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In this vast canvas Orazio Gentileschi depicts the Old Testament story of the Finding of Moses (Exodus 2:2-10). When Pharaoh decreed that all newborn sons of Hebrews should be killed, the infant Moses was placed by his mother in a basket and hidden in bulrushes to ensure his safety.Here, nine ele...

This unfinished portrait of Thomas Gainsborough’s youngest daughter, Margaret (1751–1820), playing a theorbo (a kind of lute) unites two particularly personal aspects of the artist’s life and career: his deep affection for his family and friends, and their shared passion for music.The Gainsboroug...

This informal and striking portrait of the politician Peniston Lamb (1770–1805) shows off the precocious powers of Sir Thomas Lawrence at the start of his career.The 'gentle-hearted and engaging’ Peniston Lamb was the Member of Parliament for Newport from 1793 to 1796 and the Member for Hertfords...

Two boats are moored along the right bank of the river Seine as it passes through a peaceful landscape edged with slender trees. Ethereal forms in muted greys and greens are set against a luminous sky, the whole bathed in pearly morning light. The more substantial manner in which the boats are pa...

At breakfast, an elegantly dressed woman watches a little girl dip a biscuit into milky coffee. The girl wears paper curlers in her hair. Coffee and chocolate were exclusive and costly beverages in the eighteenth century; the porcelain and silverware they use were no less luxurious.As well as cap...

Venus, the goddess of love, leans against a leafy tree while her son Cupid, the god of desire, tries to get her attention. Clutching a stolen honeycomb, he complains as bees swarm and sting him – but Venus is uninterested in her son. Instead, her attention is directed towards us.The Latin inscrip...

Erminio Soldera was born in Cappella Maggiore, near Treviso, and trained with Cesare Tallone (1853 -1919) at the Brera Academy in Rome. He produced frescoes and decorations for churches, but also painted portraits and landscapes, of which this is an early example.Dense greenery dominates the fore...

Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld was a member of the early generation of neo-classical landscapists. He was taught by Claude-Joseph Vernet, who had introduced oil sketching to the influential artist and teacher Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Bidauld was in Italy from 1785 to 1790, where he produced stud...

Charles Rémond, who studied with the neo-classical landscapist Jean-Victor Bertin (1767 -1842), won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1821 with The Rape of Proserpina by Pluto (Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris). During his four years at the French Academy in Rome, he not only sketched in th...

Artemisia Gentileschi, the most celebrated female artist of the seventeenth century, appears in the guise of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a Christian saint martyred in the early fourth century. She leans on a broken wheel studded with iron spikes, to which she was bound and tortured, and which...

The glowing sky is set between dark hills and threatening storm clouds, the strip of dense grey clouds at the top echoing the blue silhouette of land at the bottom. Distinctive jigsaw-shaped clouds are depicted in layers white hovering over grey, blue sky beyond fading to rose and peach at the ho...

In 1788, one of George Augustus Wallis’s many patrons, Lord Warwick, financed a trip to Italy. Around that year he arrived in Naples, where he stayed for a number of years, before moving to Rome in 1795. He was nicknamed ‘le Poussin anglais’ by his fellow English artists, and his future son-in-la...

This view almost certainly dates from Charles Rémond’s 1822–5 period in Italy. A landscape unfolds under a clear bright sky; a valley runs between overlapping hills, pale blue hills form a backdrop. Despite the luminous sky the colours are muted, the passage from foreground to misty distance care...

The Baths of Caracalla, Rome’s second largest public baths, was a popular site for oil-sketching. Here the foreground is broadly worked, the grass flatly painted in a bright lemon green. By contrast the architecture is more sharply and intricately painted, with details in the dark red brickwork p...

Although dated 1874 on the canvas, Sargent most likely painted this study of a shaded veranda the following year at Saint-Enogat in Brittany. He spent the summer of 1875 there, when he was just 19 years old. The fluid brushwork shows the influence of Impressionism, a new way of painting, particul...