Francesco Guardi - Venice: Piazza San Marco [c.1760]


The painting is one of the earliest of Guardi's works as a view painter, probably dating from about 1760. It shows the most famous of Venetian squares, the Piazza San Marco, with the medieval cathedral and its bell tower in the background and the 16th-century public offices, the Procuratie Vecchie, left, and the Procuratie Nuove, right, with shops and cafés to each side. In Guardi's painting figures and architecture are more freely handled than was customary with Canaletto, and the crowd that idles in the Piazza is given greater prominence.

[Oil on canvas, 72.4 x 119.1 cm]
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Charles-François Daubigny - St Paul's from the Surrey Side [1871-73]


This view shows St Paul's Cathedral in the distance, left of centre. The vantage point of the artist was on the south, or Surrey side of the river Thames, between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. Daubigny first visited London in 1866, returning in 1870-71 to escape the Franco-Prussian war. This painting, dated 1873, was either begun on the spot and finished in the studio, or was worked up from sketches made of the river during this visit.

[Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 81 cm]
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Pierre-Cecille Puvis de Chavannes - Summer [before 1873]


Puvis de Chavannes (1824 – 1898) was widely admired in his day for the grandeur and decorative subtlety of his large-scale, multi-figure compositions of allegorical subjects. This image of utopian dream represents Summer, and is also known as The Harvest. It is a preliminary study for one such monumental painting dated 1873, which was bought by the French government at the 1873 Salon and now hangs in the entrance hall of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Puvis had difficulties in deciding on the right number of figures and there are major changes between the study and the finished painting, which is dominated by the landscape.

[Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 62.2 cm]
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Lionel Bulmer - Footpath in the Snow [1954]


Born in 1919, Lionel Bulmer was the third and youngest child of an architect. From the start he was taught to look. At 17 he went to Clapham art school, where he spent two happy years before conscription into the army on the outbreak of world war two. Even that block to so many careers was not wholly wasted for this fledgling artist, who still drew and painted in free time. On being demobbed he returned full-time to his artistic calling, and was accepted by a Royal College of Art still dislodged to Ambleside in the Lake District. This was a ravishing revelation. And here he found his lasting place – beside another person. This was Margaret Green.

Her looks, talent, bearing and velvet voice wrought havoc among classmates already smitten by an escape from war into that Wordsworthian setting. “She was the full femme fatale,” one was to recall six decades later. But from their first meeting Margaret and Lionel had the mutual attraction of two magnets. Soon they were inseparable and, working side by side on sketching trips and on paintings back in the college studio, they set the pattern of shared contentment that would last until the male partner’s death in 1992. 

[Oil on canvassed board, 122 x 156.6 cm]
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Edgar Degas - Horses in a Meadow [1871]

[Oil on canvas, 31.8 x 40 cm]
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Edouard Manet - A King Charles Spaniel [c.1866]

[Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm]
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Edouard Manet - Flowers in a Crystal Vase [c.1882]

[Oil on canvas, 32.6 x 24.3 cm]
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Pieter Claesz - Still Life with Drinking Vessels [1649]


The wineglass at the left is a 'roemer', and in the centre is an octagonal 'pas-glas', containing beer. The porcelain bowl is an example of Chinese export ware which can be dated to the Wanli period (1573 - 1619). The metal objects were most likely made of silver and pewter. Although the arrangement evokes an impression of simplicity and modesty, a contemporary viewer would have immediately recognised the costliness of the different objects. The painting, a typical work from the end of the artist's career, has been cut down, probably on all four sides, perhaps by as much as five centimetres.

[Oil on oak, 63.5 x 52.5 cm]
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Pieter de Hooch - A Dutch Courtyard [1658-60]


Working in Delft, Pieter de Hooch (Dutch, 1629 - 1684) specialized in orderly, intimate spaces where housewives or maids go about their chores or pause to rest. Here a woman sips from a “pass-glass,” with rings marking equal portions for passing around to share. The little girl carries a brazier of hot coals for the men to light their long-stemmed, white clay pipes. To create a stable, sheltering environment for this depiction of domestic tranquility, De Hooch emphasized the geometry of the brick paving, window shutters, and wooden fence. Over the garden wall can be glimpsed the tower of Delft’s New Church.

[Oil on canvas, 69.5 x 60 cm]
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Jan Brueghel & Peter Paul Rubens - The Garden of Eden [c.1615]


Research has shown that it was Breughel who began sketching the outlines of the composition on the panel, but that it was Rubens who put the first scenes into paint: Adam and Eve, but also a part of the tree and the horse beside them. When this was done, Brueghel added the sky, the landscape and filled the rest of the painting with animals and plants. The painting captures the moment right before Adam eats from the fatal apple that Eve is handing him, which would result in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Rubens and Breughel show us an ideal world where everything is in perfect harmony. Nothing in this peaceful setting seems to indicate the approaching doom.

[Oil on panel, 74.3 x 114.7 cm]
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Jan Toorop - The Sea [1887]

Jan Toorop (Purworejo, Java, December 20, 1858 - The Hague, March 3, 1928) was a painter whose works straddle the space between the Symbolist painters and Art Nouveau. His early work was influenced by the Amsterdam Impressionism movement. After his marriage to an English woman, Annie Hall, in 1886, Toorop alternated his time between The Hague, England and Brussels, and after 1890 also the Dutch seaside town of Katwijk aan Zee. During this period he developed his own unique Symbolist style, with dynamic, unpredictable lines based on Javanese motifs, highly stylised willowy figures, and curvilinear designs.
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Alfred William Finch - The Channel at Nieuport [c.1889]


Born and raised in Belgium to English parents, Finch was the first Brussels artist to take up Georges Seurat's pointillist painting technique after seeing his works exhibited there in 1887. In this austere scene, silent and empty, water and sky meld almost imperceptibly into one. A few years later, Finch relocated to Helsinki where he played a major role in the Finnish avant-garde.

[Oil on canvas, 36 x 54 cm]
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Albert Bettanier - The Black Spot [1887]


Albert Bettanier (Metz, 1851 - Paris, 1932) was a French painter.

In The Black Spot a geography teacher shows his pupils the area that must be regained by a next generation, in line with the one and indivisible education policies of the French Republic. Various details reveal the warlike spirit of the day. Next to the black stain, a huge sinister blackboard represents the German threat in the East, heightened by the drum in the corner. On the far wall, a map of the walled-in city of Paris reminds of the Prussian siege of 1871, symbolized by the black, unlit ceiling-lamp that stretches out its eagle-like talons towards it.
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Gabriel Metsu - The Sick Child [c.1660-65]

Dutch Golden Age painters are renowned for their scenes of every-day life, but this one by Gabriel Metsu is highly unusual. The theme of a woman taking care of a child was common, but what is rare about this canvas, however, is the depiction of the pale and sick looking child, hanging almost lifeless on the woman’s lap. The image is so convincing because Metsu portrayed the child so skillfully. He painted the unhealthy hue of its skin perfectly, which is emphasised by the strong colours in the rest of the painting. The composition and the woman’s obvious dedication draw all our attention to the child.
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Harmen Steenwyck - Still Life, An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life [c.1640]


This type of painting is called a vanitas, after the biblical quotation from the Old Testament - Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. The books symbolise human knowledge, the musical instruments (a recorder, part of a shawm, a lute) the pleasures of the senses. The Japanese sword and the shell, both collectors' rarities, symbolise wealth. The chronometer and expiring lamp allude to the transience and frailty of human life. All are dominated by the skull, the symbol of death.

Harmen Evertsz. Steenwyck was born in Delft, where he mainly worked. He and his brother Pieter were taught by their uncle, David Bailly, in Leiden. Bailly is often credited with the invention of the type of painting called a vanitas, which emphasises the transience of life and the vanity of worldly wealth. The vanitas was a speciality in Leiden, and Steenwyck became its leading exponent.

[Oil on oak, 39.2 x 50.7 cm]
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Jan Sanders van Hemessen - Allegorical Scene [c.1550]


The man is holding a bow in his right hand, and a string instrument called lira da braccio in his left. The woman sprinkles the instrument with milk from one of her breasts. In the background, we spot a castle-like construction and a shepherd with his flock; he seems to write or draw something on the ground with his staff. 

Jan Sanders van Hemessen (c.1500 - c.1566) was a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter who was part of the mannerist movement. He was born in Hemessen in the Netherlands but settled in Antwerp in 1524 after studying in Italy. Hemessen specialised in scenes of human character flaws such as vanity and greed. His pictures are often religious, while his style helped found the Flemish traditions of genre painting.
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Hans Bol - River Landscape [1578]


Hans Bol (1534 – 1593) was a Flemish artist. Because Bol’s watercolours became so widely reproduced, he began creating miniatures on parchment. The technique earned him many international clients and a good income. Although Bol was once an important and admired painter, we only know him through his small drawings and watercolours. Most of his paintings appear to have been lost.

[Oil and tempera on canvas, 46.51 x 74.45 cm]
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Antonio Mancini - The Customs [1877]


Antonio Mancini (Albano Laziale, November 14, 1852 – Rome, December 28, 1930) was an Italian painter. He entered the Istituto di Belle Arti, Naples, at the age of 12; while still an adolescent he produced accomplished works such as Head of a Young Girl (1867; Naples, Capodimonte). On his graduation in 1873, Mancini, together with Francesco Paolo Michetti and Vincenzo Gemito, was at the forefront of VERISMO in Neapolitan art. Sharing a studio with Gemito, he painted the street boys, musicians and dancers of Naples, creating an anti-academic, popular art. His patron, Albert, Count Cahen of Antwerp (1846-1903), encouraged him to visit Paris in 1875, where he met Manet and Degas. After a second visit in 1877, he lightened his previously sombre palette and his style moved away from sensual modelling to become more decorative.

[Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 59.1 cm]

Henri Rousseau - Surprised! [1891]

This is the first of the jungle scenes on which Rousseau's fame chiefly depends. This painting was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 with the title Surpris!. It was later described by the artist as representing a tiger hunting explorers. Rousseau claimed that he had gained knowledge of the jungle while serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico in the 1860s, but this seems to be a fiction and his paintings were probably inspired by visits to the botanical gardens in Paris and by prints. The figure of the tiger may have been based on a print after a pastel by Delacroix.

[Oil on canvas, 129.8 x 161.9 cm]
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Vincent van Gogh - Sunflowers [1888]

This is one of four paintings of sunflowers dating from August and September 1888. Van Gogh intended to decorate Gauguin's room with these paintings in the so-called Yellow House that he rented in Arles in the South of France. He and Gauguin worked there together between October and December 1888.

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in August 1888, 'I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers ... it gives a singular effect.'

The dying flowers are built up with thick brushstrokes (impasto). The impasto evokes the texture of the seed-heads. Van Gogh produced a replica of this painting in January 1889, and perhaps another one later in the year. The various versions and replicas remain much debated among Van Gogh scholars.

[Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm]
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Laurence Campbell - Arch Street, Philadelphia


Campbell, born in Philadelphia January 21, 1940 grew up a few blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and visited there often throughout his youth. He studied architecture at Temple University and for several years had his own building business. But he always painted, including commissions for clients who wanted to have copies of well known artists of the past, to which he always signed his name as the reproducer. He also did fine art restoration and is of the opinion that this is a most effective way to study and master the art of painting. He has never joined any art associations and shuns publicity. Rarely seen in public, his constant companion is his wife, Evie. They have a grown son, Steve and a granddaughter, Ashley.

[Oil on board, 16 x 20 inches]
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Honore Daumier - Amateur of Prints [1860]


The amateur is absorbed in the search for an engraving. A typical example of Daumier’s characters of the petty bourgeoisie of Paris.

Honoré Daumier (Marseille, February 26, 1808 – Valmondois, February 10, 1879) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century. A prolific draftsman who produced over 500 paintings, 4000 lithographs, 1000 wood engravings, 1000 drawings, 100 sculptures he was perhaps best known for his caricatures of political figures and satires on the behavior of his countrymen, although posthumously the value of his painting has also been recognised.

[Oil on canvas, 41 x 33.5 cm]
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Peter Paul Rubens & Jan Breughel the Elder - The Feast of Acheloüs [c.1615]


This large panel of about 1615 is one of the most impressive known collaborations between Rubens and his older colleague, Jan Brueghel. Rubens conceived and painted the figure group; throughout the rest of the picture Brueghel was in his two elements of landscape and still life painting. A "cabinet picture" like this one would have been made for a collector who could appreciate clever invention, fine execution, the quotations of classical sculpture in the nearest figures at the table, and Rubens's retelling of the tale found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Theseus (in red) and his companions were returning from Crete to Athens when they encountered the River Achelous. The river-god himself sets a banquet before them and explains that a distant island is his lost lover Perimele, held forever in his embrace. Except for young and "reckless" Pirithous, the story of the miracle "moved the hearts of all."

[Oil on wood, 108 x 163.8 cm]
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Andrea Celesti - The Feast of Belshazzar [1705]


Andrea Celesti (Venice, 1637 – Toscolano, 1712) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, working in Venice. His style gravitated over the years from a turgid and academic weightiness to a lighter, looser brushstroke.

[Oil on canvas, 157 x 203 cm]
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George Glenn Newell - Twilight [c.1905]

Newell, a painter of cattle and pastoral landscapes, was born in Berrien County, Michigan in 1870. He became a student of Edgar Melville Ward (1849-1915) at the National Academy of Design, after graduating from Albion College in Michigan and Columbia University. Newell also studied under Will S. Robinson and F. E. Courter at the Teacher’s College of New York. Newell himself became a National Academician in 1937 and won several awards. He died in Sharon, Connecticut in 1947.
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Thomas Luny - Unloading the Catch [1829]


Thomas Luny (Cornwall, 1759 - Teignmouth, Devon, 1837) was an English artist and painter, mostly of seascapes and other marine-based works. At the age of eleven, Luny left Cornwall to live in London. In 1807 Luny decided to move again, this time to Teignmouth in Devon. While he received a number of commissions (mostly from ex-mariners, local gentry and the like), and he seemed to be as successful in his work as he was in London, Luny was by that time suffering with arthritis in both of his hands. This, however, did not seem to have much impact on the quality of his artistic work, and it did not appear to serve to slow or deter him in his work in the slightest.

[Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 71 cm]
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Henry Charles Brewer - The Cathedral of the Dormition, Moscow


In this work, the square is full of people arriving to attend a religious service. Visitors have come on foot or by horse and wagon. Some coachmen wait in the shadow of neighbouring buildings and others enjoy the sun, while their masters go inside. With the service about to begin, the crowd has gathered around the Cathedral’s entrance as the clergy enters. They are dressed in red robes and bear aloft a Khorúgus, a religious banner which depicts either an icon of Christ, an image of the Theotokos, or a Saint. The clergy and faithful are entering the cathedral through the south portal, which was the entrance used for royal processions. The portal is decorated with seventeenth-century frescoes. 

Henry Charles Brewer (1866 - 1950) was the son of Henry William Brewer who was also an artist. He studied at Westminster School and lived in London where he painted many urban scenes. He exhibited at the Fine Art Society and the Royal Academy between 1899 and 1902. A member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, he was elected to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1914.

[Watercolour on paper, 32 x 45 cm]
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Alfred Sisley - The Church of Moret, Evening [1894]

[Oil on canvas, 101 x 82 cm]
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Aimé Morot - The Good Samaritan [1880]


Aimé Morot (Nancy, 1850 - Dinard, 1913) was a French painter. After producing some extremely remarkable figure paintings in the beginning of his career, he went on to become a society portraitist. Although he travelled widely with his family, he produced no works in the Orientalist genre.

[Oil on canvas, 268.5 x 198 cm]
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Mikhail Klodt von Jurgensburg - Under the Birch Trees [1874]


Klodt (1832 - 1902) was born in St. Petersburg into a noted family of artists. His father, Konstantin Karlovich Klodt (1807-1879), was a Russian wood engraver, and his uncle, Pyotr Karlovich Klodt (1805-1867), was a famous sculptor. He first learnt to draw at the Saint Petersburg Mining Cadet Corps, before moving to the Academy in 1851. He studied there until 1858, when he won a gold medal of the first degree, and with it the right to study abroad. This travelling scholarship enabled him to spend time in France, Switzerland and Italy. However, he cut his trip short, complaining that the foreign landscapes did not inspire him and were inferior to Russian ones. On his return he invested the remaining funds from his scholarship to travel around Russia. He eventually became an academician, and as mentioned earlier, ran a specialist landscape class.

[Oil on canvas, 27 x 47.5 cm]
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Konstantin Gorbatov - Windmills [1911]


Painted just before his sojourn to Italy in 1912 and 1913, Windmills has a striking form and presence rarely seen in Konstantin Gorbatov’s works, although with all his familiar textures. Gorbatov’s treatment of the Russian landscape has been described as ‘breathing substance into the everyday’. Here these simple windmills are brought to life; they are depicted like a caravan of ancient Siberian Mammoths, lumbering across the landscape, as humble and historic as the peasant economy that feeds them. Using a strong but subtle palette, the monumentality of both the landscape and the windmills here is suffused with the grandeur of this life-long ideal. 

[Charcoal and gouache on paper, 46.6 x 49.8 cm]
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Jacob Ochtervelt - Two Women and a Man Making Music [c.1675-80]


The map on the wall above the virginal is based on one of North and South America called 'Americae nova descriptio' which was published by Dancker Danckerts in Amsterdam in 1661. 

[Oil on canvas, 84.5 x 75 cm]
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Georges Manzana-Pissarro - Bridge at Saint Cloud Under Snow [1905]


Georges Henri Manzana-Pissaro (Louveciennes, 1871 – Menton, 1961) was a French artist and the third child of Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Initially, he painted at his father's side, where he learned not only to handle brush and pencil but also to observe and to love nature. As a young man he painted a series of landscapes around Pontoise and Eragny in an Impressionist style which he adopted from his father. His most important exhibition during his career was in 1914 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs where he exhibited 311 works including tapestries, carpets, furniture, glassware, decorative paintings, etchings and lithographs.

[Oil on canvas, 54 x 65.3 cm]
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Alfred Sisley - Bridge At Villeneuve-La-Garenne [1872]


Modern, newly constructed bridges were often the focal point for compositions by Sisley and other Impressionists. The motif of the cast-iron and suspension bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne provides a sweeping diagonal thrust across this riverbank scene along the Seine painted in summer 1872. Sisley painted a more distant and less dramatic view of the same bridge that spring. The application of paint in flat, rectangular strokes and the crisp articulation of form are distinctive characteristics of the artist's work in the early 1870s.

[Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 65.4 cm]
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John Pike - Village Green [1945]


Village Green shows a congested square where cars, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages compete for space on the narrow roads. The image suggests the effects of war on the home front: a soldier in the foreground greets an elderly neighbour, a group of children play “war” in the square, a sign advertises a Red Cross blood drive, and an honour roll lists the names of local boys serving overseas. John Pike (Boston, Massachusetts, 1911 - Woodstock, New York, 1979) painted this image in 1945, when World War II was ending and he was posted to Asia as an artist-correspondent. The thin layers of paint, colours, and bird’s-eye view create a hazy, sentimental image that evokes a distant memory, as if recalled by someone far from home.

[Oil on fibreboard, 61.4 x 76.6 cm]
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Anders Zorn - Wet [1910]

[Oil on canvas, 92 x 62 cm]
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Carlo Bossoli - View of Westminster Palace from Lambeth


Carlo Bossoli (Lugano, December 6, 1815 - Turin, August 1, 1884) was a Swiss-born painter and stage designer who later became a naturalised Italian.

[Oil on canvas, 67.5 x 94.5 cm]
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Francesco Guardi - View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera [c.1770s]


Among the most famous later works of Guardi are evocations, almost in the manner of Whistler, of the landscape and atmosphere of his native Venice and its surroundings. The tower of Malghera, a relic of the ancient fortifications of the city and demolished in the early 19th century, lay on the edge of the Venetian lagoon near Mestre. In Guardi's painting nature is more evident than the work of man. The tower and the fishing boats in the foreground form the two focuses of the composition which is principally a study of the water of the lagoon and a clouded Venetian sky.

[Oil on wood, 21.3 x 41.3 cm]
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Max Liebermann - Women Plucking Geese [1872]


While he was still a student in Weimar, Liebermann produced this early masterpiece. Although still showing the influence of other artists, nevertheless it also points towards the future. In 1871 Liebermann, along with Theodor Hagen, had visited the fashionable painter Mihaly Munkácsy in Düsseldorf. In his studio they saw his almost finished Flax Pickers, which made a lasting impression on Liebermann. When a friend returned from a study tour with a drawing of women plucking geese, Liebermann had found his subject, combining the composition of the drawing with Munkácsy’s style. 

He made detailed studies for the work in Weimar, taking his own drawing of Goethe’s last coachman as his model for the male figure — Liebermann’s lodgings as a student in Weimar were opposite Goethe’s house. Women Plucking Geese was the first work that the 25-year-old Liebermann exhibited, and it was not received well, being mocked for its “poor” subject matter and dark colouration. However, it did find a buyer in the railway millionaire Bethel Strousberg, and with the money it earned him Liebermann travelled to Paris where he had his first sight of paintings by Millet and Courbet.

[Oil on canvas, 119.5 x 170.5 cm]
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Karl Wenig - Last Minutes of False Dmitry

False Dmitry was the Tsar of Russia from July 21, 1605 until his death on May 17, 1606 under the name of Dimitriy Ioannovich. On the morning of May 17, 1606, about two weeks after his marriage, conspirators stormed the Kremlin. Dmitriy tried to flee through a window but broke his leg in the fall. One of the plotters shot him dead on the spot. The body was put on display and then cremated, the ashes reportedly shot from a cannon towards Poland. Dmitriy's reign had lasted a mere ten months.
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Aristide Maillol - Two Nudes within a Landscape [1895]


This painting has the distinction of being painted on both sides. It tells us how Maillol worked simultaneously in several ways during the 1890s, which were for him a period of experimentation.

[Oil on canvas, 97 x 122 cm]
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Aristide Maillol - Two Women Wearing Hats within a Landscape [1895]

Painted on the reverse of Two Nudes within a Landscape.
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Hans Thoma - Summer [1872]


The glowing deep blue sky lends the painterly opulence of this hillside meadow and trees an air of unreality, and it is only on closer observation that we see that the couple with a lute in the grass are wearing Renaissance clothing: thus the painting is clearly more than a mere portrayal of nature. The dancing cupids in the sky, which may at first pass for clouds, add to the dream-like quality of the picture. 

Hans Thoma (Bernau, Black Forest, October 2, 1839 - Karlsruhe, November 7, 1924) was a German painter. In spite of his studies under various masters, his art has little in common with modern ideas, and is formed partly by his early impressions of the simple idyllic life of his native district, partly by his sympathy with the early German masters. Many of his pictures have found their way into two private collections in Liverpool.

[Oil on canvas, 76 x 104 cm]
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Dorothea Sharp - Sunday Picnic


This painting was sold by Sotheby's on March 16, 2011 for $68,500.

[Oil on canvas mounted on board, 51.6 x 55.9 cm]
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Garofalo - The Agony in the Garden [c.1520-39]


Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, near Jerusalem (seen in the left background), while three of his disciples sleep. An angel reveals a chalice containing a cross. Judas approaches on the right with the Roman soldiers who will arrest Jesus. Dramatic nocturnes were a novelty in north Italian painting associated with Giorgione.

[Oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 49.2 x 38.7 cm]
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Studio of El Greco - The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane [1590s]


Christ kneels in the centre; at the upper left an angel appears to him with a cup, a reference to his forthcoming Passion. In the background on the left are the sleeping apostles; on the right Judas approaches with soldiers. The painting is a synthesis of varying accounts of the Agony in the Gospels and is probably a workshop replica of a painting in the Museum of Toledo (Ohio). There are also several authentic vertical versions of this composition.

[Oil on canvas, 102 x 131 cm]
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Gwen John - Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris [1907]


This painting is of Gwen John's attic studio in the Rue du Cherche Midi in Paris, where she lived from 1907 until 1909. John led a very private life and found much contentment being in this room, saying that it gave her an extraordinary feeling of pleasure to be there. It has often been described as a self-portrait of John even though she is not in the picture herself.

Gwen John is best known for her paintings of women and children in interiors. She was born in Tenby, Wales in 1876 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She moved to Paris in 1904 to study under James McNeill Whistler. During this time she worked as an artist's model posing for, amongst others, the sculptor Auguste Rodin. They became lovers but the affair eventually ended and John moved to a suburb of Paris called Meudon where she lived until her death in 1939.
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Charles Guerin - Nude [c.1910]

[Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm]
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Jean Beraud - The Boulevard Saint-Denis in Paris [1899]


Jean Beraud (Saint Petersburg, January 12, 1849 - Paris, October 4, 1935) was a French Impressionist painter. Béraud's paintings often included truth-based humour and mockery of late 19th century Parisian life, along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then contemporary situations.

[Oil on canvas, 38 x 55 cm]

Also posted is Beraud’s 1889 oil on canvas painting of the Pâtisserie Gloppe in the Champs-Élysées.
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