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Painting story
Fidelity by Briton Rivière
Fidelity presents a solitary dog standing guard beside a closed door, embodying the Victorian ideal of steadfast loyalty with quiet and deeply…
Painting Stories
The meaning and history of famous paintings: what they show, where the originals hang, and how each one is recreated by hand in oil on canvas.
Painting story
Requiescat by Briton Rivière
Requiescat depicts a young woman lying still upon the ground while her devoted dog rests its head upon her, creating one of the most quietly…
Painting story
Aphrodite
Explore Briton Rivière’s Aphrodite (1902), the wild animals around the goddess, and the Homeric hymn behind this painting in the Dahesh Museum…
Painting story
Beyond Man's Footsteps by Briton Rivière
Beyond Man's Footsteps places a solitary polar bear in an arctic landscape of ice and pale sky, creating a meditation on wilderness, isolation,…
Painting story
Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses
Why does Circe offer the cup directly to us? Explore Waterhouse’s mirror, Ulysses, wand, transformed crew, throne, herbs and Odyssey story.
Painting story
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Hokusai’s colour woodblock print sets three boats beneath a towering wave while Mount Fuji remains small and steady beyond.
Painting story
Death of an Artist
Zygmunt Andrychiewicz’s 1901 allegory imagines Death as a musician keeping a final vigil beside an artist’s bed.
Painting story
The Lunatic of Étretat
Hugues Merle’s 1871 painting isolates a grieving woman holding a wrapped log as though it were a child.
Painting story
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
Ilya Repin turns the legendary Cossack letter to an Ottoman sultan into a monumental study of laughter and collective defiance.
Painting story
The Royal Nursery
Marcus Stone imagines Henry VIII with the infant Prince Edward and the young princesses Mary and Elizabeth at Hampton Court.
Painting story
King Edward VII by Luke Fildes
Fildes received the royal commission to paint King Edward VII in 1902, producing a state portrait that combined the formal conventions of the…
Painting story
The Departure of the Gondola
This richly populated scene from the celebrated fresco cycle at the Villa Tiepolo in Zianigo presents a gathering of elegantly dressed figures at…
Painting story
The Conjurer by Bosch
The Conjurer is a panel painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting a street magician performing a shell game before a crowd of onlookers, using the…
Painting story
Building of the Trojan Horse
This companion painting to the famous Procession depicts the Greek craftsmen constructing the enormous wooden horse on the plain outside Troy,…
Painting story
The Widower by Luke Fildes
Luke Fildes painted The Widower in 1876 as a deeply felt portrayal of a working-class father left alone to care for his young children after the…
Painting story
The Haywain Triptych
The Haywain Triptych is a large three-panel oil painting by Hieronymus Bosch that uses a towering cart of hay as a central allegorical image to…
Painting story
The Passing of Robin Hood by N. C. Wyeth
The Passing of Robin Hood is a deeply moving oil painting by N. C. Wyeth, depicting the final moments of the legendary outlaw as he fires his last…
Painting story
Procession of the Trojan Horse
This vivid oil painting captures the fateful moment when the citizens of Troy wheel the enormous wooden horse through the gates of their city,…
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Curated collectionsOdyssey, Magic and Witchcraft, Famous Women, Landscapes and more.Artists A to ZEvery painter in the catalogue, with an archive of their works.Art movementsRenaissance to Expressionism: what defines each and who led it.Top 50 most famous paintingsThe ranked list, with the story behind every entry.
