James Tissot, The Shop Girl (La demoiselle de magasin), 1883-85, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Viewers of this painting find themselves standing in as imagined shoppers, customers of a fancy Parisian draper’s shop. The young assistant looks towards us, politely holding the door open with her immaculately manicured fingers resting on the handle as she prepares to usher our departure. She holds two wrapped parcels of goods, one pink, one white. These are the pu

Commentators writing about Richter’s abstract paintings made in the 1990s and 2000s often dwell on the technique used to make them. They focus on the way in which he would utilise a large, custom-built squeedge to draw layers of paint across the surface of the canvas, as if they were discomfited by the ‘easy’ means of achieving its ‘accidental’ effects. Just as critics from an earlier generation would endlessly worry over Jackson Pollock’s dripping and spattering methods in h

Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) was only in his early twenties when he made this painting, and it certainly demonstrates a certain youthful rebelliousness by violating artistic conventions of the time. Its subject is neither obviously religious nor mythological and so might have been thought unworthy of an artist’s attention in the period, and even if regarded as a portrait, it does not respect the earlier Renaissance tradition of showing figures of significance in profile nor

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