Leonardo Da Vinci

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)

The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait of a Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world."
Believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506, it was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The ambiguity o...

Vincent Van Gogh

Starry-Night

The Starry Night, pronounced "De sterrennacht" in Dutch, is a painting by the face of Post-Impressionism, Vincent van Gogh. The painting depicts the view outside his sanitarium room window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (located in southern France) at night, although it was painted from memory during the day. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, part of the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, since 1941. The painting is among Van Gogh's most well known works.See more

Edvard Munch

The Scream

he Scream was painted by Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch and is one of his most recognised artworks. It was initially named The Scream of Nature, as it was inspired by an evening walk Munch took with his friends, where he experienced a 'scream piercing through nature. This makes the painting autobiographical, but the figure does not resemble him or anyone, in fact, the figure has been depersonalized and rendered genderless/sexless, curves of their body aligning with the curves around...

Pablo Picasso

Three Musicians

Three Musicians is the title of two similar collage and oil paintings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. They were both completed in 1921 in Fontainebleau near Paris, France, and exemplify the Synthetic Cubist style. One version is currently owned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City; the other is found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each painting features a Harlequin, a Pierrot, and a monk, who are generally believed to represent Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Max Jacob, r...

Jan Vermeer

The Girl with a Pearl Earring

The artwork Girl with a Pearl Earring, or "Het Meisje with de Parel" in Dutch, is one of Johannes Vermeer's (Dutch Painter) masterworks and has a pearl earring as a focal point, as the name suggests. The picture is now housed at The Hague's Mauritshuis museum. It's also known as or "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa".
According to more contemporary Vermeer research, the painting is a 'Tronie.' The term 'Tronie' refers to paintings from the 17th century in which facial expressio...

Rembrandt Van Rijn

Night Watch

The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
The painting may be more properly titled The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out. It is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as the best known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous paintings in the w...

Gustav Klimt

The Kiss (Bacio)

Gustav Klimt was a Symbolist painter from Austria who painted “The Kiss” (“Der Kuss” in German) from 1907 to 1908 and is considered a magnificent work from his so-called "Golden Period", when a number of his works, similarly, contained a gilded style. The canvas is in the shape of a perfect square and it demonstrates a couple locked in embrace as they’re elaborately dressed in robes. The decorations reflect influences from the Art Nouveau methods and the linear constructs that came with it. The ...

Claude Monet

Water Lilies

Water Lilies (or Nymphéas, pronounced: [nɛ̃.fe.a]) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

The paintings are on display at museums all over the world, including the Musée Marmottan Monet and the musée d'Orsay in Paris, ...

Georges Pierre Seurat

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884 (French: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte - 1884) is one of Georges Seurat's most famous works, and is an example of pointillism.

Georges Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figu...

Grant Wood

American Gothic

American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from what is now known as the American Gothic House, and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The figures were modeled by the artist's sister and their dentist. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 19th-century Americana, and the cou...

Vincent Van Gogh

Café Terrace at Night

Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is a coloured oil painting executed by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh on an industrially primed canvas of size 25 (Toile de 25 figure) in Arles, France, mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in his letters on various occasions. There is also a large pen drawing of the composition which originates from the artist's estate.

Visitors of the site can still stand at...

James Abbott Mcneill Whistler

Arrangement in Grey and Black. Portrait of the Painter's Mother

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (144.3 cm × 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is now one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon and...

Rene Magritte

The Son of Man

The Son of Man is a self-portrait commissioned in 1963 and he leaned towards a more Surrealist style. The painting has left many interpretations to be discussed. It consisted of a man, standing in front of a seaside with an apple in front of his face and features a bowler hat – a familiar motif in his work. The apple in front of him does not cover his full face, it leaves the sides uncovered and crating curiosity of what the man’s face may look like. When he was asked to shed light on its meanin...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Dance at Moulin de la Galette

Bal du moulin de la Galette (commonly known as Dance at Le moulin de la Galette) is an 1876 painting by French artistPierre-Auguste Renoir. It is housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and is one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces. The painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in Paris. In the late 19th century, working class Parisians would dress up and spend time there dancing, drinking, and eatinggalettes into the evening.See more

Edouard Manet

Olympia, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

This painting is an example or realism — a style that shows exactly what the eye sees. It created an uproar, not because the subject was nude, but because of the way he painted her gaze and other subtleties indicating that she was a mistress.

Rene Magritte

Time transfixed

Time Transfixed or "La Durée poignardée" in French was painted on a canvas with oil by the René Magritte, a famed Surrealist from Belgium. It is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and is usually on display in the museum's new Modern Wing.

The painting was one of many done for surrealist patron and Magritte supporter Edward James. This was the second painting delivered to James for his London ballroom. He made this painting for his wife who died from a runaway t...

Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutesfrom a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two...

Caspar David Friedrich

The Sea of Ice

The Sea of Ice (German: Das Eismeer), also called The Wreck of Hope (German: Die gescheiterte Hoffnung) is an oil painting of 1823–1824 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich.

The landscape depicts a shipwreck in the middle of a broken ice-sheet, whose shards have piled up after the impact. The ice has become like a monolithic tomb, or dolmen, whose edges jut into the sky.
The stern of the wreck is just visible on the right. As an inscription on it confirms, this is HMS Griper...

Francisco De Goya

Saturn Devouring His Son

Spain’s pioneering painter Francisco Goya y Lucientes was considered a great successor to the Spanish Baroque Painting masters, namely painters like El Greco, Velazquez, and Jusepe Ribera. His career spanned between 1785 and 1820. “Saturn Devouring his Son” was a part of the “Black Paintings” series that he made between 1819 and 1823. This series was a combination of caricatures, nightmares and cruelty of a bestial nature. Goya was only reflecting the troubled times that he had survived througho...

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Creation of Adam

The Creation of Man is one of the most notable artworks from the Renaissance period, it is a fresco painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Julius II. The fresco illustrates a passage from the bible, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him" (Gen. 1:27) and portrays God as a bearded man with a cloak draping him and his hand extending to touch Adam's left hand but only their fingers meet in between. With God are twelve figures that have been...

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent's Bedroom in Arles (First version)

Bedroom in Arles (French: La Chambre à Arles Dutch: Slaapkamer te Arles) is the title given to each of three similar paintings by 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh's own title for this composition was simply The Bedroom (French: La Chambre à coucher). There are three authentic versions described in his letters, easily discernible from one another by the pictures on the wall to the right.

The painting depicts Van Gogh's bedroom at 2, Place Lamartin...

Vincent Van Gogh

The Night Cafe

The painting ‘Night Café’ shows the dingy indoors of an all-night café which was frequently visited by prostitutes and by those who had no money for lodging or were too drunk to be taken in. The image shows tables and chairs, five customers on the left and right, a billiard table in the middle, the landlord in white clothes. Van Gogh uses the most contrasting colours in this painting, to portray the 'terrible passions of humanity. Van Gogh described the colours to his brother in a letter, as 'al...

Francisco De Goya

The Third of May 1808 (Execution of the Defenders of Madrid)

This painting shows Napoleon’s attack on Spain in 1808. Prior to this, most paintings showed war as being a glorious thing. This painting shows it as being cruel and subhuman (see how the soldiers look mechanical whereas the ones being shot look full of life).

Vincent Van Gogh

Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, The

Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is a coloured oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted in mid-September 1888 in Arles, France, on an industrially primed canvas of size 25 (Toile de 25 figure). The work is not signed, although the artist describes and mentions it in his writings on several times. A big pen sketch of the composition, which comes from the artist's estate, is also included.
Visitors to the location may still stand where the artist set up...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The Great Bathers (The Nymphs)

The Bathers (French: Les Baigneuses) is an oil painting on canvas made between 1918 and 1919 by the French painterPierre-Auguste Renoir. After being giving to the State by his three in 1923, it is currently kept at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

There are two groups of naked women: two models lying in the foreground plus three bathers in the background, on the right. One of the models of this painting is the Andrée Hessling, who became the first wife of Renoir's son, Jean. The natural setting ...

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio Da Urbino)

The School of Athens (detail 1) (Stanza della Segnatura)

This wall painting, located in the Vatican, contains pictures of many famous philosophers. Plato and Aristotle are the two in the middle. As an inside joke, Raphael based Plato’s face on fellow artist Leonardo da Vinci. He also included Michelangelo and himself elsewhere in the painting.

Henri Matisse

Harmony in Red

“Harmony in Red” is often held by critics and scholars to be Matisse’s magnum opus. A patron of post-impressionist art, Matisse borrowed a bunch of styles and techniques by artists like Van Gogh and Claude Monet. With the flat shades of Van Gogh and the fauvism of Monet, Matisse paints this work sans a point of focus. This painting was supposed to be dominated by the colour blue, but Matisse scraped that since he wasn’t happy with it. He intended this painting to be hung in the living of Sergey ...

Rene Magritte

The Menaced Assassin

The Menaced Assassin (French: L'Assassin menacé) is a 1927 oil on canvas painting by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte.
The main subject of the painting, a blood-smeared nude woman, is seen lying on a couch. The assassin of the painting's title, a well-dressed man, stands ready to leave, his coat and hat on a chair next to his bag. He is however delayed by the sound of music, and in an unhurriedly relaxed manner, listens to a gramophone. In the meantime, two men armed with club and net wai...

Joan Miro

Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman

Applying Abstract Expressionist methods, Joan Miro painted “Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman” in 1941, as a part of the 23-paintings series “Constellations”. Made using gouache, graphite, water colour and ivory-woven paper, this painting can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. Known for being an unofficial pioneer of the Surrealist style of painting, Miro also tried to navigate a linear style of ‘automatism’, which was about improvisation on canvas leading to an acute r...

Edvard Munch

Melancholy

The practice of free love by the bohemians of Christiania, advocated by Jaeger as suited to an anarchist society, led to a good deal of jealousy. Among those who aroused it was Oda Krohg (wife of the painter Christian Krohg), who became, to borrow Tom Lehrer's phraseology, the hypotenuse of a triangle involving her husband and Jappe Nilssen, a young journalist who was a friend of Munch. His jealousy inspired this symbolic composition which Munch painted in several versions under various titles: ...

Claude Monet

Gare Saint Lazare, Pari

When he painted The Saint-Lazare Station, Monet had just left Argenteuil to settle in Paris. After several years of painting in the countryside, he turned to urban landscapes. At a time when the critics Duranty and Zola exhorted artists to paint their own times, Monet tried to diversify his sources of inspiration and longed to be considered, like Manet, Degas and Caillebotte, a painter of modern life.

In 1877, settling in the Nouvelle Athènes area, Claude Monet asked for permission to work ...

Andrea Mantegna

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

The Lamentation of Christ (also known as the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, or the Dead Christ and other variants) is a painting of about 1480 by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. While the dating of the piece is debated, it was completed between 1475 and 1501, probably in the early 1480s. It portrays the body Christ supine on amarble slab. He is watched over by the Virgin Mary and Saint John who cut-off profile is behind the Virgin Mary, who are weeping for his death.

The ...

Max Beckmann

The Night

The Night is a 20th-century painting by German artist Max Beckmann, created between the years of 1918 and 1919. It is an icon of the post-World War I movement, Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity. It is an oil painting on canvas.

Three men appear to invade a small, cramped room, where they terrorize the scene. To the left, a man is hung by one of the intruders, and his arm twisted by another. A woman, seemingly the man's wife, is bound to one of the room's supports after having been raped...

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi)

Narcissus

Currently kept in Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, “Narcissus” is a key painting in the career of the great Italian painter Caravaggio, who was regarded as a master of the Baroque Style. Caravaggio made only two paintings based on Classical Mythology, and this was one of them. As stated in Metamorphoses by Ovid, Narcissus is a charming young man who falls for a reflection of his own in the water. This story had traction in those circles formed by collectors. Two of these patrons include ...

Diego Velazquez

Las Meninas (detail)

This baroque painting is considered one of the most important of all-time. The central figure is the young Margarita Teresa of Spain but the painting also shows the artist himself, an image of the king and queen, several servants, two dwarfs, and a dog.

Rose Maynard Barton

The Dream

Vincent Van Gogh

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Painted in June 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. One of the most revered paintings by Van Gogh of Dr. Paul Gachet, who took care of him in his last months. There are two authentic versions of the portrait. It was sold at auction (1990) for record price of $82.5 million. But since 1996, the location of the Original version painting is a mystery and yet unknown. The second version of the portrait is currently in the possession of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Gustav Klimt

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

The rich entrepreneur Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who made his money in the sugar industry, commissioned this picture, which took three years to finish. In 1912, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a patron of the arts, commissioned Klimt to paint another portrait of his wife Adele. Adele Bloch-Bauer was Klimt's sole subject who was painted twice. This picture is likely most known not for its aesthetic merits, but for the scandalous history it has had from its conception. Adele Bloch-Bauer wanted the artwork to g...

Paul Gauguin

Nafeaffaa Ipolpo (also known as When Will You Marry.)

When Will You Marry? (Tahitian: Nafea faa ipoipo) is an oil painting from 1892 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. On loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland for nearly a half-century, it was sold privately by the family of Rudolf Staechelin to an unknown buyer, reportedly to Qatar Museums, in February 2015 for close to $300m (£197m), the highest price ever paid for a work of art. The painting was on exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, until 28 June 2015

Arshile Gorky

Waterfall

The Waterfall is mid 20th century painting by Armenian American artist Arshile Gorky. The dimension of painting is 96.8 cm by 24 cm and is housed in Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. It is an oil painting based on surrealism style and abstract genre.

Waterfall was developed from some actual scene. The figures in the painting are not distortions, nor do they correspond only diagrammatically to people, but they do sustain the presence of the representational figure, part...

Paul Cezanne

The Card Players

The Card Players is a series of oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size and in the number of players depicted. Cézanne also completed numerous drawings and studies in preparation for The Card Players series. One version of The Card Players was sold in 2011 to the Royal Family of Qatar for a price variously estimated at between $250 million and $3...

Pablo Picasso

Women of Algiers (Version O)

Women of Algiers (Version O) is the last instalment in a series of 15 paintings and sketches by Pablo Picasso. It was inspired by Eugène Delacroix's painting The Women of Algiers in their Apartment and was executed as a tribute to his favourite artists. Delacroix's painting was done after he visited North Africa where the Sultan invited him to see inside his palace, there in the harem sits four women around a hookah. Picasso's cubist rendition had contorted their bodies where their front could b...

Jackson Pollock

Number 1, 1949

No. 5, 1948 is a painting by Jackson Pollock, an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement. The painting was done on an 8' × 4' sheet of fiberboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance. It was originally owned by Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art before being sold to David Geffen and then allegedly to David Martinez in 2006 (though the supposed sale of this...

Vincent Van Gogh

The Sower

The Sower painting by Vincent van Gogh is one with which most of his fans will be familiar. It's usually mentioned as part of a series he did inspired by the work of Jean-Francois Millet, rather than the symbolism that can be taken from the sower. The possible reference to the biblical parable of the sower and the "search for spiritual meaning in everyday existence".

Van Gogh wrote about it to his brother Theo, describing not only the colors he'd used:"Immense lemon yellow disc for the sun....

Paul Cezanne

the card players

Joan Miro

Joan Miró- Catalan Landscape (The Hunter)

Catalan Landscape is an oil painting that represents cultural movement during early 20th century. It was created by Joan Miro and it display dreams and hallucinations concept that the world was surpassing during its creation time. It primarily emphasize on Catalonia people and culture prevailing during the early decade. Interpretation of painting was clearly focused on killing of human being which is clearly displayed through black lines that connects the different objects that represents the Ca...

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Vortumnus (Vertumno)

Vertumnus (Emperor Rudolph II) is a painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the collection of the Skoklosters Slott, Bålsta. The inspiration of painting comes from god of seasons, Vertumnus, who was supposed to have power to change his form at his will. The painting displays Emporer Rudolph II with fruits, vegetables and flowers all over his body in place of skin, muscles and hairs. The style of painting is Mannerism primarily influenced by Late Renaissance made on wood with use of oil technique wi...

Pablo Picasso

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard is a colored painting created by Pablo Picasso in 1910. Ambroise Vollard is a French dealer, who is credited to provide exposure and emotional support to unknown artists including Pablo Picasso. The works reflect Analytical Cubism artwork completed by use of oil technique on canvas.

It is a masterpiece gift by Pablo Picasso to his godfather Ambroise Vollard for upraising him during his initial stages. The dimension of painting is 92 cm by 65 cm and is housed at ...

Pablo Picasso

Guernica

Pablo Picasso's work Guernica is a masterpiece. During the Spanish Civil War, it was founded in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country hamlet in northern Spain, by German and Italian airplanes at the demand of Spanish Nationalist troops on April 26, 1937. Picasso was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to design a big mural for the Spanish exhibit at the Paris International Exposition at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.
This art has taken on a monumental significance,...

Albrecht Durer

Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman

Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman is a small bust length oil on elm panel painting by the German artist Albrecht Dürerfrom 1505. It was executed, along with a number of other high society portraits, during his second visit to Italy.

The woman wears a patterned gown with tied-on sleeves that show the chemise beneath. Her hair frames her face in soft waves, and back hair is confined in a small draped cap. The work's harmony and grace is achieved through its mixtures of tones, from her pale, ...

Emile Nolde

The Mocking of Christ

Mocking of Christ is Emil Nolde painting created in 1909 to display punishments and tortures suffered by Jesus Christ. It is a colorful painting made on expressionism style to display suffering of Christ. The painting's dimensions are 88 cm by 106 cm and is housed at Brücke-Museum, Berlin.

The painting displays six people around Jesus Christ, mocking on him. The suffering and pain of Christ is displayed by expressions of people around him in the painting. The hand movement of people mocking...

Suzanne Valadon

The Blue Room

The Blue Room is a self-portrait of Valadon. She is displayed inclined on a bed surrounded by blue sheets with floral patterns, with two closed books to the side. Valadon herself appears slightly overweight, lounging in what appear to be pajamas with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes face away from the viewer, as if lost in thought. Overall, Valadon appears quite at ease, with no sense of imminent danger. Painted in 1923, this was one of Valadon's later paintings in her life.

It higlights...

Vincent Van Gogh

Self Portrait

Gustave Caillebotte

Man at the Window

Young Man at His Window (French: Jeune homme à sa fenêtre) is a painting of 1875 by the French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894). The oil on canvas painting measures 117 by 82 centimetres (46 in × 32 in).

The painting depicts the artist's brother, René Caillebotte, wearing informal clothes and standing at a balcony. He is standing at a window from the family home in the Rue de Miromesnil in Paris, looking outwards into Boulevard de Malesherbes (the large, oblique cross-street in...

Leonardo Da Vinci

Vitruvian Man

Pablo Picasso

A boy with pipe

Rene Magritte

The seductive

The Seducer is a 1953 painting of Rene Magritte. It was created in Brussels, Belgium on surrealism style to depict Mature Period. The dimension of painting is 38 cm by 46 cm and is based on storyline of marina. The night effect has been prominently featured in this painting by use of dark blue and light blue color. The ocean and wave have created a strong impact in this artwork.

The painting portraits a marina in its story line when mature period has started expanding its presence after the...

Salvador Dali

Premonition of Civil War

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) is a painting by Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. Dali made this painting to represent the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Dali painted this work six months before the Spanish Civil War had even begun and then claimed that he had known the war was going to happen in order to appear to have prophet-like abilities due to "the prophetic power of his subconscious mind." Dali may have changed the name of the painting after the w...

Rene Magritte

The meaning of night

The Meaning of Night is a painting by Rene Magritte to represent the fear of night in human being. Rene Magritte painted this artwork in 1927 by use of Surrealism Style. It is painted by use Technique oil on canvas with Dimensions 139 cm by 105 cm and is housed at Menil Collection, Houston.

The Meaning of Night represents a story of individual who is followed by his own shadow where he see the soul of other. The story line revolves to display the fear of darkness of night in humans. It repr...

Pablo Picasso

Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

"Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler" (Spanish: Retrato de Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler) is a 1910 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso in the Analytical Cubism style. It was completed in 1910, and is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The artwork displays brown as its prominent color, with dimensions 100.5 cm × 73 cm.

The painting depicts Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who owned an art gallery in France. The artwork depicts the calm character and diversity of Kahnweiler by using se...

Vincent Van Gogh

Haystacks in Provence

Haystacks in Provence is a painting of 1888 by the Dutch Impressionist Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890). The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Post-Impressionism style with landscape Genre and it measures 73 by 92.5 centimeters. It is now housed at Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo. It portrays Vincent's identification with peasant life effectively reached at its high point in his pictures of harvest time in Provence. The powerful radiance of the yellow in these works which Vincent elevated to ...

Wassily Kandinsky

Composition VII

Composition VII is a painting of 1913 by the Russian Impressionist Wassily Kandinsky (1866– 1944). The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Abstract Art style with abstract painting and it measures 200 by 300 centimeters. It was created in Munich, Germany and now housed at The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Kandinsky completed the actual painting in less than four days. The oval seems almost the eye of a compositional hurricane, surrounded by swirling masses of color and form. Composition VII c...

Jean-Joseph Constant (Benjamin-Constant)

The Throne Room In Byzantium

August Macke

Woman in a Green Jacket

Reproduction of the German expressionist painter August Macke's Lady in the Green Jacket. The painting is probably regarded as one of Macke's best. In this case it has been executed in oils on canvass board with an inlaid mount under glass and a complimentary wooden frame.
This was originally completed by the artist during a stay at Lake Thun in 1913 and it shows an especially harmonious arrangement of form and a fine equilibration of colour. It measured 44cm x 43.5 cm and today it can be found ...

Wassily Kandinsky

Improvisation. Gorge

Improvization (Russian: Импровизация) is a painting of 1914 by the Russian Impressionist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944). The oil on canvas painting is a part of the Improvisations series and is drawn on abstract painting style and genre and it measures 97 by 98 centimeters. It is now housed at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. In this painting Kandinsky portraits a still drawing inspiration from the landscape. His experience of walking through a steep-sided gorge, using the ladder motif ...

Albrecht Durer

Young Hare

Young Hare (German: Feldhase) is a 1502 watercolour and bodycolour painting by German artist Albrecht Dürer. Painted in 1502 in his workshop, it is acknowledged as a masterpiece of observational art alongside his Great Piece of Turf from the following year. The subject is rendered with almost photographic accuracy, and although the piece is normally given the title Young Hare, the portrait is sufficiently detailed for the hare to be identified as a mature specimen — the German title translates a...

Edouard Manet

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere had a controversial placement at the Salon. This piece has scholars and critics debating even 100 years after it was painted, with its ambiguities in every detail. In the painting, a barmaid in the foreground stands behind a bar in the Folies-Berger, and was likely a prostitute, an occupation that the hall welcomed. Behind her is a mirror beholding the popular music hall, filled with a fashionable crowd mingling in the balcony. The mirror adds her pers...

Georges Braque

Mandola

Mandola (Irish: tenor mandola) is a 1910 oil painting by German artist Georges Braque. Painted in 1910 in France, it is acknowledged as a masterpiece of Georges Braque. The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Analytical Cubism style with still life genre and it measures 72 by 58 centimeters. It is now housed at Tate Gallery, London.

George Braque has interest in collecting musical instruments is reflected in this painting of a small lute called a mandora. Its fragmented style suggests a sens...

Vincent Van Gogh

Portrait of Patience Escalier

Portrait of Patience Escalier is a painting of 1888 by the Russian Impressionist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The oil on canvas painting is a part of the Improvisations series and is drawn on Post-Impressionism style and portrait genre and it measures 69 by 56 centimeters. It was painted in Arles-sur-tech, France and is in the private collection of Philip Niarchos. The painting was a result of Van Gogh's desire to paint an older peasant who resembled his father. Patience Escalier was a gardener...

Pieter Bruegel The Younger

The Battle between Lent and Carnival

Pieter Bruegel The Younger specialized in copying his father's works. The Battle of Carnival and Lent, the original of which is conserved in Vienna, is a very fine example of this. The subject matter can be found in medieval literature and plays.
In the foreground, two opposing processions, the one to the left led by the replete figure of Carnival and the one to the right by the haggard figure of Lent, are about to confront each other in a burlesque parody of a joust. Here, on either side of the...

Jean Antoine Watteau

Gilles

Gilles is a painting of 1719 by the French Artist Antoine Watteau (1853–1890). The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Rococo style and based on painting genre and it measures 184 by 149 centimeters. Watteau started painting it in 1718 and completed it in 1719. It is housed at Musée du Louvre, Paris. The painting represents a confused actor with slowly fading smile who appears to have forgotten his lines. Watteau has materialized into the fearful reality of existence, sporting as his only armor t...

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (Le Douanier)

Sleeping Gypsy

The Sleeping Gypsy (French: La Bohémienne endormie) is an 1897 oil painting by French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau. It is a fantastical depiction of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night. Rousseau first exhibited the painting at the 13th Salon des Indépendants, and tried unsuccessfully to sell it to the mayor of his hometown, Laval. Instead, it entered the private collection of a Parisian charcoal merchant where it remained until 1924, when it was discovered by the art critic Lou...

Vincent Van Gogh

The Potato Eaters

The Potato Eaters (Dutch: De Aardappeleters) is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh which he painted in April 1885 while in Nuenen, Netherlands. It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The version at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo is a preliminary oil sketch, and he also made a version as a lithograph. In 1885 van Gogh made several versions of the Potato Eaters.

During March and the beginning of April 1885 he sketched studies for the painting, and corresponded with hi...

Jean Frederic Bazille

Bathers (Summer Scene)

Scène d'été, or Summer Scene, is an oil painting by Frédéric Bazille, completed in 1869, a year before his death in 1870. The impressionist painting depicts young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the banks of a river near Méric. Bazille achieved the look he wanted for the painting by first drawing the human figures in his Paris studio and then transporting the drawings to the outdoor setting. Like his earlier painting Réunion de famille (1850), Scène d'été captured friends a...

Lucian Freud

Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait)

Freud’s Reflection with Two Children, composed in 1965, is a distorted self-portrait, created from the reflection Freud saw when looking down in a mirror he placed at his feet. The result is a strange, foreshortened perspective that has the quality of a spare interrogation room, with the single eye of the ceiling light lurking ominously overhead against the endless expanse of the blotched ceiling, and the expression of barely-patient disdain curling the inquisitor’s lips. Likewise distorted in ...

Pavel Filonov

Peasant Family

Peasant Family is a painting of 1914 by the French Artist Pavel Filonov (1883–1941). The ink painting is drawn on Analytical Realism style and based on religious painting genre. It is an earlier work by Filonov and is housed at Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. The painting represents a Peasant Family, also known as God Family. It illustrates one of the tenets of his “Ideology of Analytical Art” text, that states that the each time the brush makes contact with canvas, it records the inner psychica...

Claude Monet

Grainstack in the Morning, Snow Effect

Haystacks is a title of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The primary subjects of all of the paintings in the series are stacks of hay in the field after the harvest season. The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series (Wildenstein Index Number 1266-1290) begun in the end of summer of 1890 and continued through the following spring, using that year's harvest. The series is known for its thematic use of repetition to show differences in perception of light across ...

Pablo Picasso

Portrait of Maya with her doll

Maya with Doll (Maya a la Poupee) is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso. Created in 1938, the New York Times described it as "a colorful Cubist portrait of Picasso’s daughter as a child clutching a doll."

Robert Delaunay

The City of Paris

The City of Paris (French:La ville de Paris) is a painting of 1912 by the French Artist Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). The oil on canvas painting is drawn on orphism style and based on cityscape genre. Delaunay was diverted to abstraction and it is one of painting from the City of Paris series. In 1909, Delaunay began to paint a series of studies of the city of Paris and it was completed in 1912.

Vincent Van Gogh

Skull with Burning Cigarette

No doubt one of Van Gogh's most macabre works, Skull with Burning Cigarette is probably the most distinguished of his paintings from the Antwerp period.
It's likely that the work was painted from a skeleton in an anatomy class while Vincent was studying art. A sketch, Hanging Skeleton and Cat, from the same period would appear to confirm this. The work--a stark momento mori--was produced in a time when Van Gogh's health was poor (due to stomach ailments and rotting teeth) and may reflect Vincent...

Sandro Botticelli

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus (Italian: Nascita di Venere) is a 1486 painting by Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli was commissioned to paint the work by the Medici family of Florence, specifically Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici under the influence of his cousin Lorenzo de' Medici, close friend to Botticelli . It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (which is related to the Venus Anadyomene motif).The painting is on display at the Uffizi G...

Matthias Grünewald

The Mocking of Christ

Grünewald's earliest datable work is the Mocking of Christ, a colourful, vehemently expressive painting demonstrating his ability to create dazzling light effects. The painting depicts Christ blindfolded and being beaten by a band of grotesque men. The figures are thick-bodied, soft, and fleshy, done in a manner suggestive of the Italian High Renaissance. Elements of the work also show Grünewald's assimilation of Dürer, specifically his Apocalypse series. Different from High Renaissance idealism...

Vincent Van Gogh

The Street, the Yellow House

The Yellow House is the title generally given to an oil painting by the 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painterVincent van Gogh.
This title refers to the right wing of the building, 2, Place Lamartine, Arles, France, the house where, on May 1, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh rented four rooms, two large ones on the ground floor to serve as atelier and kitchen, and, on the first floor, two smaller ones facing Place Lamartine. The window on the first floor near the corner with both shutters open is t...

Edvard Munch

Near the bed of death (fever)

Near the Bed of Death is an expressionism style painting of 1915 by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944). It is drawn on board by use of pastel technique and based on painting genre and it measures 60 by 80 centimeters. The painting resembles an ill man lying on bed in fever and is supposed to leave his soul. The people around him are praying to god. It express pain and suffering of human being which they face when close to death. The bed of ill man is represented as Bed of Death in the pa...

Gustave Caillebotte

Paris street, Rainy Day

In his masterpiece, Paris Street; Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte brought an unusual monumentality and compositional control to a typical Impressionist subject, the new boulevards that were changing the Paris cityscape. The result is at once real and contrived, casual and choreographed. With its curiously detached figures, the canvas depicts the anonymity that the boulevards seemed to create.
The painting shows the view from the eastern side of the rue de Turin, looking north towards the Place de...

Marc Chagall

I and the Village

I and the Village is a 1911 painting by the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall. It is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.The work contains many soft, dreamlike images overlapping one another in a continuous space. In the foreground, a cap-wearing green-faced man stares at a goat or sheep with the image of a smaller goat being milked on its cheek. In the foreground is a glowing tree held in the man's dark hand. The background features a collection of houses next to an Orthodox church...

Vincent Van Gogh

Young Man with Cornflower

Young Man with Cornflower is 1890 painting of Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. The painting was completed in June, 1890 in Auvers. The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Post-Impressionism style and based on portrait genre and it measures 39 by 30.5 centimeters. It is now in a private collection.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Five Bathing Women at a Lake

Five Bathing at a Lake (Deutsch: Fünf badende am See) is a painting by the German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938). It is made on nude painting genre and expressionism style. The classic painting of Kirchner displays physicality a group of five women bathing at a lake, one with towel and one with mirror in her hand.

Rene Magritte

False Mirror

The False Mirror is an allegorical painting done by Mr. Magritte in the Surrealist art form during his Surrealist period in Paris. The style of this type of art work has also been referred to as “magical realism.” It was completed in 1928. The use of this particular body part is telling in that it seems to be challenging the viewer to question whether what they are seeing corresponds with what they think they know. Magritte surprises us immediately by removing the eyes’ pupil from its usual loc...

Georgios Jakobides

First Steps

First Steps (Greek: Τα πρώτα βήματα) is an 1893 oil painting by Georgios Jakobides, one of the main representatives of the Greek artistic movement of the Munich School. It was completed in 1892 and painted on Realism style on painting genre. The painting shows a grandmother helping her granddaughter for her first steps. It also features an elder sister watching her younger sister's first steps.

Salvador Dali

Cubist Self-portrait

Cubist Self Portrait is an 1926 oil painting by Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, best known for the striking and bizarre images. The oil on canvas painting is drawn on Cubism style and based on self-portrait genre and is now housed at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. The painting represents self portrait of Salvador Dalí drwan on cubism style with use of brown, black, yellow, blue and red color.

Jan Vermeer

The Astronomer

The Astronomer is a painting finished about 1668 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is on display at the Louvre, Paris.Portrayals of scientists were a favourite topic in 17th century Dutch painting and Vermeer's oeuvre includes both this astronomer and the slightly later The Geographer. Both are believed to portray the same man,possibly Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.The astronomer's profession is shown by the celestial globe (version by Jodocus Hondius) and the book on the table. Symbolically, ...

Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2

Marcel Duchamp made a scandalous scene when Nude Descending a Staircase was presented as a cubist painting. The image depicts an abstract dynamic motion of a figure marked by lines, cylindrical and conical shapes. The arcs of the dotted lines may suggest a thrusting pelvic motion. The dark outlines serve as motion lines, emphasizing the movement while the shattered geometric shapes in the lower corner suggest the stairs. Duchamp was interested in expanding the perception of a moving body at the ...

Albrecht Durer

Christ Among the Doctors

Christ among the Doctors is an oil painting by Albrecht Dürer, dating to 1506, now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid,Spain. The work dates to Dürer's sojourn in Venice, and was executed (according to the inscription Opus Quinque Dierum, meaning "Made in five days") hastily while he was working at the Feast of the Rosary altarpiece.
According to some sources, it could have been gifted to painter Giovanni Bellini. In the latter's house it was perhaps seen byLorenzo Lotto, who used one of the...

Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait with Monkeys

This is the self-portrait in which Frida includes her pet monkeys. This painting was produced during her most prolific period, the early 1940s, in which she created several self-portraits. The background is one of tropical plants which is a common background theme used in many of her paintings.
In this self-portrait Frida may be portraying herself in an academic setting. In the year this self-portrait was painted, Frida accepted a teaching position at the School of Painting and Sculpture in Mexi...

Gustav Klimt

Bildnis Fritza Riedler, 1906 - Österreichische Galerie, Vienna

Fritza Riedler is one of the early portraits of Gustav Klimt. Society underwent dramatic changes at the turn of the century. Klimt's portraits of females give an indication of the emergence of an increasingly confident middle class. His 1898 portrait of Sonja Knips elevated him to the role of portraitist of a well-heeled Viennese bourgeoisie. His likenesses of Fritza Riedler and Adele Bloch-Bauer (one of the most expensive paintings in the world) have lost nothing of their appeal to this day. Li...

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi)

The Musicians

Trained in Lombardy, Caravaggio moved in 1592 or 1593 to Rome, where he initially made his reputation with a number of realistic paintings of half-length figures. This picture dates from about 1595 and was painted for his first great patron, Cardinal Francesco del Monte. Although it was described by contemporaries as "una musica" (a music piece), it is an allegory of music. Cupid, "who is always in the company of music" (Vasari), is shown at left with a bunch of grapes, "because music was invent...

Leonardo Da Vinci

Lady with an Ermine

Leonardo Da Vinci painted “The Lady with the Ermine” on a wooden panel in oils. To Italy, for the era in which this was painted, oil paint as a medium was quite new. By the 1470s, this style got properly introduced. Cecilia Gallerani was recognized in this painting as the sitter. Ludovico Sforza, who was Leonardo’s employer, had kept her as his mistress who was also referred to as “The Moor”.

Cecilia was aged sixteen at the time this was painted. Not belonging to the wealthy class, her fami...

Arshile Gorky

The Liver is the Cock's Comb

This painting contains many veiled references to Gorky's life and history, while it simultaneously creates visual puns and double meanings that function on many levels. The liver is often referred to in ancient texts as the center for passion, instead of the heart. The "cock's comb" is both the headdress, and a kind of feathered genitalia for the figure on the right, becoming a dual sign of the mind and body, both of which are incorporated in the process of painting. The vanity of the headdress ...

Vincent Van Gogh

Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe

Painting himself, in January of 1889, Vincent records the injury he caused to his ear. His Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe is now part of the Niarchos Collection.