MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the event and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints.
Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.

ISLE OF THE DEAD (1883, Third version) Multiple versions in different cities. Arnold Bocklin (Swiss) 1827-1901

Bocklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as a ‘dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door’.

Bocklin disliked titling his works as a matter of principle. The title ‘The Isle of the Dead’ is the invention of an art dealer (Fritz Gurlitt), who perhaps realized (correctly), with a merchant’s keen and deadly intuition, that one cannot market an artwork without giving it a name.

THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS, 1510 Museo del Prado, Madrid. Hieronymus Bosch (Dutch) 1450 – 1516

The Garden of Earthly Delights is like most of his other ambitious works, a large 3-part altarpiece, called a triptych. This painting was probably made for the private enjoyment of a noble family.

The triptych depicts the history of the world and the progression of sin. Beginning on the outside shutters with the creation of the world, the story progresses from Adam and Eve and original sin on the left panel to the torments of hell, a dark, icy, yet fiery nightmarish vision, on the right. The Garden of Delights in the centre illustrates a world deeply engaged in sinful pleasures.

THE BIRTH OF VENUS, 1485 Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Sandro Botticelli (Italian) 1445 -1510

In his masterworks Primavera (1478) and The Birth of Venus (1485) the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli’s study of the antique.
The complex meaning of these paintings continue to receive widespread sholarly attention, mainly focusing on the poetry and philosophy of humanist who were the artist’s contemporaries.

Although he was one of the most individual painters of the Italian Renaissance, Botticelli remained little known for centuries after his death. Then his work was rediscovered late in the 19th century by a group of artists in England known as the Pre-Raphaelites.

THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH (c1562) Museo del Prado, Madrid. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, (Flemish) C1525/1530 – 1569

A bleek landscape of death and destruction confronts the viewer. An army of skeletons massacres masses of people of every age and gender. At the top of the painting, the sky is black with smoke from fires that have destroyed the landscape, as if the land had been decimated by war.

The Triumph of Death sends what seems to be a certain message: everyone must perish by the same uncaring hand of Death. Religion, the saving grace of Christ seems little more than a joke in this macabre representation where skeletons stand enclosed by bariers bearing the holy cross. Bruegel makes no allusions to the salvation of the soul. The viewer is encouraged and even forced to face death in all its ugliness and finality.
In an era where heaven and the grace of God were axiomatic, this painting was and is shocking in its irreverence. Bruegel’s harsh imagery makes viewers confront and scrutinize their faith in religion and the etermal life of the soul.

THE FUNERAL OF THE ANARCHIST GALLI, 1911 Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Carlo Carra, (Italian) 1881-1966

The Funeral of Anarchist Galli is an intriguing depiction of the famous 1904 funeral of political activist Angelo Gali, who was killed by Italian police during a year of worker protests and general strikes. The funeral itself turned violent when police, attempting to keep the event from turning into a political protest, barred mourning anarchists from following pallbearers into the cemetry after the main service.

The activist resisted, and, as Carra -who was at the funeral- noted: " I saw the horses becoming restive, and clubs and lances clashing, so that it seemed to me that at any moment the corpse would fall to the ground and be trampled by the horses."

The violence subsided in the nick of time, however, but the horrific images of the day live on indefinitely in Carra’s famous painting.

THE CARDPLAYERS, 1892 Musée D’Orsay, Paris Paul Cézanne, (French), 1839-1906

Born during the first generation of impressionists and spasmodically also belonging to the group. Cézanne nevertheless always went his own way. He was to become a great influence on subsequent generations of painters and can be regarded as the forerunner of modern painting. Despite his close contact with the impressionists, he did not adopt their methods, preferring to produce something "solid and lasting". Cézanne painted in every genre, and was successful in landscapes and portraiture as well as the still life work which he’s best known for.

Cézanne regarded the work on each new version as an attempt to gain new and progressive aspects from his painting. The Card-Players presents a topic he was to treat no less than five times in the course of the 1890s.

SEPTEMBER MORN, 1921 Museum of Modern Art, New York City> Paul Emile Chabas, (French) 1869-1937

The French painter Paul Chabas completed September Morn in early 1912. The painting shows a young woman demurely bathing nude by the edge of Lake Annecy in Haute-Savoie, France. When Chabas howed it that year at the Paris Salon, it won a gold medal of honor. Critics praised it. However, no one could have predicted what would happen next.

Copies of the painting made their way to America, and there provoked a bitter controversy about nudity, art and public morality. Thanks to this controversy, September Morn became one of the most famous and popular paintings of the twentieth century. It sold millions of copies and was reproduced on a wide variety of merchandise including umbrellas, suspenders, postcards, candy boxes, cane heads, and watch fobs.
The painting is often cited as an example of "success by scandal". The publicist Harry Reichenbach later claimed to have started the controversy by complaining to moral censors about the idecency of the painting. he was cynically manipulating the self-righteous moralists in order to sell copies of the painting.

THE CORNFIELD, 1826 John Constable (English) 1767-1837

Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home- now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. " I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, " painting is another word for feeling".
John Constable was particularly interested in landscape paintings, in which he tried to capture the phenomena and the variability of nature.

Initially Constable’s paintings only seemed to meet with little interest in Engeland. After he had participated in the Paris Salon, however, they became very successful in France.
John Constable is regarded as the most important landscape painter of the 19th century, at a par with William Turner.

DOGS PLAYING POKER, serie of 16 oil painting. Starting 1903. Causius Marcellus Coolidge (American)1844-1934

Between 1868 and 1872 Causius Marcellus Coolidge worked as a druggist and sign painter, founded a bank and a newspaper,then moved from Antwerp, New York, to Rochester, where he started painting dogs in human situations. His poker-playing dogs are the most famous, but he also painted dogs on a commuter train and in a
ballpark.

Coolidge’s first customers were cigar companies that printed copies of the paintings for giveaways. Coolidge eventually signed a contract with Brown & Bigelow to turn out hundreds of thousands of copies of his dog paintings for advertising posters, calendars, and prints.
In popular cultures. In the TV sitcom Cheers, Sam Malone loves the paintings (in particular one of Dogs Playing Blackjack), The set of the TV show Roseanne had a reproduction of one of the paintings in the family’s living room. The animated television series The Simpsons has made several references to the paintings.

L’ORIGINE DU MONDE, 1866 Musee d’Orsay, Paris Gustave Courbet (French) 1819-1877

L’Origine du monde depicts the close-up view of the genitals and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed and spreading her legs. The framing of the scene, between the thighs and the chest, emphasizes the eroticism of the work.

At the time the painting was done, Courbet’s favourite model was a young woman, called Joanna Hiffernan, also known as Jo, her lover at the time was James McNeill Whistler, an American painter and disciple of Gourbet.

L’Origine du monde was painted in an era when moral values were being questioned. By the very nature of its realistic, graphic eroticism the painting still has the power to shock.
The commission for L’Origine du Monde is believed to have come from Khalil-Bey, a Turkish diplomat,who had just moved to Paris. After Khalil-Bey’s finances were ruined by gambling, the painting subsequently passed through a series of private collections.

ANNUCIATION, C1472-1475 Uffizi, Florence Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

When it came to Uffizi in 1867 from the monastery of San Bartolomeo of Monteoliveto, near Florence, it was described to Demenico Ghirlandaoi. In 1869 some critics recognised it as a youthful work by Leonardo, executed while he was still in apprentice in the workshop of his master, Andrea del Verrocchio.

The marble table in front of the Virgin probably quotes the tomb of Pierro and Giovanni de’ Medici in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence that was sculpted by Verrocchio in this same period.

THE BENOIS MADONNA, 1478 Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

The Benois Madonna, otherwise known as the Madonna and Child with Flowers, could be one of the two Madonna’s started by Leonardo da Vinci, as he remarked himself, in October 1478. The other one could be Madonna with the Carnation from Munich.
It is likely that the Benois Madonna was the first work painted by Leonardo independently from his master Verrocchio. There are two Leonardo’s preliminary sketches for this piece in the British Museum.

As for Madonna’s toothless smile, it is tempting to suggest that the work, like so many other Leonardo’s paintings, was left unfinished.
The composition of Madonna and Child with Flowers proved to become one of Leonardo’s most popular. It was extensively copied by young painters, including Raphael, whose own version of Leonardo’s design (Madonna of the Pinks) was acquired in 2004 by the National Gallery, London.

For centuries Madonna and Child with Flowers was considered lost. Only in 1909, the architect Leon Benois sensationally exhibited it in St. Petersburg as pert of his father-in-law’s collection.

After many a squabble on attribution, Leon Benois sold the paintings to the Imperial Hermitage Museum in 1914. Ever since then, it has been exhibited in St. Petersburg.

THE LAST SUPPER, painted between 1496 to 1498 Milan Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

The Last Supper is supposed to be the moment when Jesus, in the words of John says "Truly, truly, I say to you one of you will betray me ". The picture shows the reactions of the disciples to this.

In the fictional book " The Da Vinci Code ", Daniel Brown has his character Teabing suggest that the figure seated to Jesus’ right is not the disciple John but is instead Mary Magdalena. The theory suggested several times in the past, is that Jesus married and after the crucifixion she had a child by him.

Due, to it’s poor condition there has been some argument the owner of the hand holding the knife (or, as some call it, -a dagger).

MONA LISA, painted 1503 and 1505 Musee du Louvre, Paris Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

Reams haven been written about this small masterpiece by Leonardo, and the gentle woman is who is its subject has been adapted in turn as an aesthetic, philosophical and advertising symbol, entering eventually into the irrevent parodies of the Dada and Surrealist artists. The history of the panel has been much discussed, although it remains in part uncertain.

According to Vasari, the subject is a young Florentine woman, Monna (or Mona) Lisa, who in 1495 married the well-known figure Francesco del Giocondo, and thus became to be known as ‘La Gioconda’

Leonardo himself loved the portrait so much that he always carried it with him until eventually in France it was sold to Francois I, either by Leonardo or by Melzi.

In the essay "On the perfect beauty of a woman", by the 16th-century writer Firenzuola, we learn that the slight opening of the lips at the corners of the mouth was considered in that period a sign of elegance. Thus Mona Lisa has that slight smile which enters into the gentle, delicate atmosphere pervading the whole painting. To achieve this effect, Leonardo uses the sfumato technique, a gradual dissolving of the forms themselves, continuous interaction
between light and shade and an uncertain sense of the time of day.


From the beginning it was greatly admired and much copied, and it came to be considered the prototype of the Renaissance portrait. It became even more famous in 1911, when it was stolen from the Salon Carré in the Louvre, being rediscovered in a hotel in Florence two years later.

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. ANNE (Burlington House Cartoon) Musee du Louvre, Paris, Cartoon National Gallery, London Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

Leonardo first explored the topic of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne around about 1498. His original sketch is lost, but in the one illustrated left, commonly termed the Burlington House Cartoon, the infant Christ is shown blessing a young St. John during a meeting in the dessert. This is only one of many sketches on the theme that was never translated into a painting; Leonardo was to entirely abandon these earlier ideas. Cartoons are preparatory large-scale drawings intended to be transferred to a wall or canvas during the final painting; this was named after the British collection which once owned it. Many scholars prefer the Burlington House Catoon to Leonardo’s completed oil painting, painting out how the face of the Madonna is much more natural and less wooden looking.

The oil painting of the Virgin And Child With St. Anne is thought to date from 1507-1513. The five by four foot painting was commissioned by the monks of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence for their high altar.

Some people are convinced that hidden in the folds of the draping over the arms is the shape of a vulture, the head and neck can be found in the blue encircling the Madonna and the bird’s tail points towards the infant’s mouth. Most are skeptical about this idea, though Dr. Sigmund Freud supported it and claimed that it was a repercussion of a fantasy Leonardo had when he was a child and which he noted in Codex Atlanticus "Among the first recollections of my childhood it seemed to me that, as I lay in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail and struck me several times with its tail between my lips"

THE VIRGIN ON THE ROCKS Musee du Louvre, Paris and The National Gallery, London Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian) 1452-1519

On the 25th of April 1483, Leonardo was contracted to deliver an altarpiece which would decorate the chapel of the Immacolata at the church of San Francesco, Milan. At the same time Evangelista De Predis was assigned the task of carrying out the gilding, colouring and retouching with his brother Ambrogio to do side panels.
Giacomo del Maino was commissioned to carve the framework and once finished the pieces would resemble a miniature temple. Leonardo’s contract had a very short deadline which required the painting delivered before December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, (this strongly suggests that the artists already had a cartoon prepared), but as was typical of him he failed to comply; this piece became the source of two lengthy lawsuits which lasted for many, many years.

Two versions of this painting exist, one at the Louvre in Paris and the second held by the National Gallery in London. Experts have studied both closely and consider the Louvre version to be entirely by Leonardo, while the National Gallery version is still the source of some debate.

Critics continue to take issue with which is the earlier version of Virgin of the Rocks and there is no proof either way. It appears that the the style of the Louvre version belongs more to the 1480s and this painting was probably completed early in 1490. The London painting is a more mature work and assuming it is the later version, dates to around 1506.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, 1958-59 Salvador Dali Museum Salvador Dali (Spanish), 1904-1989

Three major influences (other than Gala, who was always Dali’s chief muse) insprired Dali to create this masterwork, which is more than 14 feet tall. The first of these was the approaching 300th anniversary of the death of Velazques who was very important to Dali. The second was that there was considerable academic debat at the time regading the true nationality of Columbus. Some were asserting that Columbus had been Catalonian rather than Italian, and Dali seized upon this opportunity to further glorify his wondrous Catalonia. Finally, the gallery commissioned Dali to paint this work, the Huntington Hartford Gallery, was situated on Columbus Circle in New York City. The combination of these 3 things was enough to inspire Dali to wondrous heights of creativity.

Dali, in a period of intense interest in Roman Catholic mysticism at the time, symbolically portrayed Columbus bringing Christianity and the "true Church" to a new world as a great holy accomplishment.

Gala Dali, the painter’s wife, whom he often depicted as the Virgin Mary, poses for role of The Blessed Virgin on the banner in the right hand of Columbus. Dali painted himself in the background as a kneeling monk holding a crucifix. Dali’s belief that Columbus was Catalonian is represented by the incorporation of the old Catalonian flag.

CONSTRUCTION WITH BOILED BEANS (PREMONITION OF CIVIL WAR), 1936 Philadelphia Musuem of Art Salvador Dali (Spanish), 1904-1989

Dali’s gruesome of the Spanish Civil War depicts his homeland as a deformed body tearing itself apart. It was painted shortly before General Franco’s nationalist forces revolted against the democratic government of the Spanish Republic. Dali later described the painting as " A vast human body breaking out into monstrous excrescences of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of autostrangulation".

Salvador Dali developed his " achingly precise version of Surrealism to achieve what he called a concrete irrationality". This he hoped would lend credibility to images of the unconscious, which in turn would discred the world of reality. In Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, however, Dali applies his method to very real and deeply troubling subject of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Here a vast, grotesque body rips itself apart, its grimace registering the pain. Set against a technicolor sky and the parched landscape of northern Spain, the mutating figure dominates its environment.

This disjunction of scale indicates its symbolic function -depsite its hysterical concreteness- as a representation of the physical and emotional self-conflict in which Spain was both the victim and the agressor.

THE GREAT MASTURBATOR, 1929 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid Salvador Dali (Spanish), 1904-1989

The Great Masturbator is a self-portrait painted in July 1929. Dali’s head has the shape of a rock formation near his home and is seen in this form in several paintings dating from 1929. The painting deals with Dali’s fear and loathing of sex. He blamed his negative feelings towards sex as partly a result of reading his father’s, extremely graphic book on venereal diseases as a young body.

The head is painted ’soft’, as if malleable to touch; it looks fatigued, sexually spent; the eyes are closed, the cheeks flushed. Under the nose a grasshopper clings, its abdomen covered with ants that crawl onto the face where the mouth should be. From early childhood. Dali had a phobia of grasshoppers and the appearance of one here suggest his feelings of hysterical fear and a loss of voice or control. Emerging from the right of the head, a woman moves her mouth toward a man’s crotch. The man’s legs are cut and bleeding, implying a fear of castration.

MADONNA OF PORT LLIGAT, two versions. First one 1949, second one 1950. One in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the other in Fukuoka Salvador Dali (Spanish), 1904-1989

This immense canvas, one of Dali’s most famous, marks the beginning of a new period in his work. At the same time, it is the first picture so large, it is the first of the religious paintings, and it heralds the corpuscular epoch. The whole compesition is arranged around the eucharistic bread visible through a hole in the center of Jesus’ body, the point of intersection of the diagonal lines indicating the middle of the painting. Gala is depicted as the Virgin and also as the cuttlefish-angles on the right side of the canvas. A little boy of adaqués called Juan Figueras was used as the model for the infant Jesus. Gala Madonna embodies all the geological virtues of Port Lligat.

There are two oils of the same subject. The first, which is smaller in size, was submitted by Dali to Pope Pius XII for approval and is now at Marquette University. About the larger canvas, Dali has commented: " This picture because of its size was destined to know many mishaps. In the midst of an awful storm we had to have a contractor come to Port Lligat to enlarge the window in the room, because the canvas on its stretcher would not go through the window. The dealer at the time said; " This painting is magnificent, but I will never be able to sell it, because there is no house big enough for it, and it costs too much to ship it around".

Today The Madonna of Port Lligat is in the collection of Lady Beaverbrook in Canada. Due to its measurements it is never shown in retrospective exhibitions.

A WOMAN PEELING APPLES, C1663 Wallace Collection, London Pieter de Hooch (Dutch) 1629-1684

De Hooch became a member of the painters guild of Sant Luke in 1655, and moved to Amsterdam in 1661, where he lived in the poorest areas of the city.

Soon after de Hooch’s move to Amsterdam his works gain a little more in power and body, and his color and chiaroscuro increase in warmth. This is seen in the full character of the figures in the Woman Peeling Apples with its concentration on the motif close to the spectator without side views.

The painting recalls Vermeer’s paintings of one or two figures in a lighted corner of a room and is theme of a woman watched by her child as she works at a simple kitchen task is related to Maes’s depictions of household activities.

Yet de Hooch’s painting is unmistakably his own; his ability to suggest the intensity and flow of light is undiminished, and the relationship between the woman and child is absorbed in their simple activities retains human charm and naturalness.

LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830 Musee du Louvre, Paris Eugene Delacroix, (French) 1798-1863

Liberty leading the people, painted on 28 July 1830, to commemorate the July Revolution that just brought Louis-Philippe to the French trone.
The painting, which is a sort of political poster, is meant to celebrate the day of 28 July 1830, when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon King. Alexandre Dumas tells us that Delacroix participation in the rebellious movements of July was mainly of a sentimental nature. Despite this, the painter, who had been a member of the National Guard, took pleasure in portraying himself in the figure on the left wearing the top-hat.

Liberty leading the people caused a disturbance. It shows the allegorical figure of Liberty as a half-draped woman wearing the traditional Phygrian cap of liberty and holding a gun in one hand and the tricolor in the other. It is strnkingly realistic, Delacroix, the young man in the painting wearing the opera hat, was present on the barricades in July 1830. Allegory helps achieve universality in the painting. Liberty is not a woman, she is an abstract force.

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MADONNA AND CHILD MAESTA, C1300 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Duccio, (Italian) 1278-1318

Even for Christians, it is hard in the 21th century to imagine the jubilation with which Duccio’s grand ‘Maesta’ was carried from his workshop through the streets of Siena to the high altare of the city’s cathedral on June 9, 1311. The painter was at the height of his fame. The piece was enormous and detailled, with an enthroned Vigin and Child surrounded by saints and angels on the front and the Passion of Christ on the back.

The ‘Rucellai Madonna” was commissioned in 1285 by the Confraternity of the Laudesi at Santa Maria in Florence. Many would call the ‘Rucellai Madonna’, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence the most beautifel panel picture of the 13th century. Some 10 or 15 years later, Duccio painted a luminous small ‘Madonna and Child’ (it has exactly the size of a sheet of legal stationery, and is painted in tempera and gold on a wooden panel). An American no longer has to cross the ocean to see it since the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it in 2004 for the staggering price of $45 million.

Although the Madonna and Child was well known in art-historical circles the only one of Duccio’s dozen or so surviving paintings to remain in private hands, its whereabouts had been uncertain since the death, in 1949, of its last registered owner, the Belgian collector Adolphe Stoclet.

VENUS, CUPID, FOLLY AND TIME, 1540-1545 National Gallery, London Angolo Bronzino (Angolo di Cosimo)(Italian), 1503-1572

Between 1540 and 1545 Bronzino was commissioned to create a painting which has come to be known as Venus,Cupid,Folly and Time. It displays the ambivalence, eroticism and obscure imagery which is characteristic of the Mannerist period, and of Bronzino’s master Pontormo.

The painting may have been commissioned by the Duke of Florence, Cosimo de’Medici or by Francesco Salviate, to be presented by him as a gift to Francis I of France.
The erotic imagery would have appealed to the tastes prevalent in both the Medici and French courts at this time.
Crowded into the claustrophobic foreground of the painting are several figures whose identities have been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. The themes of the painting appear to be lust, deceit and jealousy. At times it has also been called A Triumph of Venus. Its meaning, however, remains elusive.

The two central figures are easily identified by their attributes as Venus and Cupid. The identity of the remaining figures is even more ambiguous. The old woman rending her hair has been called Jealousy -though some believe her to represent the ravaging effects of syphilis. The creature at the right hand side behind Folly, with a girl’s face and grotesque body, extending a honeycomb with her left hand attached to her right arm, may represent Pleasure and Fraud. There is, however, no consensus on these identifications.

WHERE DO WE COME FROM ? WHAT ARE WE ? WHERE ARE WE ? ,1898 Musuem of Fine Arts, Boston Paul Gauguin (French) 1848-1903

This is Gauguin’s ultimate masterpiece – if all the Gauguins in the world, except one, were to be evaporated, this would be the one to preserve. He claimed that he not think of the long title until the work was finished, but he is known to have been creative with the truth. On the right (Where do we come from ?), we see the baby and three young women – those who are closest to that eternal mystery. In the center, Gauguin meditates on what we are. Here are two women, talking about destiny, a man looking puzzled and half-aggressive, and in the middle, a youth plucking the fruit of experience. In the final section (Where are we going ?), a beautifel young woman broods, and an old woman prepares to die. Her pallor and gray hair tell us so, but the message is underscored by the presence of a strange white bird. It is Gauguin’s symbol of the alterlife, of the unknown (just as the dog, on the far right, is his symbol of himself). All this is set in a paradise of tropical beauty: the Tahiti of sunlight, freedom and color that Gauguin left everything to find. He seems to have concocted a story that, being ill and unappreciated (that part was true enough), he determined on suicide -the great refusal. He wrote to a friend, describing his journey into the mountains with arsenic. Then, he found himself still alive, and returned to paint more masterworks. It is sad that so great an artist felt he needed to manufacture a ploy to get people to appreciate his work.

LAUGHING CAVALIER, 1624 Wallace Collection, London Frans Hals (Dutch), 1580-1666

The Laughing Cavalier is one of the most famous portraits in the world. We still do not know his name, but the Latin inscription in the top right hand corner tells us that he was twenty-six years old when the portrait was painted. The title itself is not original, but was coined between 1875 and 1888 and is, on reflection, misleading: the man is not a cavalier, nor is he really laughing. The current title is a Victorian era invention.

While we may not know the man’s identity, his portrait gives us sample opportunities to form an impression of his personality and circumstances. The painting’s low vantage makes The Laughing Cavalier peer down on us with a confident knowing gaze. In contrast to portraits made by many previous Dutch artists, Hals’ painting style, as well as composition, manages to suggest liveliness and movement: the elbow of the sitter juts out and forms a diagonal with the dramatic hat. His opulenty embroidered costume implies wealth, and its details suggest that he might be dressed for marriage.

The painting is famous because of the artist’s skill at painting the lace of the costume and that the eyes appear to follow the viewer from every angle.

WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE, 1851 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Yor City Emanuel Leutze (German/American), 1816-1868

More than sixty years after the campaign that solidified Washington’s reputation, a German-born American painter, Emanuel Leutze, produced his famous Washington Crossing the Delaware. However stirring the image, it has been called absurd by many critics. The pose of Washington in the prow of a rowboat is ridiculous; the flag is an anachronism; and the river covered with ice is the Rhine, not the Delaware.

Nonetheless, the painting has become a symbol of Washington’s accomplishment and is perhaps the best known of Leutze’s works and the most popular conception of the crossing.

ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND GREY #1: THE ARTIST’s MOTHER, 1871 Musee d’Orsay, Paris James McNeill Whistler (American), 1834-1903

The work colloquially known as Whistler’s Mother is among those few famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa and American Gothic which have transcended art and entered popular culture. There was little doubt in most people’s eyes that the austere portrait of Anna McNeill Whistler by her son James was the quintessential picture of motherhood.

What is less known is the controversy the painting stirred up when it was painted in 1871. And its apparent conservative nature seems a bizarrely uncharacteristic work. Whistler was on of the 19th century’s most unorthodox painters and was leading proponent of the bohemian credo "art for art’s sake" that divorces art from any didactic, moral and utilatarian function.

LE DEJEUNER SUR L’HERBE, 1863 Musee d’Orsay, Paris Édouard Manet (French), 1832-1883

The active spirit of independance in Impressionism -if not its style- may be considered to date from his famous work, refused by the Salon in 1863 and exhibited under the title of Le Bain at the Salon des Refusés of the same year. It is the larger of Manet’s two versions of the subject, a smaller and freer version being in the Courtcauld Institute Gallery in London.

According to Antonin Proust, the idea of the pricture suggested itself to Manet when they were watching bathers at Argenteuil. The furious outcry it caused as the principal exhibit among the Salon rejects was based on the alleged indecency of two fully-dressed men appearing in the company of the naked female bather. How far Claude Monet was impressed by the pricture may be gauged from the fact that in 1865 he dediced to paint his own Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.

AMOR VICTORIOUS CARDSHARPS, 1602 Kimbell Art Museun, Fort Worth, Texas Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Italian), 1571-1610

The Cardsharps showing another unsophisticated boy falling the victim of card cheats -is phychologically complex and perhaps Carvaggio’s first true masterpiece.

The low-life scene links Carvaggio’s discreet dramas to the genre painting favoured by his followers. It was to have many imitators -within a few years of the painter’s death an early variant had been painted by the Franco-Roman Valentin de Boulogne- but few equals. Caravaggio was less melodramatic than many of the artists known as the Caravaggisti who painted in his style, and he suggests only enough of the interaction between the three actors to imply the sequel.

The allegedly homoerotic ambience of this and other paintings has been the centre of considerable dispute amongst scholars and biographers since it was first raised in the later half of the 20th century.

PANORAMA MESDAG, 1881 Mesdag Museum, The Hague Hendrik Willem Mesdag (Dutch), 1831-1915

Panorama Mesdag is a cylindrical painting, more than 14 meters high and 120 meters in circumreference and the view you have is 360 degrees. You simply stand in the middle of the painting. You enter the panorama via a narrow, circular staircase in the center. Once you are inside the panorama, you are taken back 130 years in time. The illusion is almost perfect.

The vista of the sea, the dunes and Scheveningen village was painted by one of the most famous painters of the Hague School, Hendrik Willem Mesdag. Mesdag starts his work in April 1881. Painting the panorama was a race against the clock, since it was to be finished in August 1881. This job was far too big for Mesdag to do by himself; he hired his wife and other painters to assist him. The other painters were assigned to various tasks of the project. It is the oldest 19th century panorama in the world in its original site, and a unique cultural heritage.

THE CREATION OF ADAM (MAN), C1511 Sistine Chapel, Vatican City Michaelangelo (Italian), 1475-1564

The Creation of Man is the fourth panel in the series of nine which constitutes the central portion of the frescoes; or the sixth in the series reckoned in the order in which it was painted. For, as all the world knows, the series was painted backward. Just why the Drunkenness of Noah was chosen as the subject of the last panel, and then painted first, all the world is still discussing.

Like any other genuine artist he became more interested in the work itself than in anything else, and proceeded to adapt the treatment of his theme to the expanding vision. What a transition in five panels from the orderly confusion of the Flood to the simplicity of the Creation.

OPHELIA, 1851/1852 Tate Britain, London John Everett Millais (English), 1829-1896

It depicts Ophelia, a character form Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, singing before she drawns in a river in Denmark. The work was not widely regarded when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but has since come to be admired for its beauty and its accurate depiction of a natural landscape.

Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate Gift in 1894 and remains one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate’s collection. John Everett Millias was one of the founders of a group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelites. They rejected the art of the Renaissance in favour of art before Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo (15th-16th centuries).

Ophelia has been estimated to have a market value of around £30 million.

VICTORY BOOGIE WOOGIE, 1942-1944 ….. Piet Mondriaan (Dutch) 1872-1944

At the time of Mondriaan’s fairly sudden death in early in 1944 at the age of seventy-two, Victory Boogie Woogie was still unfinished.

Victory Boogie Woogie is a feast for the eye. Blue, yellow, red and white are interwoven over the entire surface, fragmented into larger and smaller planes and small blocks of colour.Given the time, he would probably have replaced them by a rather more regular, painted, version of the fragmented visual rhythms. He had never a chance to do so but, even in this state, Victory Boogie Woogie is an impressive painting.

Although the title Victory Boogie Woogie was not invented by Mondriaan it is known that he saw this paintings as a follow-up to his 1942-1943 painting. Broadway Boogie Woogie an that he used the word ‘Victory’in relation to it. The term Boogie Woogie refers to a new kind of jazz then popular in New York, in which short melody lines were interrupted by open rhythmical patterns. Victory undoubtedly refers to the triumph of a new form of art in a free world, something in which Mondriaan continued to have unshakeable faith even in the darkest days of the Second World War.

WATER LILY POND, 1899 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Claude Monet (French), 1840-1926

This is one of the most famous paintings by Claude Monet, who is probably the most beloved of all Impressionist painters. What he’s interested in is the light. When you look at the painting up close, it’s a jumble of colored spots because that’s the effect of the light as Monet saw it. And by focusing not on the objects but on the light reflected from them, he creates a work of great beauty and immense value.

In 1883 Monet moved from the north-west of Paris to Giverny where he lived until his death. Adjacent to his property was a small pond which he acquired in 1893, where he created a water garden with an arched bridge in the Japanese style. In 1900 he exhibited a series of ten canvases of the pond, showing a single subject in differing light conditions. He worked on similar series representing poplars,
haystacks and the facade of Rouen Cathedral during the same period.

The simple design of this painting with the close-up view of the bridge was repeated in several other canvases. The fresh greens of the foliage evoke an early summer’s day.

GUERNICA, 1937 Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid. Pablo Picasso (Spanish) 1881-1973

On April 26th 1937, a massive air raid by the German Luftwaffe on the Basque town of Guernica in Northern Spain shocked the world. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the raid which became a major incident of the Spanish Civili War.

The bombing prompted Picasso to begin painting his greatest masterpiece…Guernica.

Guernica presents a scene of death, violence, brutality, suffering, and helplessness without portraying their immediate cause. The choice to paint in black and white conveys the chronological nearness of a newspaper photograph and the lifelessness war affords. Guernica depicts suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos. The painting became a timely and prophectic vision of the Second World War and is now recognised as an international icon for peace. Despite the enormous interest the painting generated in his lifetime, Picasso obstinately refused to explain Guernica’s imagery. Guernica has been the subject of more books than any other work in modern art and it is often described as " The most important work of art of the twentieth century " .

THE NIGHT WATCH (DE NACHTWACHT), 1642 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch) 1606-1669

The 17th century saw an unparalleled output of art in the Republic of the United Provinces. The number of paintings and prints produced this period is staggering, and very many of them are of outstanding quality. Perhaps the most famous painting is the work by Rembrandt known as The Night Watch.

The painting depicts the company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburgh, surrounded by sixteen of their men. A shield above the gate bears the names of the 18 people in the portrait, who paid for the work. Rembrandt’s former pupil, Samuel van Hoogstraten, wished that Rembrandt "had put more light into it". The name Night Watch dates from the 18th century, when the painting had already darkened quite considerably. By then, people were no longer sure precisely what it represented. They evidently took it for a night scene.

Famous as it is, the painting has been damaged several times by mentally disturbed people, but it has alwayd been successfully restored.

STARRY NIGHT, 1889 Museum of Modern Art, New York City Vincent van Gogh (Dutch), 1853-1890

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh has risen to the peak of artistic achievements. Although Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, the aftermath of his works is enormous. Starry Night is one of the most well known images in modern cultures as well as being one of the most replicated and sought after prints. From Don McLean’s song Starry, Starry Night (based on the painting), to the endless number of merchandise products sporting this image. It is nearly impossible to shy away from this amazing painting.

During Van Gogh’s younger years (1876-1880) he wanted to dedicate his life to evangelization of those in poverty. Many believe that this religious endeavor may be reflected in the eleven stars of the painting. Whether or not this inspiration is true, it is known that the piece is not the only Starry Sky painting that Van Gogh ever created. Van Gogh was quite proud of a piece he had painted earlier in Arles in 1888 that depicts stars reflecting in the Rhone River.

SUNFLOWERS (or VASE WITH 15 FLOWERS) ,1888 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Vincent van Gogh (Dutch), 1853-1890

Sunflowers are the subject of a series of still life paintings executed in oil on canvas. Among the Sunflowers paintings are three similar with fifteen sunflowers in a vase, and 2 similar paintings with 12 sunflowers in a vase.

Although Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings are very similar in many aspects each stands out as its own unique work of art. Van Gogh began painting sunflowers after he left Holland for France in pursuit of creating an artistic community. The firsts were created to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin’s bedroom. The majority of Van Gogh’s sunflowers in vases were created in Arles, France.

Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of $40 million for Van Gogh’s still life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie’s London, at the time a record-setting amount for a work of art. The price was over four times the previous record of about $12 million, paid for Andrea Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi in 1985. The record was broken a few months later with the purchase of another Van Gogh, Irises by Alan Bond for $53.9 million at Sotheby’s, New York on November 11, 1987. After the purchase a controversy arose whether this is a genuine van Gogh or an Emile Schuffenecker forgery.

THE LITTLE STREET, c1657-1661 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Vermeer (Dutch), 1632-1675

Het straatje, -’The Little Street’- is in fact a little painting of a small section of street. There is nothing to indicate how wide the street is, though we get the impression that the painter’s view (which is our view) is from a house opposite, from an upstairs room. There must have been hundred such passageway in Delft then. However, an adjacent pair, with twin gates like those in the picture, is now not te be found in any of the favoured streets.

It also seems possible that here, as in many other paintings, Vermeer picked and mixed details. He took some elements of reality and put them together in an ‘invented scene’. He may have observed some details and remembered or imagined others.

The liberties he has taken, include theft, or at least major borrowing from fellow artists and yet the ultimate effect is original. Time, halted for this instant and therfore in a sense for eternity, seems to be his essential subject. Its wear and tear is visible in the bricks and mortar, the fabric of fact that bluntly underpins our tenuous and temporary hold on existence with its many unanswerable questions, such as " What are we doing here ? ".