Works of Art

Achieving the Illusion of Depth, Two Examples

This large fresco is a masterclass in linear perspective. The Forum like architecture is bilaterally symmetrical and provides a very large number of orthogonals that converge, with rigid mathematical precision, […]

The Slave Ship by Turner, a Critical Appreciation

At first sight Slave Ship seems to depict a beautiful sunset over a tumultuous sea. A Turner tactic to lull you in. A stark counterpoint to the horrors and barbarity […]

Twenty Famous Nude Paintings

There are many reasons that the female nude is such a popular subject for painting. It is an aesthetically pleasing subject. Most artists and most patrons have been men. It […]

Henri Matisse. A modern artist for two ages.

In 1905, accompanied by the artist Andre Derain, Matisse (then 35) went to Collioure in South West France, near the Spanish border. Here he moved on from Neo Impressionism to […]

Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling compared

Rogier van der Weyden (a.k.a. Roger de la Pasture) (c1399-1464) was born in Tornai in the Burgundian Netherlands and served an apprenticeship there between 1427 and 1432 with the great […]

Northern Renaissance and Religion

In the mid fifteenth century there were very few media that suspended human disbelief, just visual art and acted plays, so the power of a virtual window into an alternate […]

Roadmenders in the rue de Berne, Eduard Manet

Painted in 1878, oil on canvas, measuring 63cm X 79cm. This painting portrays Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris as it is actually happening, additionally it is one of Manet’s paintings that […]

Facade, 10b Elizabetes iela, Riga

Serendipity brought a number of factors together in the early 1900 to propagate an unprecedented building boom in Latvia that created the largest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture in the […]

Gustav Klimt. Three Ages of Woman

This is a square oil painting on canvas, 180cm X 180cm, completed in 1905, when Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was at his artistic peak. It won the gold medal at the […]

La Primavera

Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492), leader of the family banking business, was one of the richest men in Europe and was effectively ruler of Florence at a key stage in the […]