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.
A single collie lies with its head resting on the coffin of its deceased owner in a scene of quiet grief that became one of the defining images of…
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a large triptych by Hieronymus Bosch depicting the creation of humanity, a vast panorama of earthly indulgence,…
Blind Pew is a monumental oil painting by N. C. Wyeth depicting the menacing blind pirate from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, created…
Peasant men and women of varying ages gather around a young man reading aloud from a book in a sunlit rural setting, forming an image of…
A large bloodhound and a small West Highland terrier peer from the doorway of a kennel in a composition that transforms two dogs into a study of…
Painted in 1860, The Black Brunswicker depicts a young soldier of the Napoleonic Wars bidding farewell to his beloved on the eve of the Battle of…
A group of peasant schoolboys crowds around a blackboard covered in a complex division problem, each child visibly absorbed in the effort of…
Painted in 1830, The Faithful Hound presents a large dog standing vigil beside the lifeless body of its owner, encapsulating the Victorian ideal…
In The Magic Circle, Waterhouse portrayed a sorceress in the act of tracing a protective or conjuring circle on the ground, surrounded by the…
Painted in 1883 and permanently displayed in the Basilica di Santa Felicita in Florence, Trasporto di Cristo al Sepolcro presents the carrying of…
A barefoot peasant boy presses close to a schoolhouse wall, gazing through a gap toward the lesson unfolding inside, in one of the most quietly…
A red deer stag stands alone against a Highland sky in one of the most recognized animal paintings in the history of British art.
De Morgan portrays the sorceress Medea in a moment of concentrated occult power, surrounded by alchemical symbols and bathed in an eerie…
Waterhouse depicted the climactic episode from the Odyssey in which Ulysses, bound to the mast of his ship, is assailed by the Sirens whose song…
Ulysses and Argus depicts the moment from the Odyssey of Homer in which the long-absent hero, returned to Ithaca in disguise, is recognised only…
Completed in 1871 after nearly three decades of preparation, Ecce Homo is the defining work of Antonio Ciseri, depicting the moment Pontius Pilate…
This tender portrait of a young boy gazing upward at a soap bubble became, after its acquisition and use in advertising by Pears Soap, one of the…
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, this large-scale painting depicts a queue of London poor waiting in the cold for overnight shelter,…
