Visual Arts

See eleven photos and read about the artists who created these European masterpieces from the 1400s to the 1800s.

Painter van Gogh created this series to decorate the walls of the bedroom of his poet friend, Paul Gaugin. The friendship did not endure the paintings do.

"She’s like a queen, magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, a stately neck, and a face of the most delicate and finished modelling: the flow of surface from the temples over the cheek is exactly like the carving of a Phidean goddess" – Walter Howell Deverell describing Elizabeth Siddal

"The very hem of the poor girl's dress, at which the painter has labored so closely, thread by thread, has a story in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her outcast feet failing in the street" - John Ruskin to the Times on 25 May 1854 about The Controversy

"On the wall was a large nearly full-length portrait of her by Rossetti, so strange and unreal that if you hadn’t seen her you’d pronounce it a distempered vision, but in fact an extremely good likeness." — American Writer Henry James About Jane Burden Morris

The inspiration behind the many pre-Raphaelite paintings of Arthurian lore.

Examinations on various artworks show that the painter and the painting have an intimate and important connection. This gives a reason as to why understanding the biography and ethnicity of an artist is important in interpreting his artwork.

This article takes a look at the meaning of bamboo in east Asian art, some of the great Chinese bamboo painters, and a little about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean bamboo paintings.

An introduction to the hugely talented and successful cartoonist who dared to find humor in the macabre.

"The life of Fanny Cornforth is forever linked to that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Fairly or unfairly, it is his art that defines our impression of her." — Kirsty Stonell Walker, Stunner: The Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth

"Women are important in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. But while their faces are seen everywhere - in oil paintings, watercolors, drawings – their voices are never heard." — Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (Quartet Books, 1985)

"As a rule, each room was home to three families; penury, filth and vice thrived there” These are the words of Artist and Illustrator Carl Larsson, describing his childhood in the slums of Stockholm in the 1850s and 60s. Cholera and tuberculosis...

Painted screens are a unique folk art tradition of Baltimore, Maryland that gave inhabitants of narrow streets privacy. Includes how to paint a screen as well as a gallery of decorated screens.

The article summarizes the career of American artist Willem de Kooning, who became the most influential and perhaps the highest paid abstract artist in American history.

In the summer of 1849, a picture went on exhibition in London bearing the mysterious initials PRB. It was the first public offering by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of a small group of young artists who would completely change the face of British art in the 19th century.

Dread Scott’s work, “What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?” sparked much controversy about whether "desecrating" the US flag in the name of art is protected under free speech.