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Post your thoughts about the reading. Try to identify what made you think, what you struggled with, and what you'll take away from the reading. Then reply to two other students.

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A boggle-eyed pagan god feasts on the headless carcass of his own son. A humanoid billy goat in a monkish cassock bleats a satanic sermon to a gasping congregation of witches. A desperately expressive little dog appears to plead for rescue, submerged up to its neck in a mud-coloured mire beneath a gloomy, void-like firmament of negative space.

"Well, these are quite a pick-me-up," remarks one visitor to Madrid's Prado museum, as his group moves quickly past the Black Paintings of Francisco de Goya. I have overheard that kind of thing many times in this room: a jokey, defensive sort of irony in response to the spectacular weirdness and bleakness of these 14 images.

My flat is close to the Prado and I go there a lot on weekday evenings, when admission is free for the last two hours. I've been known to spend the whole time just looking at the dog (or The Drowning Dog, to use the title it is given here), because I tend to feel the same way as artist and writer Antonio Saura, who called it "the world's most beautiful picture".

Throughout 2019, the museum is celebrating its bicentennial with high-profile events, including an exhibition of Goya's drawings spanning his career, from early student sketches in Italy to the last lithographs he made in France. The Black Paintings also turn 200 this year, if only approximately. None of them was dated, signed or formally named by the artist, who never spoke or wrote about them as far as we know, and never intended them to be seen by the public.

Like some phantasmagorical form of interior design, they were painted directly on to the walls of the farmhouse just outside Madrid that Goya bought in 1819. He was 73, ancient by the standards of the day, and alienated from the Spanish royal court where he had painted for half of his life. By this time, he had also been profoundly deaf for decades. Over the next few years, Goya conjured face-melting visions in dark oils and projected them on the plaster - wrapping hallways, staircases and living spaces in hellacious murals for his own contemplation.

Almost half a century after his death in 1828, they were stripped out by Baron Frédéric Émile d'Erlanger, who bought the place and had the pictures transferred to canvas by restorer Salvador Martínez Cubells. Badly damaged, and partly repainted in the process, they were shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878, where the British critic PG Hamerton took against them with true Victorian opprobrium, casting Goya as a "hyena" and these scenes as emanations from "a hideous inferno ... a disgusting region ... shapeless as chaos".

Today, Goya is held up as one of the three pillars of the Prado's permanent collection, along with his idol Diego Velázquez and Peter Paul Rubens. His work is said to form a bridge between those old masters and the great moderns, prophesying expressionism and surrealism, which doesn't make them any easier on the eye.

I don't think I've ever seen a visitor whose expression hasn't changed. Even a yawning teenager will wake up when they see them

"Some people can hardly even look at them," says Teresa Vega, an art historian who leads guided tours in the museum and leaves that room for last. "I've had plenty of clients who didn't like them at all. But when they walk in, they are always surprised. I don't think I've ever seen a visitor whose expression hasn't changed. Even a yawning teenager will wake up when they see them."

It is not Vega's job to tell visitors what a painting means, though with other masterpieces she can point them in the right direction by way of context. Confronted with a Goya horror show, such as Saturn Devouring His Son, she can only cite the Greek myth it draws on and invite the group to look into the mad eyes of the main figure. To her, these suggest "not evil, but a kind of shock at his own monstrousness".

These pictures have been so studied, says Vega, that they have been almost overanalysed. "And still, today, none of us can claim, 'I have it, I understand them.' Their mystery makes them very appealing, but also very disturbing." The various schools of thought around the Black Paintings include no end of psychiatric and pathological readings, many focused on the unknown, life-threatening illness that Goya suffered shortly before creating them.

Might their feverish intensity be somehow symptomatic of the eastern plague, viral encephalitis, a series of mini-strokes, cumulative lead poisoning by his own paint-making materials, or possibly a bout of paranoid dementia? Alternative interpretations lean more heavily on biography, proposing that Goya's world view was darkened by the famine, poverty and cruelty he witnessed (and sketched) during the Peninsular war between Napoleon and Bourbon Spain; by the restoration of King Ferdinand VII and the denial of the new, enlightened country that was promised by the Spanish constitution of 1812.

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Strange encounter ... a guide initiates another Prado tour group in the Black Paintings. Photograph: David Pearson/Alamy

Manuela Mena sees none of this when she looks at the Black Paintings. The Prado's former deputy director for conservation and research, she became the in-house Goya specialist some 30 years ago, believing a more scientific approach was needed. Part of her work involves parsing out the many pictures falsely attributed to him - including The Colossus, a once-major museum holding subsequently credited to a "follower of Goya". More broadly, Mena is concerned with what can and cannot be said for certain about Goya's life and work. She is "quite sure" that he painted the walls - when, for example, in 2003, Professor Juan José Junquera advanced a theory that he couldn't have.

"Goya's hand is there," Mena says. "The strokes, the strength and the light, which is the main thing. His technique, his way of thinking." Knowing him as well as anyone now living, she finds it "difficult to agree" with scholars who present the Black Paintings as a showcase for the artist's political despondency, or his existential, edge-of-death despair. "All you hear about these pictures is how he was crazy, melancholic, pessimistic when he made them. But he was actually an optimist with a great sense of humour, very rational and very clear in his mind, right to the end of his life."

The available documentary evidence makes for a nuanced character study. Goya was a country boy from Aragon who rose to the highest rank of any Spanish artist. A social climber who maintained a distaste for aristocrats. A man of the people with a loathing of the mob. A painter of luminous royal portraits and ethereal chapel frescoes who also made a worldly series of prints that he called Los Caprichos, satirising "the foibles and follies to be found in any civilised society".

In those etchings and engravings, Goya used grotesques to illustrate his themes: witches, demons and goblins are metaphors for violence, ignorance, blind superstition. "The sleep of reason produces monsters," he wrote beneath one of the most emblematic images. Mena believes the Black Paintings to be mockeries in the same spirit - cartoons he drew around himself as if the walls were "big sheets of paper". Which is to say, she finds them funny.

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Two Old Men Eating Soup (The Witchy Brew) by Goya. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

Two Old Men Eating Soup, for example, seems to her a kind of joke about greed. One of the men is practically a skeleton, already dead and decomposing, but still "eating like crazy, trying to get all he can". She says: "Look at the expressions on the faces in these paintings, how each is a different personality. They're not real, they're caricatures, but they show Goya's deep interest in human beings, in what we do and why. He was almost like a writer in a way, learning the worst about people and laughing about it in his work."

Here was an artist operating in his own space and time, not communicating anything to anyone, expressing himself to himself alone

The laughter I hear in the gallery this evening sounds nervous, incredulous. Nobody knows how to respond to these paintings. Even an expert like Mena can't really tell them. Here was an artist operating in his own space and time, not communicating anything to anyone, expressing himself to himself alone. The results remain as personal, indelible and insoluble as dreams, which may be the very thing that makes them so strangely familiar.

I look at the howling mouths of the marching peasants in The Pilgrimage to San Isidro and wonder how they sounded to Goya, who hadn't heard a thing for 25 years when he painted it. But I also think of refugees at a border, 200 years later.

And I keep coming back to The Drowning Dog, which is funny only in the sense that it makes me cry in public. What long-dead pet served as Goya's model? The artist loved dogs and wrote about them often in his letters. It reminds me of my own dog, now old and grey around the snout. How long do we have left together? I look at this painting and I see in that poor animal our condition in general, and our historical moment in particular. I'm the dog and you're the dog, our heads held just above a dark, rising tide.

* Museo del Prado 1819-2019: A Place of Memory runs in Madrid until 3 October.
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Goya's Black Paintings: 'Some people can hardly even look at them'

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A boggle-eyed pagan god feasts on the headless carcass of his own son. A humanoid billy goat in a monkish cassock bleats a satanic sermon to a gasping congregation of witches. A desperately expressive little dog appears to plead for rescue, submerged up to its neck in a mud-coloured mire beneath a gloomy, void-like firmament of negative space.

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Summary of Egon Schiele

With his signature graphic style, embrace of figural distortion, and bold defiance of conventional norms of beauty, Egon Schiele was one of the leading figures of Austrian Expressionism. His portraits and self-portraits, searing explorations of their sitters' psyches and sexuality, are among the most remarkable of the 20 th century. The artist, who was astoundingly prolific during his brief career, is famous not only for his psychologically and erotically charged works, but for his intriguing biography: his licentious lifestyle marked by scandal, notoriety, and a tragically early death of influenza at age twenty-eight, three days after the death of his pregnant wife, and at a time when he was on the verge of the commercial success that had eluded him for much of his career.

Accomplishments

Schiele's portraits and self-portraits helped re-establish the vitality of both genres with their unprecedented level of emotional and sexual directness and use of figural distortion in place of conventional notions of beauty. Frequently depicting himself or those close to him, Schiele's portraits often present their sitters in the nude, posed in revealing, unsettling angles-frequently viewed from above-and devoid of secondary attributes often depicted in the portrait genre. At times, Schiele used traditional motifs, giving the intensely personal images a more general, allegorical statement on the human condition.

Creating some three thousand drawings over the course of his brief career, Schiele was both an extraordinarily prolific and unparalleled draughtsman. He regarded drawing as his primary art form, appreciating it for its immediacy of expression, and produced some of the finest examples of drawing in the 20th century. Even his painterly oeuvre revealed a style that captured some of drawing's essential characteristics, with its emphasis on contour, graphic mark, and linearity.

Painter Gustav Klimt was the primary influence on Schiele's development, serving as Schiele's friend and mentor. While Schiele inherited Klimt's focus on erotic images of the female form (and shared Klimt's insatiable sexual appetite), the emotionally intense, often unsettling Expressionist idiom Schiele eventually developed, with its investigation of his sitters' inner life and emotional states, in some ways directly opposed his mentor's Art Nouveau-inspired style, with Klimt preferring a more brilliant palette and glimmering, patterned surfaces.

The Life of Egon Schiele

To counter what he called, "a mourning world," Egon Schiele put his faith in art that "could only stem from intimacy," as he uniquely combined torment and eroticism in his Expressionistic works.

Important Art by Egon Schiele

Portrait of Gerti Schiele

This is one of Schiele's many portraits of his younger sister, Gerti, the artist's favorite model during his early career and the member of his family with whom he was the closest. Painted when Gerti was a teenager, this early portrait demonstrates both the strong stylistic link between Schiele's work and that of Klimt, as well as the shift away from the style of his mentor. In her pose and adornment composed from a series of flat patches with gold and silver accents, Gerti's figure is reminiscent of Klimt's works such as Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907). But unlike the Klimtian predecessor, the image is not so much decorative as static and soft, as if Schiele were casting his sitter in clay. In addition, Schiele replaced Klimt's richly shimmering, gold-dominated palette with more muted colors, creating an image that appears dried-out, suggestive of decay rather than growth.

Oil, silver, gold-bronze paint, and pencil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Self-Portrait

Schiele's self-portraits are extraordinary not only for the frequency with which the artist depicted himself, but for the manner in which he did so: eroticized depictions where he often appears in the nude, in highly revealing poses-male self-portraits virtually unparalleled in the history of Western art. In this drawing, the artist has created an intense and almost frightening vision of himself: emaciated, with glowing red eyes, legs deformed and footless, his body fully exposed, yet with his face partially hidden, perhaps suggesting a sense of shame, and in a twisting pose indebted, as many writers have suggested, to the important influence of modern dance. Characteristic of the Expressionist mode that Schiele was increasingly practicing at this time, he expresses his anxiety through line and contour, and flesh that appears abraded and subjected to harsh elements.

Black chalk, watercolor and gouache on paper - Leopold Museum, Vienna

Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant

This is perhaps Schiele's most celebrated self-portrait, and certainly the most storied. In this work, painted during a time in which he was participating in numerous exhibitions, Schiele gazes directly at the viewer, his expression suggesting a confidence in his artistic gifts. Although Schiele deploys less distortion than in other self-portraits, the painting refuses to idealize its subject, featuring scars and other lines characteristic of the contoured manner of the artist's drawing style.

Exhibited in Munich in 1912 alongside work by a number of other Expressionist artists, the painting has a companion portrait depicting his lover at the time, Wally Neuzil (the Wally portrait was stolen by the Nazis from the home of a Jewish Austrian, only to be returned to Vienna in 2010 following a prolonged, twelve-year legal battle). It now serves as a "poster child" for the Leopold Museum in Vienna, which houses the largest Schiele collection in the world.

Oil on canvas - Leopold Museum, Vienna

Hermits

This rare double portrait, among the most allegorical works in Schiele's oeuvre, shows Schiele and Klimt standing together, nearly as one. As close as the two men were, and for all their similarities, Schiele spent much of his career seeking to break free of Klimt's influence. In Hermits, both men wear their signature long black caftans, an item of clothing for which Klimt was known, and which Schiele appropriated for his own work, perhaps in tribute. Never one for modesty, Schiele positions Klimt in the background, blind and mostly hidden, as if being consumed by the younger artist. The resulting form evokes the image of a single dark figure, indicating the confident successor Schiele assuming the mantel of the old master. The hermit motif also evokes Schiele's existential conception of the artist as a figure existing at the margins of society.

Oil on canvas - The Leopold Museum, Vienna

Death and the Maiden

In this painting, one of Schiele's most complex and haunting works, the female figure, gaunt and tattered, clings to the male figure of death, while surrounded by an equally tattered, quasi-surreal landscape. As elsewhere in his work, in this composition Schiele combines the personal and the allegorical-in this case by turning to a theme deriving from the medieval concept of the Dance of Death that reached its height in 15 th-century German art. Death and the Maiden was painted around the time Schiele separated from his longtime lover, Wally Neuzil, and several months before he married his new lover, Edith Harms. The painting memorializes the end of his affair with Neuzil, seemingly conveying this separation as the death of true love. Interestingly enough, the manner in which Schiele's figures are nearly consumed by their clothing and abstracted surroundings suggests the portraiture of Klimt, who likewise placed his subjects within indecipherable environments.

Oil on canvas - Osterreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Austria

Town among Greenery (The Old City III)

Although his art centered on the human figure, Schiele-who had occasion to travel throughout Europe during his career-was also drawn to the land and cities. In fact, the artist's paintings of the countryside and his native Vienna comprise a significant portion of his work. This painting was inspired in part by his mother's hometown, Krumau, where he lived briefly in 1911. Schiele's landscapes-although often devoid of people-contain fascinating parallels with his figural work. His frequent use of a bird's-eye perspective in his landscapes calls to mind one of the most radical elements of his portraiture: his tendency to depict his sitters from above. This canvas contains other characteristic elements of Schiele's idiom as well, most notably, his use of boldly outlined and sharp contours. What causes this work to stand apart from his portrait work is the artist's use of and range of color, something for which Schiele was not known.

Oil on canvas - The Neue Galerie, New York

Biography of Egon Schiele

Childhood

Egon Schiele was born into modest means in Tulln an der Donau ("on the Danube"), a small but vibrant Austrian town also known as Blumenstadt, or "city of flowers." He was the third child born to Adolf Schiele, who worked as a stationmaster for the Austrian State Railways, and Marie Soukupova, who originally hailed from the Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov (Krumau), now the site of the Egon Schiele Art Centrum, a museum dedicated primarily to the artist's work. Schiele had two older sisters, Melanie and Elvira, the former of whom often modeled for Schiele and eventually married Schiele's close friend, the painter Anton Peschka. Schiele also had a younger sister, Gerti (Gertrude), with whom he was very close, with some accounts calling the relationship incenstuous.

Although Schiele was never a prolific student, one of his primary school arts instructors recognized a natural gift for draughtsmanship in Schiele and encouraged him to pursue formal training. Following his father's death from syphilis, and having been placed under the guardianship of his uncle and godfather, Leopold Czihaczek, in 1906 Schiele enrolled in Vienna's Akademie der bildenden Kunste (Academy of Fine Arts), which Gustav Klimt had also attended.

Early Training

In 1907, Schiele sought out Klimt, whose work he already greatly admired, and the two quickly formed a mentor-mentee relationship that would have a major impact on the young artist's early development. Klimt not only exerted his influence over Schiele in the studio, but also in introducing Schiele to patrons, models, and the work of other artists-such as Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Jan Toorop-about whom Schiele, despite being a devoted art student, had little occasion to learn, given Vienna's relative isolation from European avant-garde movements during this time. Through Klimt, Schiele was also introduced to the Wiener Werkstätte, the arts and crafts workshops of the Vienna Secession, a movement that had close ties to other modern art styles of the period.

In 1908, when Schiele was eighteen, he participated in his first exhibition, a group showing in Klosterneuburg, a small town to the north of Vienna. The following year, Schiele and a few fellow students left the Academy in protest, citing the school's conservative teaching methods and its failure to embrace more forward-thinking artistic practices that were sweeping through Europe. As part of this rebellion, Schiele founded the Neuekunstgruppe (New Art Group), composed of other young, dissatisfied artists defecting from the Academy.

The new group didn't waste any time, holding several public exhibitions throughout Vienna, all the while Schiele was exploring new modes of painterly expression, favoring distortions and jagged contours of form and a more somber palette than that of the more decorative and ornate Art Nouveau style. Essentially, Schiele was gradually distancing himself from the style popularized by Klimt, although the two men would remain close until Klimt's death in early 1918. If the content of Schiele's work is any indication, it appears that the mentor and mentee shared an insatiable appetite for women.

Mature Period

Shortly after forming the Neuekunstgruppe, Schiele began enjoying modest success as a painter and draughtsman, and in 1911 he had his first solo exhibition, at Vienna's Galerie Miethke, where the artist's increasing penchant for self-portraiture and sexualized-often approaching lewd-studies of young women were on display. While Schiele's work scandalized Viennese society, at the same time he sold many of his explicit images to private collectors, as he wrote, "Doing an awful lot of advertising with my prohibited drawings," when five newspapers critiqued his work. Schiele's early studies were also controversial for his use of children as nude models and for showing pubescent girls in implicitly erotic situations, as seen in his Nude Girls Reclining (1911) where two pubescent girls are depicted as if after an erotic encounter. That same year, Schiele lived briefly in his mother's hometown of Krumau in Southern Bohemia, where his practice of having young children visit his studio attracted disapproval from the local townspeople.

The following year was a crucial one for Schiele, both personally and artistically. In addition to participating in a number of group exhibitions-in Budapest, Cologne, and Vienna-Schiele was invited by Galerie Hans Goltz in Munich to show his work alongside members of the Der Blaue Reiter group of Expressionists, which included Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Alexej von Jawlensky. Among Schiele's works at this time was his most famous Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant (1912), a captivating study of the artist, his face and other features replete with lines, scars, and subtle deformities. The Goltz show provided Schiele with his greatest exposure to date, revealing his rich use of personal symbolism and dark allegory to the public.

Also in 1912, while living in the Austrian town of Neulengbach, Schiele was arrested at his studio and imprisoned for twenty-four days, accused of the kidnapping and rape of a twelve-year-old girl (as in Krumau, Schiele's studio had become a gathering place for many of the town's children, attracting outrage from local residents). These charges were eventually dropped, and he was convicted of exposing children to erotic images. The police had confiscated 125 of his "degenerate" works, and in a symbolic gesture, the judge burnt one of his drawings in the courtroom (the work, showing a young girl nude from the waist down, had previously been displayed on his studio wall). The incident had a noted impact on Schiele, as he subsequently ceased his practice of using children as models, although the morbidity and sexual explicitness of his work - particularly in his drawings - appears to have increased following his release from prison.

Later Years and Death

Nonetheless, even though World War I loomed, his career flourished as he returned to Vienna. In 1913 he held his first solo exhibition in Munich and in 1914 a solo show in Paris. His personal life also took a turn, when 1915 he wrote to a friend, "I intend to get married, advantageously," and proposed to Edith Harms, a young woman of good social standing. Though he hoped to continue his relationship with Wally Neuzil, she left him upon news of his engagement, a loss powerfully expressed in Death and the Maiden (1915).

Schiele was eventually conscripted into military service four days after his marriage. However, he never saw any real combat throughout the war's duration, and instead was allowed to continue practicing his art and exhibiting wherever he was stationed. Inspired by his wartime travels, Schiele produced a number of land- and cityscapes around this time, devoid of the artist's usual exaggerated contours.

By 1917, Schiele was back in Vienna and hard at work. That same year, he and Klimt co-founded the city's Kunsthalle (Art Hall), a new exhibition space designed to encourage Austrian artists to remain in their homeland. The following year, both poignant success and tragedy visited the artist in many forms. In February, a stroke and pneumonia claimed the life of his mentor and friend, Klimt. Just one month later, the Vienna Secession held its forty-ninth annual exhibition and devoted the main exhibition space to Schiele's work, making the affair a great commercial success. In October, his wife, Edith, six months pregnant, succumbed to the Spanish flu pandemic sweeping through Europe at the time, which claimed Schiele's life just three days later, dying at age twenty-eight. In the three days between their respective deaths, Schiele produced a number of sketches of his late wife.

The Legacy of Egon Schiele

Despite Egon Schiele's short life, the artist produced an astonishing number of works on canvas and paper. He was instrumental in formulating the character of early-20 th-century Expressionism, characterized by the use of irregular contours, an often somber palette, and frequently dark symbolism. Unlike his mentor, Klimt, with whom Schiele's name remains most commonly associated, he produced a great number of self-portraits, suggesting a preoccupation with the self on a par with the likes of Picasso. Schiele's aesthetic greatly influenced both Expressionist contemporaries like Oskar Kokoschka, as well as Neo-Expressionist successors as varied as Francis Bacon, Julian Schnabel, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Egon Schiele

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Egon Schiele embraced figural distortion, and boldly defied convention. His portraits are searing explorations of sexuality and the psyche.

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Édouard Manet-the eldest son of an official in the French Ministry of Justice-had early hopes of becoming a naval officer. After twice failing the training school's entrance exam, the teenager instead went to Paris to pursue a career in the arts. There he studied with Thomas Couture and diligently copied works at the Musée du Louvre.

The biennial (and later, annual) Paris Salons were considered the most expedient way for an artist to make himself known to the public, and Manet submitted paintings to Salon juries throughout his career. In 1861, at the age of twenty-nine, he was awarded the Salon's honorable mention for The Spanish Singer ( 49.58.2). His hopes for continued early success were dashed at the subsequent Salon of 1863. That year, more than half of the submissions to the official Salon were rejected, including Manet's own. To staunch public outcry, Napoleon III ordered the formation of a Salon des Refusés. Manet exhibited three paintings, including the scandalous Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The public professed to be shocked by the subject of a nude woman blithely enjoying a picnic in the company of two fully clothed men, while a second, scantily clad woman bathes in a stream. While critics recognized that this scene of modern-day debauchery was, to a certain degree, an updated version of Titian's Concert champêtre (a work then thought to be by Giorgione; Musée du Louvre, Paris), they ruthlessly attacked Manet's painting style.

Manet's submissions to the Salon of 1864 were again condemned by critics, who found errors of perspective in his Incident at a Bullfight (fragments of which are now at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Frick Collection, New York) and a lack of decorum in The Dead Christ with Angels ( 29.100.51). The latter picture, in particular, was denounced for its realistic touches, such as the cadaverous body of Christ and the seemingly human angels. It was argued that the painting lacked any sense of spirituality; the figure of the battered Christ was said to more closely resemble the body of a dead coal miner than the son of God.

Despite his efforts, Manet's modern scenes remained a target of criticism throughout the decade. (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) was considered the most shocking work in the 1865 Salon. Its debt to Titian's Venus of Urbino (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence) only accentuated the wide gulf of public opinion vis-à-vis a reclining nude woman as subject matter: a goddess was perfectly acceptable, but a contemporary prostitute awaiting her client was not.

Dejected by the critical response to his art, Manet traveled to Spain in August 1865. His interest in Spanish culture already had been apparent for years, with paintings such as The Spanish Singer, Mademoiselle V..., and Young Man in the Costume of a Majo. He garbed his studio models in Andalusian costumes and outfitted them with Spanish props, often in fanciful ways. For example, the left-handed model of The Spanish Singer ( 49.58.2) presses on nonexistent chords of a guitar strung for a right-handed player. A stereotypical Spanish still life rests next to his espadrille-clad feet. Similarly, Victorine Meurent, the female model of Mademoiselle V... ( 29.100.53), is shown wearing men's clothes, as well as shoes that are impractical for a bullfighting ring. Stylistically, many of these paintings reveal a clear debt to the art of Velázquez and Goya.

After being rejected from the Salon of 1866 and learning that he was to be excluded from the Exposition Universelle of 1867 as well, Manet grew anxious to find an audience for his art. He used his inheritance to construct a pavilion across the street from one of the entrances to the Exposition Universelle. Inside were fifty of his pictures, including several large works now in the Metropolitan's collection: A Matador ( 29.100.52) and Young Lady in 1866 (Woman with a Parrot) ( 89.21.3). Earlier that year, the artist's first champion, Émile Zola, had published a lengthy and glowing article about Manet. "The future is his," Zola proclaimed. He insisted that the much-maligned Déjeuner sur l'herbe (which was included in Manet's 1867 exhibition) would one day hang in the Louvre. Zola proved prophetic; it took almost seventy years, but the painting entered the collection of the Louvre (now Musée d'Orsay) in 1934.

By all accounts, the sociable Manet was on good terms with many of his peers. He had met Edgar Degas in 1859, when they both copied paintings at the Louvre; he befriended Berthe Morisot, who eventually married his younger brother; and he spoke with countless others during the now-famous evening gatherings at the Café Guerbois. His first encounter with Claude Monet was strained due to Manet's belief that Monet was copying his style in "despicable pastiches," then signing them with a signature too close to Manet's own. After the confusion was cleared, the men became close, as is obvious in a work such as The Monet Family ( 1976.201.14). Boating ( 29.100.115), also painted during the summer of 1874, records a moment when Manet, Monet, and Auguste Renoir painted together at Argenteuil, a suburb northwest of Paris. That spring, Degas, Monet, and Morisot were among the artists who exhibited together as the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs (an event more commonly referred to as the first Impressionist exhibition). Manet declined invitations to participate in this or any of the seven subsequent exhibitions organized by the group. They nonetheless influenced one another and shared an interest in modern subjects, plein-air painting, bright colors (often purchased ready-made, in tube form), and visually arresting cropping (inspired by both photographs and Japanese prints).

When Manet's health began to deteriorate toward the end of the decade, he was advised to take a cure at Bellevue. In the summer of 1880, he rented a villa in that Parisian suburb, and he painted his last portrait of his wife, the Dutch-born pianist Suzanne Leenhoff, in the villa's garden ( 1997.391.4). The following spring, he won a second-class medal at the Salon for his portrait of Henri Rochefort (Kunsthalle, Hamburg), and in the fall he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He continued to work until his premature death in April 1883.

Within a year, a posthumous exhibition of 179 of his paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints was organized at the École des Beaux-Arts, the officially sanctioned art school. At least one critic commented on the irony of the location for an artist whose works had been ridiculed and refused by so many Salon juries. It seems unlikely that Manet would have minded. He himself wrote that he had "no intention of overthrowing old methods of painting, or creating new ones." The critic Louis Gonse viewed things slightly differently. "Manet is a point of departure, the symptomatic precursor of a revolution," he wrote. To this day, Manet is still considered by many art historians to be the father of modernism.

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Édouard Manet (1832-1883) | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Despite his efforts, Manet's modern scenes remained a target of criticism.

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William Blake was an English painter born on 28 November 1757 in London, United Kingdom. Blake exhibited artistic tendencies from a young age and was encouraged by his parents. At ten, he enrolled at the Henry Par drawing academy before apprenticing under engraver James Basire. In 1778, Blake started studying at the Royal Academy but quit shortly after due to the strict doctrines of the academy.

Subsequently, Blake began work as a commercial engraver and painter, receiving commissions from prominent individuals such as Thomas Butts. However, Blake's period of success and popularity was tainted by his bouts of hallucination, and many considered him insane. In 1818, Blake met John Linell, whose patronage resuscitated his finances and led him to associate with The Ancients group.

The Ancients was a group of artists who admired Blake's works and methods. Toward the end of his life, Blake became a mentor and respected figure in the group. Before he died on 12 August 1827, Dante was commissioned to make a series of illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, showcasing his expertise even in his later years.

What was William Blake Known For?

William Blake was known for his imaginative and creative works featuring religious and biblical themes. Blake also famously infused literary concepts in his artworks and depicted subjects from the books and poems of famous authors and poets. Blake's preferred mediums are watercolor, ink, and pen.

Who was William Blake Influenced By?

William Blake was influenced by Renaissance artists Michelangelo, Raphael, Albrecht Durer, and James Basire. Blake, carrying an interest in literature and poetry from childhood, studied the works of Renaissance artists and was especially drawn to the Gothic themes employed in them.

What Art Movement was William Blake Associated With?

William Blake was associated with the Romanticism art movement.

William Blake Artwork

Below are some of the artworks of William Blake

Antaeus setting down Dante and Virgil in the last circle of hell

Beatrice addressing Dante from the Car

Job and his daughters

Nebuchadnezzar

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing

Satan Calling Up his Legions

Satan smiting Job with boils

The Ancient of Days

The Body of Abel Found by Adam & Eve

The Ghost of a Flea

The Goblin

The Lovers Whirlwind

The parable of the wise and foolish virgins

The Spirit of Plato

The Sun at His Eastern Gate

The Sun in His Wrath

The Wandering Moon

The Youthful Poet`s Dream

When the Morning Stars Sang Together

When the Morning Stars Sang Together

All William Blake Artwork on Artchive

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William Blake - Artwork & Bio of the British Painter

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William Blake was an English painter born on 28 November 1757 in London, United Kingdom. Blake exhibited artistic tendencies from a young age and was encouraged by his parents. At ten, he enrolled at the Henry Par drawing academy before apprenticing under engraver James Basire.

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The life and work of the Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, to whom 20 paintings have been definitively attributed, have long captivated audiences around the world. Considered one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance, Bosch is known for creating restlessly imaginative works rich in religious symbolism, allegory, and fantastical elements depicted in bustling scenes across expansive compositions. If his crowded proto-Surrealist paintings have been acclaimed by many, his early life and the origins of his work are still less widely known. The guide below traces key milestones in Bosch's youth and career up to the completion of his world famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1500).

Hieronymus Bosch was born between 1450 and 1456 in the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch. He was the fourth of five children born to Antonius van Aken and Aleid van der Mynnen. Known as Jheronimus in his early years, Bosch's grandfather Johannes Thomaszoon van Aken was among the most prominent painters in 's-Hertogenbosch in the first half of the 15th century. According to art historian Stefan Fischer's 2014 book He was born into a family of painters.
Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Works, Johannes built what was considered a "painter dynasty" for his family, affording his children and grandchildren relatively comfortable lives. While very little is known of Bosch's father's art practice, Hieronymus is first mentioned in documents as a member of Antonius's workshop in 1475.

A fire engulfed Bosch's town in 1463.
On June 13, 1463, a fire raged through 's-Hertogenbosch, obliterating Bosch's childhood home. It is believed that the artist bore witness to this disaster, which was perhaps one of the most devastating events of his early life. It's possible that the catastrophic incident influenced Bosch's later works, some of which include blazes raging in their backgrounds.

As a young man, Bosch married a merchant's daughter.
Scholars are still unsure what, exactly, Bosch was up to between 1475 and 1480, but they do know he married Aleid van der Mervenne, who came from a wealthy family, sometime between 1480 and 1481. According to Fischer, Bosch benefited from the funds, land, and status that came with the union, and he established his own workshop soon after the pair married. At this point in his life, Bosch became an artist in his own right, and he was poised to make meaningful connections with influential royal patrons.

The artist's earliest known works depicted explicitly religious scenes.
A painting titled Crucifixion with Saints and Donor (ca. 1485-90), which is now held in the collection at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, is believed to be among Bosch's earliest surviving pieces. Fischer writes that, while it remains unknown where it was originally displayed, the painting, like many other devotional images of the period, was created to ensure salvation for the soul of the donor depicted kneeling at the foot of the cross. Crucifixion with Saints and Donor is something of an outlier in a body of work that favors eccentric, dizzying, and disconcerting compositions, and Bosch would later project his idiosyncratic style onto various religious subjects.

Bosch's iconic style begins to reveal itself in paintings of saints.
The rich colors and the bizarre imagery of The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1500) are prefigured by less strange subject matter: Bosch's early pictures of saints. His painting St. Jerome at Prayer (ca. 1485-90) shows the saint clutching a crucifix contorting his body so as to fit within a compact enclosure in the wilderness. St. John the Baptist in Meditation (ca. 1490), an oil on panel painting in the collection of the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid, shows the saint dressed in a vivid red robe slightly obscured by an otherworldly-and somewhat threatening-plant of monumental size. And in Bosch's two-winged St. John on Patmos, an altarpiece made for the exclusive Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady, a religious co-fraternity of which Bosch was a member, a wiry devil with reptilian extremities and a small fire burning above his head conspires in the corner of the composition to thwart Saint John's writing of the Book of Revelation.

An early commission by an Antwerp couple foreshadowed his hellish scenes.
Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1494), which is part of the collection at the Prado Museum in Madrid, is widely considered a masterpiece by Bosch. The work depicting the biblical event on its interior panels was commissioned by donors Peeter Scheyfve and Agneese de Gramme of Antwerp. Replete with elaborate details and religious symbolism, the painting shows Mary and Jesus receiving gifts beneath a thatched roof in disrepair. Ghostly faces of astonished onlookers peer around the side of the house, and the donors of the work are pictured on the far left and right wings of the piece. Beyond the central action and the imminent collision of two armies in the background, Bosch has rendered a sprawling-if not entirely accurate-city of Bethlehem. The relative tranquility of this verdant and expansive composition would soon give way to chaotic and nightmarish interpretations of religious scenes.

As he became successful, scary visions emerged in his work.
According to Fischer, Bosch started employing at least one assistant by 1499, just before he completed another show-stopping masterpiece of unknown patronage. That he was able to hire an assistant at all was a sign that he achieved success. Soon, Bosch would produce The Temptation of Saint Anthony (ca. 1500), a triptych whose interior chronicles futile attempts by demons and other evil forces to coerce Saint Anthony from salvation. The busy central panel, which shows a hellscape of flames, is inhabited by multifarious creatures that try to lure Saint Anthony into debauchery and sin.

The Garden of Earthly Delights was painted for a count's marriage.
Bosch's most famous painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, was made to commemorate Count Henry II of Nassau-Breda's wedding. Fischer explains that the piece was intended to illustrate the "benefits and hazards" of marriage through the lens of biblical storytelling. The triptych shows Adam and Eve in a harmonious landscape on the left, a hedonistic paradise at the center, and a blazing hell awaiting the unbridled lovers on the right panel. But, as with many of his other works, Bosch's penchant for humor and absurdity shines through his masterpiece. Nude figures twist their spindly bodies around one another and perform acrobatic poses, birds and animals look on or join in the erotic revelry, and some participants congregate in snug shells and enclosures of various shapes and colors. Levity can even be found in the macabre scenes of destruction on the triptych's right side, where a pair of giant ears wields a massive knife and monumental musical instruments are used as torture devices. More than 500 years after its creation, The Garden of Earthly Delights, which puts Bosch's boundless imagination on full view, remains a source of intense fascination and entertainment for art historians and art lovers alike.

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Hieronymus Bosch: A Mysterious Master's Early Life and Major Works

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The life and work of the Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, to whom 20 paintings have been definitively attributed, have long captivated audiences around the world. Considered one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance, Bosch is known for creating restlessly imaginative works rich in religious symbolism, allegory, and fantastical elements depicted in bustling scenes across expansive compositions.

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Fascinated by the supernatural, Henry Fuseli’s created dramatic illustrations of otherworldly scenes and creatures, ideas ultimately culminating in the Surrealism movement.

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Biography

Given his bold and eccentric styles and departure from contemporary art norms, John Martin (1789-1854)was commonly at odds with art academics.[1] However, today, Martin is regarded as a main player in England's Romantic movement, which focused on portraying the human relationship within the natural world. Most notably, Martin's artworks masterfully portray the sublime, whereas his numerous apocalyptic scenes could evoke emotions of terror and unsettledness.

John Martin was born in 1789 in Haydon Bridge, England, to a poor family living in a one-room cottage. At age fourteen, he studied heraldic painting as a coachbuilder's apprentice; the following year he began studying under a local Italian artist named Boniface Musso.

In 1806, at age seventeen, Martin accompanied Musso and his son to help establish a china painting business in London. When the business went bankrupt three years later, Martin found employment with a glassmaking company, William Collins, and worked there from 1809 to 1812. While working as a glassmaker, Martin completed his first oil painting, A Landscape Composition, which hung in the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1811.

After leaving the glassmaking business, Martin sought to work independently as a painter. In 1812, he drew inspiration from a Persian-themed story to paint Sadak in Search of the Water of Oblivion, which depicts an exhausted man climbing into a formidable rocky terrain. Despite not initially selling at the Royal Academy, Martin's Sadak painting received much praise from the public and eventually sold to a wealthy couple. Following this success, Martin painted scenes from the Bible and classical mythology, while also painting some landscapes of London and Southern England. During this time, Martin focused on vast landscapes, emphasizing natural elements with little architecture.[2]

As his popularity grew, Martin became known for depicting the insignificance of humans in relation to immense landscapes and forces of nature.[3] In 1816, the public admired Martin's Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon, which depicted a Biblical scene zoomed out to invoke a dramatic natural setting with rays of light shining through clouds.

Martin also began to experiment with architectural perspective in his 1819 apocalyptic painting, The Fall of Babylon, depicting humans in panic as a storm looms over an ancient city. Martin also used architectural perspective in painting Belshazzar's Feast, depicting massive colonnades encompassing a lavish banquet square with the Hanging Gardens and Tower of Babel appearing in the distance. Dwarfed by the surrounding architecture, Daniel prophesizes to Belshazzar in the foreground while crowds scurry behind in distress. Some critics speculate that Belshazzar's Feast is a satire of George IV and his flaunted plans for "metropolitan improvement." [4] In his 1828 painting, The Fall of Nineveh, Martin again exhibits his imagination for lavish architecture and extensive cityscapes, while also depicting the turbulence in its looming ruin.

In the late 1820s, Martin began producing mezzotint engravings of his paintings to sell to the public. To accomplish this, he assembled a printing room underneath his studio and hired professional printers to work under his supervision. The black and white engravings intensified dramatic light contrasts exhibited in his paintings. Not only did he profit from this project, but the greater distribution of his work brought Martin international popularity.

Between 1824 and 1825, Martin produced mezzotint engravings to serve as illustrations for John Milton's poem, Paradise Lost. Using powerful light contrasts and detailed landscapes, Martin conveyed scenes such as the caverns of hell, Pandemonium (the capital of Hell), and Satan presiding at the Infernal Council. After receiving critical acclaim for these Paradise Lost illustrations, Martin solidified a reputation in engraving.

In the 1830s, Martin's apocalyptic artwork waned in popularity. However, he continued to paint (mostly in watercolor) and even proposed water systems to the Royal Commission likely based on his paintings of Babylon. Although none of his architectural plans were executed, many locomotive bridges and railway stations were later inspired by Martin's paintings.[5]

In 1838, as Martin faced potential bankruptcy, he returned to oil painting. In 1839, he painted The Coronation of Queen Victoria on a large canvas, incorporating the coronation's noble attendees in the iconography. Many of the attendees purchased Martin's unsold paintings when visiting his studio, alleviating Martin's financial issues. Martin's last works before his death in 1854 comprise a trilogy of large oil paintings: The Plains of Heaven, The Great Day of His Wrath, and The Last Judgement. Showing both serene and terrifying elements of nature, the three apocalyptic paintings are considered among Martin's greatest works.

[1] Michael Campbell, introduction to John Martin: Visionary Printmaker (New York: Campbell Fine Art, 1992), 3, Hathi Trust Digital Library.

[2] Ibid, 1.

[3] Ibid, 2.

[4] Gregory Dart, "Martin, John 1789-1854," in Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, ed. Christopher Murray (New York and London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004), 714.

[5] Ibid, 715.

This artist's biography was written by Thomas Eitel Stucke. Stucke grew up in Washington, DC, and Knoxville, Tennessee. In 2018, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He is currently studying art history and real estate at Cornell University, and holds a curatorial internship at Norman Rockwell Museum.

Image of John Martin by Henry Warren, Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, London.

Illustrations by John Martin

Additional Resources

Bibliography

Adams, Max. The Prometheans: John Martin and the Generation That Stole the Future. London: Quercus, 2010.

Feaver, William. The Art of John Martin. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.

Johnstone, Christopher. John Martin. London: Academy Editions, 1974.

Kowalski, Jesse. Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration. New York: Abbeville Press, 2020.

Myrone, Martin, ed. John Martin: Apocalypse. London: Tate, 2011.

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Given his bold and eccentric styles and departure from contemporary art norms, John Martin (1789-1854)was commonly at odds with art academics.[1] However, today, Martin is regarded as a main player in England's Romantic movement, which focused on portraying the human relationship within the natural world.

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Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch 17th-century painter, and one of the most interesting artists of all time. His paintings are full of drama, contrasts between...