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This small, arresting work was painted at the height of Carus’s friendship with Friedrich. The view looks out through a barred window onto a blue sky streaked with whisps of white cloud. On the grey stone windowsill a few stalks of straw are scattered. To the right the first few links of a heavy...

It was in Haarlem that many of the genres for which Dutch painting is best known were first developed. Floris van Dijck was among the city’s most important pioneers in the field of still-life painting. Celebrated for their precise realism, his paintings invariably depict banquet tables laden with...

The identity of the artist behind this impressive panel is a mystery. In fact, whether the painter was Netherlandish or French is up for debate. The panel’s overall eccentricity and the dramatically foreshortened faces of the saints and angels are reminiscent of the early work of Jan Gossaert. En...

Degas enjoyed capturing moments behind the scenes. Here, four ballet dancers are relaxing in the wings. Dressed in vibrant tutus, they are placed along a diagonal line within an asymmetrical composition cropped at the lower right, reflecting the influence of Japanese prints. The first young woman...

King David was a biblical warrior king and musician, who is credited with writing several Psalms in the Old Testament. Here, David is not young but not yet old. He looks at a tablet inscribed with a line from a Psalm: ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, O City of God’ (GLORIOSA / DICTA SVNT / DE...

The figure ascending the stairs is Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63?‒12 BC): general, statesman, architect and close friend to Augustus Caesar, who reigned as the first Roman Emperor from 27 BC. Agrippa moves through his impressive villa, away from the figures making their requests, and the objects t...

In a simple bare room, featuring only three objects, a sofa, a full-length mirror and a picture on the wall, a young woman stands in quiet contemplation of her appearance. She wears a striped dress with an overdress of a pale grey, tied in a bow at the waist with a black fringed scarf. Her hair i...

This painting is a spectacular example of the later style of Abraham Bloemaert, one of the most influential Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. It depicts a moment from the Old Testament story of Lot and his daughters which recounts how Lot and his family fled the destruction of the immoral...

Staring straight at us while nonchalantly holding a cigarette is the Hungarian-born art dealer Joseph Brummer (1883‒1947), who had opened his gallery in Paris that same year. Brummer dealt in African works of art and was one of Rousseau’s most devout patrons. Seated in a wicker chair covered in r...

In the late 1630s, Poussin painted one of the summits of his art: the first series of Seven Sacraments. Commissioned by his friend and patron Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), Poussin depicted the seven rites of the Catholic Church: Baptism, Penance, Eucharist, Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination an...

Saint Bartholomew sits alone in the wilderness. Enveloped in the folds of his mantle, he turns towards us, unable to look at the knife clasped in his left hand. One of the twelve apostles, Bartholomew was said to have preached the gospel in India and Armenia. When he refused to make a sacrifice t...

Charlotte Cuhrt was 15 years old when Max Pechstein painted this striking full-length portrait. The daughter of Max Cuhrt, a successful solicitor and patron of the avant-garde, she sits confidently in an armchair, her big black eyes looking directly at the viewer. She’s dressed in red, with a lar...

For its lavish interiors, the objets d’art in the background, and the swaggering self-confidence of the sitter, this portrait has become an icon of the late 19th century’s Aesthetic movement. Painted by Jacques Joseph (James) Tissot, a French émigré who settled in London in 1871, it depicts the a...

A native of Berne, Switzerland, Ferdinand Hodler spent much of 1902 in the Oberland painting mountainous landscapes. This work shows the Kien Valley looking towards the Bluemlisalp, a massif at the far end of the valley. During his artistic retreats in the Alps – not so different, in spirit, from...

Dressed in a sumptuous black velvet doublet and satin robe trimmed with ermine, the man in this portrait looks out to his right with a steady, impassive gaze. Seated in front of an architectural column against a backdrop of shimmering green drapery, the full-length format of this portrait conveys...

This acknowledged masterpiece represents Wilkie at the height of his powers. Melding seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish influences with the contemporary demand for genre scenes, the artist created an artwork that celebrated the victory of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), while redefining what co...

Standing against a dark blue background in his oversized chef’s jacket and hat, a young pastry chef looks at the viewer. The work is the last in a series of at least 30 portraits of hotel staff by Jewish-Belarusian artist Chaim Soutine, painted between 1919 and 1927. In the series, Soutine depict...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

The increasing availability of the gold entering Europe via global trade routes, and the metal’s intrinsic value, meant that it could be reliably used as a stable and secure form of currency during the Middle Ages. While southern Italy had an earlier tradition of minting gold coins, the great eco...

On 8 August 1632, Charles I authorised payment to Van Dyck for £20 for ‘One of our royall Consort’. This was perhaps the first single portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria painted by Van Dyck after his arrival in London, and it provided a type from which many variations by the artist and his assistan...

King Ahasuerus’s second wife, Esther, learns that the King’s chief minister is plotting to have all the Jews in the Persian Empire massacred. Esther intercedes with the King and eventually he grants her request to spare her people. The intense colours create an impression of exotic splendour, whi...

This is the only surviving mythological painting from Van Dyck’s employment as Charles I’s court artist. It may be one of a series of canvases illustrating the story of Cupid and Psyche ordered for the Queen’s House at Greenwich. This project, which involved Jacob Jordaens and Sir Peter Paul Rube...

This portrait is a sensitive representation of the studio assistant who would ‘carry the artist’s materials when he went into the country to sketch’. His name is not recorded, but this painting has been named after the child’s home village in Somerset. The loose handling of the paint and unfinish...

This portrait of Gainsborough’s older daughter Mary was produced in 1777 around the same time as a portrait made of his youngest, Margaret Gainsborough, holding a Theorbo (NG6687), which entered the National Gallery Collection in 2019. Unusually, the artist has inscribed the work with the name of...

Edward Gardiner was Gainsborough’s nephew, and recorded to have spent time in his studio. He is depicted in this portrait at the age of around eight or nine. It is thought that the painting was created as a pendant to a portrait of the sitter’s sister Susan, at the same age.The portrait of Edward...

Ribera depicts Saint Jerome, one of the four fathers of the Western Church, as a man of learning. The watery-eyed, bare-chested saint looks up from his work, his face catching the light. The scroll he holds refers to his monumental achievement: the translation of the Old and New Testaments into L...