Reading Judith Mackrell’s perceptive and illuminating double biography of Augustus and Gwen John, Artists, Siblings, Visionaries recently, I came across a reproduction of this painting which seemed like such a compelling reflection of the artist’s character and sensibility that had been so insightfully described by the author. Mackerell relates how, after studying at The Slade and always overshadowed by her flamboyant brother, Gwen made her own life in Paris to escape the str

It sometimes feels as if AI fakery is nothing new. The manipulation of digital photos to ensure subjects are all-smiling, skin blemish-free, the ‘best’ versions of themselves living wonderful lives in desirable, Instagrammable locations is commonplace today. But something similar was happening in Northern European Renaissance art too. In this painting, van der Weyden relocates the Virgin and Child to an elevated palace room with a centrally framed view to outside. This archit

Giuseppe De Nittis was a hugely popular artist in his day but his work is sometimes dismissed somewhat sniffily by critics today - art historians are often more excited by those avant-garde contemporaries of his who pushed at the boundaries of what they thought art should be. Degas was an early admirer and lobbied for his inclusion at The First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, but even he became a little more waspishly disparaging of the Italian’s later success, describing h

This is one of the most often expounded upon of Courbet’s paintings, notorious at the time of its creation for its realism and its scale and remarkable, looking back from today’s perspective, as a milestone in the development of artistic expression. At 6.6m wide, it was of a size that would normally be dedicated to a classical subject or to some momentous historical event, but here it shows ordinary people attending a burial in a small country town. Ornan, in the Jura mountai

The gas station in this painting sits beside a narrow road empty of traffic, away from the rushing urgency of a highway. It is dusk and the light within the building and above the three signal-red pumps and particularly the light that illuminates the Mobilgas sign, stand as beacons to welcome travellers. The station is a refuge, a place of safety at which to stop and rest a while, and also a place where a longer journey may be sustained; refuelling facilitates the voyage onwa