There is a danger in choosing this work by Morisot to write about, of reinforcing some of the early prejudices that her work provoked, those slights which emphasized her paintings’ femininity, their sentiment and a certain nebulousness to the brushwork. Some critics dismissed her as a mere dilettante, a relatively privileged bourgeoise  who, as a woman, couldn’t be seriously compared to male artists, especially since there is a clear tendresse that imbued much of her work -

Edgar Degas, Women on a Terrace Café in the Evening , 1877, pastel on paper, Musée d'Orsay, Paris Degas’s depictions of the reality of modern life were a far cry from the Salon-approved works of the period which presented viewers with grand historical or mythological subjects, formally and traditionally posed. Such academic paintings were characterised by scale and high levels of finish and detailing - the works of Ingres, whose greatest achievements had been executed earlier

In 1887, the great novelist Henry James wrote about his friend and fellow American expatriate the artist John Singer Sargent, in Harper’s Magazine: In an altogether exceptional degree does he gives us the sense that an intention and the art of carrying it out are for him one and the same thing…   that perception with him is already by itself a kind of execution…. I mean the quality in the light of which the artist sees deep into his subject, undergoes it, absorbs it, discover

Fra Angelico, San Marco Altarpiece  (1438-43), tempera on wood, San Marco Museum, Florence Among the most vivid recollections of my early Catholic School education are of the macabre stories told to us by our nun-teachers about martyrs. Each year’s classroom was dedicated to a particular saint whose statue was displayed there as a way to focus our attention on their lives lived in the faith. Not all were martyrs of course (St Francis’ story was equally compelling and the othe

Like many of James Ensor’s paintings featuring skulls or skeletons, this one is an odd combination of the macabre and the joyful. The palette is bright, fresh, and the room depicted seems enticingly sunny. But the artist is represented as dead (or at least a zombie-like member of the living dead) and skulls other than his own are also strewn around the room. One sits on the floor at bottom left in profile, with what looks like a puncture mark or bullet hole visible on it. Ano