The Capture of Christ, 1618-20, Oil on Canvas, 344 x 249 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Sir Anthony van Dyck mostly painted portraits, and is especially known for his expresses use of hand gestures. He is also often thought of as a second tier version of Peter Paul Rubens. I’ve been able to find some of his larger narrative paintings online and I’m loving them. They capture elements of Rubens, Titian, and Caravaggio. I’m thinking of Rubens compositions, Titian’s drawing of figures, and Caravaggio’s use of light. See his painting of soldiers mocking Christ, and the Brazen Serpent as other examples. This painting especially holds my attention with its organic interweaving of open and closed forms. I love the way the dark space and light forms intermingle.

The Yard of a Madhouse, 1794, Oil on Tinplate, 43.8 x 31.7 cm, Meadows Museum, Dallas

There is much pleasure to be gained from an exploration of three dimensional space in a two dimensional painting. Often paintings explore the depth of a room or a landscape, allowing the viewer to move along a horizontal plane in the imaginary space. Sometimes paintings will stress a vertical exploration of space. In this case the exploration does not involve traveling upward into the sky, but only yearning for the freedom and clarity there. There is a simple division of the composition into light and dark areas–a theme found in many of the paintings I select for this blog, and also in some of my own paintings (see the Natural History series). I’m still figuring out why I continue to be moved by this simple arrangement in paintings. Though simple, it has a paradoxical profundity. Heaven and Earth: Sky and Land: Light and Darkness: Air and Dirt: Spirit and Body.

Portrait of Marquesa de Manzanedo, 1872, Oil on Canvas, 244 x 294 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Academic madness exemplified! The prosaic thoroughness of this painting is awe-inspiring. Dear Ingre, Eakins, Vermeer, Sargeant, what do you think of this? This one of those artists whose style most likely limited his output. I imagine making a painting like this took a heck of a lot of time. It probably also drained the artist of observational energy. I don’t think a human could make more than 20 or 30 paintings like this in a lifetime. It has a wonderful sense of expansion in the medium values, as though a whole lifetime has been lived in them alone. In this way it resembles some of the painters in Northern European countries who painted in the silver skies of 16-hour-long daylight. But it also has a crispness to it; and where their essays were on Green, this essay is on Red.

I love how approachable the sitter is, despite her extravagant dress and ornamentation.

Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, 1808, Oil on Canvas, 244 x 294 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

In the U.S.A. Prud’hon is probably most well known for his beautiful figurative charcoal drawings that appear in college drawing textbooks. He is presented as an expert modeler of the human form on toned paper. And it’s true. It is interesting to see what happens when his drawing expertise is translated into painting. I think the resulting works have positive and negative qualities. The negatives are that he seems to want to draw with the paint, appearing to work and rework surfaces to achieve an obsessive value scale. In some cases this appears to kill the paint–to make it dark, blurry, and generally overworked. The positive side is the uniqueness of his painted images. They possess a haunting light, almost as if our spectrum of viewing light has been twisted. It is as though the characters are trapped in a half-real world existing in another dimension.

Also, I find the use of allegory surprisingly clear and practical in this painting. Most paintings with characters named “Truth” or “Justice” fail to interest me. This painting is an exception.

The Solitude, Recollection of Vigen, Limousin, 1866, Oil on Canvas, 95 x 130 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

A landscape by Corot is like a memory of a wonderful dessert from childhood.

Student with a Lesson-book, 1757, Oil on Canvas, 63 x 49 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Every once in a while an artist seems to hit the nail on the head, hit one out of the park, strike gold, etc. Grueze was no hack of a painter–he made a lot of really good paintings. Some of them are large and narrative, probably commissioned works, probably much adored. But there seems to be this phenomenon where some good painters who are successful and productive . . . they slow down and hit a home-run. I’m thinking of other painters like Zurburan, Murillo, Rubens, Caravaggio and many other lesser known painters (whose names I don’t remember now).

I’m usually impressed by their paintings that show a sincere observation of a real person or thing. I guess some of the time they had to hurry things along, making some visual things up. Slowing down and grappling with reality–getting down to the nitty gritty–pays off in the long run.

Interior of a Kitchen, 1815, Oil on Canvas, 65 x 81 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

He was a French painter. Two of his kids became artists; his daughter one of the few successful female artists of the time, Louise Adéone Drölling.  You can find one of his daughter’s paintings in a blog post about the Met. Museum’s show “Rooms with a View, ” here “Woman Around Town.” It’s interesting to see the similarities in the father and daughter compositions. Maybe I’m interested because my father is a painter.

I like how this painting gets marvelously dark without loosing the ability to distinguish objects. I also really like the stark difference in the warm of the interior and the cool colors of the exterior. Small crescents of cool light journey into the warm interior. A simple design. Simple and powerful. It reminds me of Hammershoi.

Diana and Cupid, 1761, Oil on Canvas, 49 x 68 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This painting makes you believe in Cupid.

Apollo and Marsyas, 1637, Oil on Canvas, 182x232 cm, Museo Nazionale di San Martino, Naples

The skin of the canvas and the skin of the flesh, the skin of perception, these are stretched taught.

York Harbor, Coast of Maine, 1877, Oil on Canvas, 15 ¼ x 30 ¼ in., The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

It’s amazing how a small painting can captivate a viewer in a large room. In the case of this painting by Heade the room is full of very beautiful paintings. For example, Inness is no slouch. Nor is Kensett, by any stretch of the imagination. So musing on this Heade painting is something like admiring an extraordinary ruby in the crown of an extremely wealthy king.

I suppose if you wanted to find this painting in its former life, you might have to leave gallery 170 and go across the Atlantic, back in time 230 years, and up to gallery 213, the one with the Woman at the Half-door (once thought to be by Rembrandt) and look at Aelbert Cuyp’s, A View of Vianen with a Herdsman and Cattle by a River, c. 1643/4.