Gandalf's Gallery's photostream  

Sunflowers appear amid the variegated bouquets that were the mainstay of Van Gogh's work in Paris in 1886–88. Intent upon updating his lackluster Dutch palette, he repeatedly turned to painting flowers so as "to render intense colour and not a gray harmony." By the summer of 1887, when he adopted the sunflower as the dominant motif in four pictures, he had found his voice as an original colourist.

[Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 61 cm]

gandalfsgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/vincent-van-gogh-s...

This image is one of some thirty-five self-representations by Vincent van Gogh. As part of an artistic tradition of introspection and self-analysis, the self-portrait was appropriate for a sensitive and thoughtful artist such as Van Gogh. There were also practical reasons for his doing a large number of such works. Professional models were not always available or within the means of a struggling artist. Over the course of his career, Van Gogh would use his own features to explore a variety of painting styles and techniques. His self-portraits constitute fascinating documents of his development as both an artist and an individual.

gandalfsgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/vincent-van-gogh-s...

David Denby (born 1946) is an American painter.

[Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 50.5 cm]

gandalfsgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/david-denby-tea-ti...

With Manet's assistance, Monet found lodging in suburban Argenteuil in late 1871, a move that initiated one of the most fertile phases of his career. Impressionism evolved in the late 1860s from a desire to create full–scale, multi–figure depictions of ordinary people in casual outdoor situations. At its purest, impressionism was attuned to landscape painting, a subject Monet favored. In Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, his skill as a figure painter is equally evident. Contrary to the artificial conventions of academic portraiture, Monet delineated the features of his sitters as freely as their surroundings. The spontaneity and naturalness of the resulting image were praised when it appeared in the second impressionist exhibition in 1876.

Woman with a Parasol was painted outdoors, probably in a single session of several hours' duration. The artist intended the work to convey the feeling of a casual family outing rather than a formal portrait, and used pose and placement to suggest that his wife and son interrupted their stroll while he captured their likenesses. The brevity of the moment portrayed here is conveyed by a repertory of animated brushstrokes of vibrant colour, hallmarks of the style Monet was instrumental in forming. Bright sunlight shines from behind Camille to whiten the top of her parasol and the flowing cloth at her back, while colored reflections from the wildflowers below touch her front with yellow.

[Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm]

gandalfsgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/claude-monet-woman...

This view shows St Paul's Cathedral, in the distance, left of centre. The vantage point of the artist was on the south, or Surrey side of the river Thames, between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. Daubigny first visited London in 1866, returning in 1870-71 to escape the Franco-Prussian war. This painting, dated 1873, was either begun on the spot and finished in the studio, or was worked up from sketches made of the river during this visit.

[Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 81 cm]

gandalfsgallery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/charles-francois-d...