Seville’s most popular painter in the later 17th century was Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. While Murillo is well known for works with religious themes, he also produced a number of genre paintings of figures from contemporary life engaged in ordinary pursuits.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
A play and a painting appear to have merged in Jan van Eyck’s dramatic Annunciation , which is rich with Christian symbolism. The rainbow-winged archangel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that God has chosen her to bear his son.
"Mellon to Give Gallery and 19,000,000 of Art to Nation."
This group portrait represents George Washington’s military, political, and family life. The president, in a Revolutionary War uniform, rests his hand on a plan for Washington, DC, the site for the new US capital.
household depended on the labor of enslaved people, as did the economy of the young nation
Van Gogh found inspiration for this portrait in the bold complementary colors and contrasting patterns of the Japanese woodblock prints he collected. He fantasized about Japan as a utopia of bright light and color different from the dark, crowded western capitals he lived in.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
"Pictures lost to the Nation."
When The White Girl debuted in London in 1862, it puzzled viewers. At the time, portraits of this scale usually featured well-known people.
Art for the Nation no. 65 (Spring 2022): 26-27, repro. 2023 Murphy, Paul Thomas
The people and animals in this colorful procession are on their way to see the infant Jesus and honor his birth. The procession winds around a hill, under an ancient arch, and to the manger.
"Pictures lost to the Nation."
Although Nicolas Poussin’s work exerted an enormous influence on the development of French seventeenth-century painting, the artist perfected his style in Rome, incorporating the lessons of Renaissance and contemporary Italian painters into his own idiom. Poussin’s Baptism of Christ is one of a series of canvases illustrating the Seven Sacraments executed from 1638-1642 for his friend and patron Cassiano dal Pozzo.
"Pictures lost to the Nation."
Venus, as if filled with foreboding about Adonis’s fate, desperately clings to her lover, while he pulls himself free of her embrace, impatient for the hunt and with his hounds straining at the leash. The goddess’s gesture is echoed by that of Cupid, who anxiously watches the lovers’ leave-taking while clutching a dove—a creature sacred to Venus.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Jan Steen’s paintings encompass a wide range of moods and subjects, from intimate scenes of a family saying grace before a meal to festive village celebrations, yet all of his paintings elicit a warm reaction to the lives of ordinary people. All five senses are represented in this work in which two young musicians play for a dancing couple while other people in the vine-covered arbor flirt, eat, drink, or smoke, and children amuse themselves with their toys.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
