of Doom and the Doom Fulfilled, The Court of Phineas, and The Baleful Head, shown below.

The tenth and final painting in Burne-Jones’ series, The Baleful Head (1885), shows Perseus and Andromeda, their right hands clenching one another’s wrists, looking at the image of Medusa’s face reflected in the surface of a well. This is set in a peaceful garden, with a fruit-laden apple tree behind, and flowers springing up from the grass beneath them.

Literary accounts take the couple on to live at Tiryns in Argos, from where Heracles/Hercules later undertook his Twelve Labours. They had seven sons and two daughters, and among their descendants were Heracles, Castor and Pollux, Clytemnestra, and the Achaemenid Persians.

When Perseus returned to Seriphos, he discovered Polydectes was still trying to seduce his mother Danaë. Perseus therefore used Medusa’s face to turn him to stone, and made Dictys king and his mother’s consort. His mission accomplished, Perseus returned the weapon and equipment loaned by the gods, and gave Athena the head of Medusa, which she then set in her shield as the Gorgoneion, more commonly referred to as the Aegis.

Distinguishing the three goddesses taking part in The Judgement of Paris, shown in Rubens’ late account from 1632-35, often relies in part on the aegis. The three goddesses are, from the left, Athena with her shield, Aphrodite, and Hera with her peacock.

There was still one loose end to be tied, though: the prediction that Perseus would kill his father Acrisius. Various accounts are given of this, but consensus is that Perseus threw a quoit or discus that unintentionally struck Acrisius and killed him. Thereafter, he ruled a kingdom until he and Andromeda died. They were both catasterised into their own constellations, where they can still be seen today.

When reading a painting of classical myth, the feet and footwear can be very important. Although they’re by no means common, if you see a figure wearing what could be winged sandals, you can narrow them down to one of two: Hermes or Mercury as messenger of the gods, and the hero Theseus. However, their depictions aren’t always consistent, and the absence of winged sandals doesn’t mean you can exclude them, unfortunately.

I start with the god, whose talaria were fashioned from gold by Hephaestus/Vulcan to enable him to fly as fast as any bird.

One of the most famous depictions of Hermes, typically in a supporting role, is in Botticelli’s magnificent Primavera from around 1482.

Hermes’ mother Maia gave her name to the month of May, so is associated with Spring. Botticelli has chosen to give the serpents on his caduceus wings to make them resemble small dragons. The god is also more typically seen with his caduceus in his left hand, rather than his right as shown here, and his winged sandals clearly aren’t made of gold.

Hermes is a frequent figure in paintings of gatherings of deities, including Andrea Mantegna’s Mars and Venus, known better as Parnassus (1496-97), painted for Isabella d’Este. At the right of this complex gathering is Hermes with his winged sandals and caduceus, and Pegasus the winged horse. Apollo is at the far left, making music for the Muses on his lyre.

Francisco Bayeu y Subías was Goya’s brother-in-law. His Olympus: The Fall of the Giants from 1764 shows the war between the Titans and Olympian gods, and was presumably hung under a ceiling. Just to the upper left of its centre, holding his caduceus and wearing winged sandals, is Hermes.

Auguste Renoir’s account of The Judgment of Paris, from about 1908-10, demonstrates his skill as a narrative painter. After Paris has accepted Aphrodite’s bribe of Helen, he is shown awarding her the golden apple provided by the discordant Eris from the garden of the Hesperides. Watching on is Hermes, complete with his winged helmet and sandals, and caduceus.

Hermes seldom lent out his talaria, but there’s one occasion that has become well known. When Perseus was on his mission to obtain the head of Medusa, he was kitted out with Hermes’ sandals, the cap of Hades for invisibility, and a kibisis or sack in which to conceal the Gorgon’s severed head.

This Pompeian account of Perseus Freeing Andromeda from about 50-75 CE shows Andromeda still chained to the rock by her left wrist, and partially clad rather than naked as the myth related. Perseus has Medusa’s head tucked behind him, her face shown for ease of recognition. He is wearing his winged sandals, and carrying his sword in his left hand, although there’s no sign of Cetus the sea-monster yet.

Peter Paul Rubens’ Perseus and Andromeda from about 1622 contains most of the cues and clues to the original narrative. Andromeda is almost naked, although unchained at this stage, on the left. Perseus is clearly in the process of claiming her hand as his reward, for which he is being crowned with laurels, as the victor. He wears winged sandals, and holds the polished shield that still reflects Medusa’s face and snake hair. Much of the right of the painting is taken up by Pegasus, and at the lower edge is the dead Cetus, its fearsome mouth wide open.

In Edward Burne-Jones’ Perseus Series, the hero’s winged sandals are one of its less consistent features.

The third painting, Perseus and the Sea Nymphs (1877), shows the Hesperides equipping Perseus with the kibisis at the far right. Burne-Jones combines with that his donning the winged sandals (centre) and Hades’ helmet, as provided by Hermes and Zeus.

Further on in the series, in his finished oil version of The Doom Fulfilled (1888), the sandals are shown clearly as Perseus takes on Cetus.

In one of Frederic, Lord Leighton’s last paintings, of Perseus On Pegasus Hastening To the Rescue of Andromeda from about 1895-96, the wings on his sandals are tiny but distinctive.

In addition to his account of the battle between Lapiths and centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous and Hippodame, Ovid tells the story of Nessus the centaur and his attempt to abduct Hercules’ wife.

Nessus had set himself up as the ferryman on the river Euenos, in western Greece. One day, Deianeira, the beautiful wife of Hercules, wanted to cross the river, so she mounted Nessus’ back and he took her across. As he was doing so, he decided to try to abduct and rape her. However, Hercules was on the bank they had just left, and heard her cries. He drew his bow and shot Nessus in the breast with an arrow whose tip was poisoned with the blood of the Lernean Hydra.

As Nessus lay dying, in an act of revenge he told Deianeira that his blood would act as a love charm to ensure that Hercules would be true to her forever, which she foolishly believed. She collected his blood, and kept it ready for use. Some years later, Hercules was having an affair with the young and beautiful Iole. When Deianeira discovered this, she spread Nessus’ blood on a shirt (chiton), which she gave to her husband to wear, in the hope that it would bring him back to her.

When Hercules was away, Deianeira accidentally spilt some of Nessus’ blood on the floor, where it lay smoking in the light of dawn. She realised that Nessus had tricked her, and that his blood would harm Hercules. She sent a messenger to warn him, but that was too late for Hercules, whose body had been horribly burned by the shirt. He took himself out to die a noble death on a pyre of oak branches, from where Zeus took him to Mount Olympus.

This story is shown on several Greek pots, and this Roman fresco from around 50 CE. Although an interesting painting, it seems to show a variant to the story involving Hercules’ son Hyllus and a chariot. The artist has also chosen to show the group before Nessus carries Deianeira across the river, thus before the attempted abduction, a puzzling choice.

This wonderful woodcut from around 1474 may not have quite grasped what a centaur is, but includes two complete copies of the protagonists in its single frame. Hercules is first seen placing Deianeira onto a horse, then Hercules has shot the horseman. In trying to squeeze these two instants into the image, it runs out of space at the right.

Antonio del Pollaiolo’s painting from about 1475–80 tries a side-on view, requiring Nessus to be shot while still in the river, a slight adjustment to the original story. Deianeira appears precariously balanced, and must be grateful that Nessus’ muscular arms save her from being dropped into the river below. The artist also leaves it to the viewer to know that Hercules’ poisoned arrow strikes Nessus rather than Deianeira.

In about 1580, Bartholomeus Spranger painted one of the few accounts timed after the death of Nessus. Hercules has caught his wife up in his arms, and a winged Cupid looks a little puzzled from the top left, as if wondering how his arrow could have killed the centaur. The sequel story, relying on Nessus’ blood, appears to have been lost in the joy of reunion, leaving the viewer confused as to how this matches the literary narrative.

Paolo Veronese’s painting from about 1586 elects for a much earlier moment, as Hercules is readying his bow and arrow, with Nessus just reaching the opposite bank. He also shows the scene from Hercules’ position, but discovers the problems with that point of view: Nessus and Deianeira are now small, and Nessus is looking away (and his chest concealed), and even Hercules’ face is turned from the viewer.

Guido Reni’s masterly painting from around 1620, one of the finest of its period in the Louvre, almost fills the canvas with Nessus, who looks worryingly heroic, and Deianeira, who seems to be flying. The small figure of Hercules in the distance is well-lit, but loses the details of bow and arrow. In any case, the arrow could hardly strike Nessus in the chest.

This painting is almost certainly not the work of Peter Paul Rubens, but was probably painted in his workshop around the time of Rubens’ death, in 1640. Like Veronese, the artist adopts the point of view from the bank on which Hercules is poised to shoot his arrow into Nessus. By turning the centaur round, to run across the width of the canvas, his face and chest are well exposed, and Hercules’ target is feasible. Even Deianeira appears more comfortable with the force of gravity.

They have added a winged Cupid, to make clear Nessus’ intentions, and Deianeira’s facial expression is marvellously clear in intent. The additional couple, in the right foreground, might be intended to be a river god and naiad, who would be superfluous apart from their role in achieving compositional balance.

Noël Coypel’s painting from around 1680 includes more narrative elements than others, but in doing so I fear becomes confusing to read. Nessus has been struck, is bleeding, and holding out some cloth that is slightly blood-stained. An arrow lies on the ground in front of him, but none in his chest. Deianeira is still on his back, although his legs have buckled under him, and he looks distressed. Approaching them with a heavy club in his right hand is Hercules, perhaps coming to finish the centaur off.

To those Coypel adds three winged putti, who seem to be pointing out those clues to the story, and behind them is a river god, and another couple of figures, watching but not apparently part of this story.

In about 1706, Sebastiano Ricci embroidered the story further, showing Hercules, his left hand grasping Nessus’ mouth, about to club the centaur to death, while a slightly bedraggled Deianeira watches in the background. There is no arrow in Nessus’ chest, and Hercules’ quiver is trapped under Nessus’ right foreleg. Three other figures of uncertain roles are at the right, and a winged putto hovers overhead, covering its eyes with its right hand.

Although Gaspare Diziani returned to the original story in his painting of about 1730, he fell foul of the same compositional problems as in earlier works. Nessus is making off with Deianeira as he is crossing the river. He clutches the woman in his arms, which at least allows us to see her face, and the hand calling for assistance, but his face and chest are almost occluded.

Hercules has to stand so close as to almost be able to touch him, so it is feasible for his arrow, when loosed, to enter the right side of the centaur’s chest, under the armpit. Hercules is looking down at his feet, although drawing back ready to shoot Nessus. Above them an incongruous winged putto forms the apex of a triangle with the other figures. Where will Hercules’ arrow strike?

In 1755 Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée clearly understood the compositional problem. His solution is unfortunately no better, despite his beautiful painting. Nessus, bearing a distressed Deianeira in his arms, has just reached the opposite bank, in the foreground. Hercules is on the left in the distance, and we can at least see his face, bow and arrow. Unlike Reni, he has not lit Hercules to best effect, and there appears to be no way that Hercules’ arrow could impale Nessus’ chest, without first passing through some of the abundant Deianeira. He also adds a river god, who seems to have been knocked over in Nessus’ haste to make off with his captive.

Gustave Moreau’s final drawing of about 1860, squared up and ready to transfer to canvas for painting, alters the story to make its composition feasible. He puts Nessus in the foreground, with the attendant risk of making him appear the hero, somehow supporting the upstretched body of Deianeira. In the right distance, Hercules has already loosed the fatal arrow, which is prominently embedded not the front of Nessus’ chest, but his back. The centaur’s legs have collapsed under him, and his head and neck are stretched up in the agony of death.

Moreau’s eventual painting of Nessus and Deianeira, in 1872, was titled Autumn (Deianeira), and quite different from that drawing. Deianeira and Nessus are in very similar postures, although reversed onto the opposite bank of the river, with Nessus still very much alive, and Deianeira apparently in a trance-like state. Hercules may be lurking in the dense wood around them, but for the moment I cannot see him.

My last example is also the most puzzling: Arnold Böcklin’s painting from 1898. Nessus is far from part-human, and Deianeira not the beauty that she was claimed to be. As those two wrestle grimly, Hercules has stolen up behind them, and is busy pushing a spear into Nessus’ bulging belly. Blood pours from the wound, but Deianeira seems to be in no position to collect it.

In Greek and Roman mythology centaurs were creatures with the upper body of a human, down to the waist, fused onto the body of a horse, with all its four legs. Although some tales about centaurs suggest otherwise, in general they represented the lower appetites and behaviours of humans, and were more like wild horses than people. They were known for their fights with Lapiths, an Aeolian tribe, against whom they wielded rocks and limbs of trees. Centaurs persisted in legends and stories well into the Middle Ages, and are the subject of this weekend’s two articles about paintings.

Piero di Cosimo’s assembly of Tritons and Nereids, with Satyrs and Centaurs painted in about 1500-05 shows an odd range of centaur-like creatures, and is believed to have been commissioned for the Palazzo Vespucci.

Those in Böcklin’s Fight of the Centaurs (1873) are behaving more in character, in hand-to-hand combat, and by wielding rocks.

But Eugène Delacroix had better to report.

In the Poetry cupola of the Library of the National Assembly in Paris, Delacroix painted The Education of Achilles. This shows the myth of the young Achilles with a bow and arrow, riding on the back of his tutor Chiron the centaur, on the steep slopes of Mount Pelion. This was to become one of Delacroix’s favourite motifs.

His last known pastel painting, and one of his finest, is The Education of Achilles, painted in about 1862, showing the same scene of the ‘wisest and justest of all the centaurs’ Chiron teaching Achilles to hunt. The artist gave this to his longstanding friend Aurore Dudevant, better known under her pen name of George Sand.

Following the tradition of Nicolas Poussin, Achille Etna Michallon (a namesake of Achilles) set mythological figures in some of his finished landscape paintings. His Landscape: Theseus Pursuing the Centaurs from 1821 shows the Greek hero about to throw his spear at a galloping centaur.

Franz von Stuck added centaurs to his repertoire of mythical beasts in his Fantastic Hunt (1890). Here an archer centaur has buried his arrow into the right axilla of a deer-like variant, perhaps resembling Actaeon after Diana’s vicious metamorphosis. The deer-centaur’s legs have already buckled under him, and his hands claw at the air in his agony.

There are two major myths involving centaurs that have been painted extensively, both picturing them at their worst, at a wedding feast that turned into a pitched battle, and the attempted abduction of the wife of Hercules.

The account of the former is given by Nestor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and is one of a pair of primaeval battles said to have established world order: that between the Titans and the Gods ended the heavenly Titanomachy, and that between the Lapiths and Centaurs ended the earthly Centauromachy.

When Pirithous married Hippodame, the couple invited centaurs to the feast. Unfortunately, passions of the centaur Eurytus became inflamed by drink and lust for the bride, and he carried Hippodame off by her hair. The other centaurs followed suit by each seizing a woman of their choice, turning the wedding feast into utter chaos, more like a city being sacked.

Theseus castigated Eurytus and rescued the bride, so the centaur attacked him. Theseus responded by throwing a huge wine krater at Eurytus, killing him. The centaurs then started throwing goblets and crockery, and the battle escalated from there. Nestor details a succession of grisly accounts of Lapiths and Centaurs killed. Gryneus the centaur ripped up the altar and crushed two Lapiths with its weight, only to have his eyeballs gouged out by a Lapith using the prongs of some antlers. Not content with using the objects around them as weapons, they started using their own lances and swords.

When the centaur Petraeus was trying to uproot a whole oak tree, the groom Pirithous pinned the centaur to the tree-trunk with his lance. Nestor also tells of the success of Caeneus, formerly Caenis, in killing five centaurs. The centaur Latreus taunted Caeneus, so the latter wounded the centaur with his spear. Latreus thrust his lance in Caeneus’ face, but was unable to hurt him, so he tried with his sword, which broke against the invulnerable Caeneus, leaving him to finish the centaur off with thrusts of his own sword.

The centaurs then united to try to overwhelm Caeneus by crushing him under their combined weight. Just as they thought they had succeeded, Caeneus was transformed into a bird and flew out from underneath them. With that the survivors dispersed, the Lapiths having won the day.

Piero di Cosimo’s The Fight between Lapiths and Centaurs (1500-15) is my favourite among the earlier paintings, and remains one of its best-structured and complete accounts. In the centre foreground, Hylonome embraces and kisses the dying Cyllarus, a huge arrow-like spear resting underneath them. Immediately behind them, on large carpets laid out for the wedding feast, centaurs are still abducting women. All around are scenes of pitched and bloody battles, with eyes being gouged out, Lapiths and Centaurs wielding clubs and other weapons at one another.

Towards the end of his life, Peter Paul Rubens painted this brilliant oil sketch of The Rape of Hippodame (c 1637-38). At the right, Eurytus is trying to carry off the bride, with Theseus just about to rescue her from the centaur’s back. At the left, Lapiths are attacking with their weapons, and behind them another centaur is trying to abduct a woman.

That became the finished painting, The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38), which remains faithful to Rubens’ sketch and its composition. Facial expressions, particularly that of the Lapith at the left bearing a sword, are particularly powerful.

Luca Giordano’s later painting of the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs from 1688 lacks the narrative structure of Piero di Cosimo’s, and covers later action than Rubens’. As a result, its story has become a little lost in the mêlée of battle.

Sebastiano Ricci’s The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs from about 1705 has similar problems, although it does use multiplex narrative to help. In the left background, Hippodame is seen being carried away by Eurytus, and to the right there are further scenes of abduction.

Francesco Solimena’s Battle between Lapiths and Centaurs (1735-40) puts multiple abductions in the foreground, with pitched battles taking place behind.

Tomorrow I’ll look at paintings of the fight between Nessus and Hercules, and how Nessus got his revenge.

Many of the great Masters are known to have painted preparatory studies prior to starting on full-size finished studio paintings. Unfortunately, most of those studies were either destroyed by the artist in their lifetime, or by their heirs following their death. Seeing studies alongside a finished work tells a great deal about the artist’s intent and methods, and some exhibitions have made a point of including as many studies as possible. This article shows a small selection of some whose images I have been able to gather.

Some of the best surviving studies are the oil sketches made by Peter Paul Rubens, some of which were given to assistants in his studio for completion.

Towards the end of his life, he painted this brilliant oil sketch of The Rape of Hippodame (c 1637-38). At the right, Eurytus is trying to carry off Hippodame, the bride, with Theseus just about to rescue her from the centaur’s back. At the left, Lapiths are attacking with their weapons, and behind them another centaur is trying to abduct a woman. Rubens typically sketched on small wood panels, here 26 x 40 cm (10 x 16 inches), with wonderfully painterly brushstrokes.

That became this finished painting, The Rape of Hippodame (Lapiths and Centaurs) (1636-38), which remains faithful to the sketch and its composition. Facial expressions, particularly that of the Lapith at the left bearing a sword, are particularly powerful.

Studies were better preserved in the nineteenth century, when tastes changed and some realised worthwhile sums in posthumous sales of the contents of studios.

Among the most studied are those made by Géricault when he was working up his landmark painting of The Raft of the Medusa. This oil study on canvas was probably made as he was completing his preparations during the autumn of 1818, and reveals some of his compositional thinking, for instance over the size of the ship that rescued the survivors.

The end result is this vast canvas, its figures shown life-sized, which has had huge impact on everyone who has seen it since its completion in 1819. It appears completely authentic, and given the work that Géricault put into making it so, that’s perhaps not surprising. But most gain the impression that the raft was almost square in form, as a result of the tight cropping applied, and that even with those few survivors on board, it was overcrowded. This is because Géricault chose to pack all his figures into one small section of the raft.

I was fortunate enough to visit an exhibition of some of John Constable’s works, in which his studies were shown alongside finished paintings. Here I show just one example. Had Constable lived fifty years later, he might have been persuaded to stop his paintings when they were still late oil studies, rather than take them to their finished conclusions.

This early sketch of Hadleigh Castle (1828-29) already contains some surprisingly detailed passages: at the far left, a shepherd, his black dog by his side, with a small flock of sheep grazing near the ruined tower. There’s a brown and white blob on the seaward slope, probably a cow grazing there. Wheeling in wrinkles of impasto above the tower are a few birds resembling small runnels of liquid metal like solder. By this time, many artists were painting their oil studies on cheaper millboard, as Constable did here. Millboard is made by pasting together many sheets of fine paper, so isn’t as durable as cheaper stretched canvas.

By the finished work, the splendid Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames – Morning after a Stormy Night (1829), the basic disposition of those figures has changed little, but Constable has changed each to suit his image. The shepherd, still carrying his long crook, is separated from his dog, and has lost his sheep, which have become scattered rocks. The single cow on the sloping grass has gained a couple of friends, and a cowherd. Beyond them are another couple of tiny specks of figures, and there are more by the wood in the lower right corner.

William Powell Frith’s late study for Derby Day was probably painted in about 1856, and is very close to the finished work shown below, although covering only about a tenth of its area.

Jacob Bell commissioned Frith to paint his finished Derby Day (1856-58) for the huge fee of £1,500, and the artist was paid a further £1,500 for rights to make prints. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858, and proved so popular that a guard rail had to be installed in front of it to protect the work from the admiring crowds.

Georges Seurat’s preparations are also revealed in his surviving studies, and are very different given his Pointillist technique. Some of the later Divisionists made conventional studies, and there are some experimental examples using larger tiles of colour (see below). Seurat instead rehearsed parts of the overall view when preparing his masterwork.

Seurat’s first and greatest masterpiece, generally known as La Grande Jatte, uses the technique of optical mixing of colour. Rather than blending pigments on the canvas, it’s constructed of tiny dots that are high in chroma, and allow for optical mixing, one of the fundamental techniques in Seurat’s new scientific painting. His theory was that the mixing of colour would then occur in the retina of the viewer, and he tried this in a pure landscape study (above), and in his huge finished painting (below).

He painted his finished version in three phases. In the first, the dots he applied were mixed from available and fairly conventional pigments, including duller earths. In the second phase, he used a limited number of brighter and higher chroma pigments. In the third and final phase he added coloured borders which are distinctive of his paintings.

By the late nineteenth century oil studies were being supplemented by photographs.

Thomas Eakins’ preparatory studies for Swimming (1885) grew from a series of photographs taken by the artist and his friends. But photos never replaced his own sketches: for this work, Eakins made several figure studies, details such as the dog, and different landscape backgrounds, then brought them together in oil sketches.

Once he was happy, he embarked on his final version. In at least some cases, including his paintings of shad fishing from 1881-82, the figures in his Arcadia (c 1883), and Swimming (1885), he put final photographic images into a ‘magic lantern’ projector, which he then projected at the canvas.

He developed a sophisticated system not only for using the projected image to make a graphite underdrawing, but as the painting progressed, to incise key points and lines of reference in the paint surface. This enabled him to create paintings that were accurately calibrated to his reference images: a great advance on the traditional system of enlargement using grids, and one factor in his detailed realism. This technique was discovered by Mark Tucker and Nica Gutman.

Together with other photos and various studies, Eakins then painted Swimming (The Swimming Hole) in 1885.

Albert Bierstadt was more traditional in his preparatory studies for The Last of the Buffalo in 1888.

This late study was painted on canvas, and is 63 x 91 cm (25 x 36 inches). It concentrates on the action to be embedded in a broader landscape.

Bierstadt’s finished painting is larger still, and sets that action in a more characteristic grand panorama, with bleached skulls and dying buffalo in the foreground. In the middle distance are hundreds of animals in the herd, suggesting that extinction was by no means the only outcome.

Finally, a pair of paintings by the less-known Divisionist Henri-Edmond Cross shows an alternative approach to Seurat’s, where his study is built of small daubs of colour, which are then reduced in size for the Pointillism of his final version.

His Clearing in Provence from about 1906 was painted on paper, and has subsequently been mounted on canvas for display in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

That sketch formed the basis of the woodland setting Cross used in The Glade, painted in oils in 1906. Colour changes are prominent, and the chroma has been considerably enhanced. The size has grown, and it’s on a more permanent support of stretched canvas.

Seen through modern eyes, many of the oil studies of the past deserve to be seen more widely, rather than being kept in storage.