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NGAkids Art Zone for iPad contains eight interactive activities and a freehand sketchbook for children of all ages.

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Edgar Degas was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings.

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Vincent van Gogh — Google Arts & Culture

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Vincent van Gogh — Google Arts & Culture

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Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept a long correspondence by letter.

"I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream."

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Vincent van Gogh - Google Arts & Culture

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Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life.

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Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. He began painting the water lilies in 1899, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."

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Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting.

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Explore all Artists on Google Arts & Culture.

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Leonardo da Vinci — Google Arts & Culture

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Leonardo da Vinci — Google Arts & Culture

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Leonardo da Vinci - Google Arts & Culture

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance, whose areas of interest inc...

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.

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Marc Zakharovich Chagall was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.

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Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s.

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Wassily Kandinsky — Google Arts & Culture

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Wassily Kandinsky — Google Arts & Culture

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Wassily Kandinsky - Google Arts & Culture

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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist.

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Johannes Vermeer — Google Arts & Culture

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Johannes Vermeer — Google Arts & Culture

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Johannes Vermeer - Google Arts & Culture

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Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life.

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni or more commonly known by his first name Michelangelo was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of th...

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Camille Pissarro — Google Arts & Culture

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Camille Pissarro — Google Arts & Culture

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Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the "pivotal" figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality". Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord," and he was also one of Gauguin's masters. Renoir referred to his work as "revolutionary", through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".

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Camille Pissarro - Google Arts & Culture

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Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Google Arts & Culture

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir, was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style.

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Georgia O'Keeffe — Google Arts & Culture

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Georgia O'Keeffe — Google Arts & Culture

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Georgia O'Keeffe - Google Arts & Culture

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Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.

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Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist artist.

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker.

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Kids learn about art history. Educational articles for teachers, students, and schools including art movements, impressionism, realism, symbolism, abstract, and pop art. Biographies of famous artists including Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Michelangelo, and more.

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The Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh — Google Arts & Culture

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The Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh — Google Arts & Culture

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Van Gogh's night sky is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning. But death was not ominous for van Gogh. "Looking at the stars always makes me dream," he said, "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."

The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting.

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 35

Find out more about The Starry Night at:
mo.ma/starrynight

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The Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh - Google Arts & Culture

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Van Gogh's night sky is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flamel...

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The Tower of Babel - Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Google Arts & Culture

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The Tower of Babel - Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Google Arts & Culture

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"[...] Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven;and let us make us a name [...]. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower [...]. And he said: [...] let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one nother's speech. [...] and they left off to build the city." (Gen. 11:4-8.)
King Nimrod, who appears as builder
along with his entourage at the bottom left of the painting, is not mentioned in the biblical text. Only the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who collaborated with the Romans, combined records from different sources to create the legend that became accepted (Antiquitates Judaica I,4; 93-94 AD).
In the book illumination of the Early and High Middle Ages, local buildings that were less than monumental were used as models for the architecture of the Tower of Babel. Starring in the 16th century, artists orientated themselves on the
Mesopotamian type of step-shaped ziggurat (temple tower), which, however, was rectangular rather than round. Bruegel's monumental composition had several forerunners in Netherlandish painting, but his work became the most famous classic among the Tower of Babel depictions and was frequently copied in many different variations. The sense of scale is provided by the flemish-style port city, which is impressively tiny in comparison to the tower. With meticulous precision and encyclopaedic interest Bruegel depicts an abundance of technical and mechanical details, from the supply of the building materials in the busy harbour to the various cranes and the scaffolding on the unfinished brick foundation. He sets the workers' dwellings into the stone outer structure, which blends elements of classical with Romanesque architecture, and they appear to be more than merely temporary. By anchoring the building on the rocky slope, Bruegel creates the impression of static equilibrium. Reaching up to the clouds, the building, however, is
optically distorted and appears to have slightly sunk into the ground on the left side. This is an artistic gesture, on the one hand enhancing the impression of the
building's monumentality, and on the other hand alluding to human hubris and the impossibility of completing the tower because "the Lord confused the language of all the earth". (Gen. 11:9.)
© Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010

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The Tower of Babel - Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Google Arts & Culture

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"[...] Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven;and let us make us a name [...]. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower [...]. And he said: [...]

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Jadeite Cabbage - Unknown — Google Arts & Culture

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Jadeite Cabbage - Unknown — Google Arts & Culture

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This piece is almost completely identical to a piece of bokchoy cabbage. Carved from verdant jadeite, the familiar subject, purity of the white vegetable body, and brilliant green of the leaves all create for an endearing and approachable work of art. Let's also not forget the two insects that have alighted on the vegetable leaves! They are a locust and katydid, which are traditional metaphors for having numerous children. This work originally was placed in the Forbidden City's Yong-he Palace, which was the residence of the Guang-xu Emperor's (r. 1875-1908) Consort Jin. For this reason, some have surmised that this piece was a dowry gift for Consort Jin to symbolize her purity and offer blessings for bearing many children. Although it is said that the association between the material of jadeite and the form of bokchoy began to become popular in the middle and late Qing dynasty, the theme relating bokchoy and insects actually can be traced back to the professional insect-and-plant paintings of the Yuan to early Ming dynasty (13th-15th c.), when they were quite common and a popular subject among the people for its auspiciousness. In the tradition of literati painting, it has also been borrowed as a subject in painting to express a similar sentiment, indirectly chastising fatuous officials. For example, in a poem written in 1775, the Qian-long Emperor associated the form of a flower holder in the shape of a vegetable with the tradition of metaphorical criticism found in the Tang dynasty poetry of Du Fu, in which an official was unable to recognize a fine vegetable in a garden. The emperor thereupon took this as a warning to be careful and alert. Regardless of whether it is a court craftsman or the maker of this jadeite bokchoy cabbage, all are merely giving play to their imagination and creativity, following the taste and directions of their patrons. Despite not having more historical records to probe these ideas, it nonetheless provides the viewer with greater room for imagination.

Details

Title: Jadeite Cabbage

Creator: Unknown

Date Created: Qing dynasty (1644-1911)

Physical Dimensions: w91 mm (Length: 18.7 cm , Thickness: 5.07cm)

Rights: National Palace Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

External Link: National Palace Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

Medium: Jade

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Jadeite Cabbage - Unknown - Google Arts & Culture

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This piece is almost completely identical to a piece of bokchoy cabbage. Carved from verdant jadeite, the familiar subject, purity of the white vegetable body, and brilliant green of the leaves all create for an endearing and approachable work of art. Let's also not forget the two insects that have alighted on the vegetable leaves!

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The Kiss - Gustav Klimt — Google Arts & Culture

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The Kiss - Gustav Klimt — Google Arts & Culture

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"The Kiss", probably the most popular work by Gustav Klimt, was first exhibited in 1908 at the Kunstschau art exhibition on the site of today's Konzerthaus. The Ministry bought it from there for the sum of 25,000 Kronen and thus secured for the state one of the icons of Viennese Jugendstil and indeed of European modern art. It undoubtedly represents the culmination of the phase known as the "Golden Epoch". In this decade, the artist created a puzzling, ornamental encoded programme that revolved around the mystery of existence, love and fulfilment through art. Klimt gained initial inspiration for this in 1903 on a journey to Ravenna to see the Byzantine mosaics. In addition, the painting contains a myriad of motifs from various cultural epochs, above all from Ancient Egyptian mythology. Most recent research has, however, revealed that it is not enough to read the ornaments in the picture just as symbols rooted in tradition aiming to convey a timelessly valid message. They reveal more, such as references to Klimt's love for Emilie Flöge and the artist's exploration of the sculptor Auguste Rodin's art.

Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more

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The Kiss - Gustav Klimt - Google Arts & Culture

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"The Kiss", probably the most popular work by Gustav Klimt, was first exhibited in 1908 at the Kunstschau art exhibition on the site of today's Konzerthaus...

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Hase - Albrecht Dürer — Google Arts & Culture

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Hase - Albrecht Dürer — Google Arts & Culture

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Hase - Albrecht Dürer - Google Arts & Culture

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The work at the very heart of the Albertina, Dürer's famous 'Hase', can only be shown every few years. Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen received it in 1796 as p...

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The Ambassadors - Hans Holbein the Younger — Google Arts & Culture

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The Ambassadors - Hans Holbein the Younger — Google Arts & Culture

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This picture memorialises two wealthy, educated and powerful young men. On the left is Jean de Dinteville, aged 29, French ambassador to England in 1533. To the right stands his friend, Georges de Selve, aged 25, bishop of Lavaur, who acted on several occasions as ambassador to the Emperor, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See.

The picture is in a tradition showing learned men with books and instruments. The objects on the upper shelf include a celestial globe, a portable sundial and various other instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring time. Among the objects on the lower shelf is a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book, a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe.

Certain details could be interpreted as references to contemporary religious divisions. The broken lute string, for example, may signify religious discord, while the Lutheran hymn book may be a plea for Christian harmony.

In the foreground is the distorted image of a skull, a symbol of mortality. When seen from a point to the right of the picture the distortion is corrected.

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The Ambassadors - Hans Holbein the Younger - Google Arts & Culture

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This picture memorialises two wealthy, educated and powerful young men. On the left is Jean de Dinteville, aged 29, French ambassador to England in 1533. To the right stands his friend, Georges de Selve, aged 25, bishop of Lavaur, who acted on several occasions as ambassador to the Emperor, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See.

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Textile length, 'Bird' - William Morris — Google Arts & Culture

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Textile length, 'Bird' - William Morris — Google Arts & Culture

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Textile length, 'Bird' - William Morris - Google Arts & Culture

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Length of woven furnishing fabric, jacquard woven, tabby woven woollen double cloth, repeating design vertically and horizontally of birds, flowers and fol...

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No Woman, No Cry - Chris Ofili — Google Arts & Culture

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No Woman, No Cry - Chris Ofili — Google Arts & Culture

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The teardrops in this tender painting contain collaged pictures of the London teenager, Stephen Lawrence, victim of a racist murder in 1993. Ofili was deeply moved by Doreen Lawrence's dignity throughout the public enquiry into her son's death, which exposed the mishandling of the investigation and the institutional racism of the Metropolitan Police. The words 'R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence' are just discernible beneath the layers of paint, and made more visible with the absence of light. Despite these specific references, Ofili also intended the painting to be read in more general terms, as a universal portrayal of melancholy and grief. Purchased 1999.

Details

Title: No Woman, No Cry - view in light

Date Created: 1998

Physical Dimensions: 2438 x 1828 x 51 mm

Original Title: No Woman, No Cry

More Info: Artist Biography

Additional Viewing Notes: We were fortunate that Chris Ofili was keen to participate in this project. He came to the Gigapixel capture session and advised the technical and editorial staff about some of the fascinating and complex aspects of the painting. With the artist's encouragement a plan was improvised to photograph an ultra high resolution image of the phosphorescent paint glowing in the dark. This proved a serious technical challenge, but was duly met by an enthusiastic team and some creative use of lighting. The session ended near dawn, with the team proud of their work and deeply appreciative of both the artist's efforts on the canvas, and of the meanings generated by them.

Provenance: Purchased 1999

Type: Painting

Rights: © Chris Ofili, courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London

Medium: Mixed media on canvas

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No Woman, No Cry - Chris Ofili - Google Arts & Culture

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The teardrops in this tender painting contain collaged pictures of the London teenager, Stephen Lawrence, victim of a racist murder in 1993. Ofili was deeply moved by Doreen Lawrence's dignity throughout the public enquiry into her son's death, which exposed the mishandling of the investigation and the institutional racism of the Metropolitan Police.

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Marc Chagall’s Ceiling for the Paris Opéra - Marc Chagall — Google Arts & Culture

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Marc Chagall’s Ceiling for the Paris Opéra - Marc Chagall — Google Arts & Culture

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In 1960, the Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux made what in those days was the bold as well as spectacular gesture of commissioning Marc Chagall to paint a new ceiling for the Opéra. True, there was a recent precedent, the rather unsuccessful ceiling painted for the Louvre's Salle Henri II by George Braque in 1952. And in fact, Malraux would follow up the year after and commission André Masson to do a ceiling for the Théâtre de l'Odéon. Was this an attempt to smash open the orderly but closed world created by Charles Garnier? A media coup at a time when the media were taking over the world.

An act of sacrilege? Chagall's painting now covered the work of another artist, who, like all the pompier (as the nineteenth century academic painters were known), was out of favour. (That said, he would not remain there for long: less than two decades later, Lenepveu's design was given the honours of the new Musée d'Orsay.) The action was sacrilegious, above all, with regard to Garnier's principle of harmony, a principle observed by all the artists working under him, and even, to a certain degree, by Carpeaux. But then of course Garnier was no longer there to safeguard the unity of his palace of dreams.

Chagall's ceiling did, without a doubt, make the Palais Garnier fashionable again. Just as, twenty years later, Buren's columns put the spotlight on the Palais-Royal, which Parisians had totally forgotten, and were a great improvement on the car park that had dishonoured its courtyard for decades without anyone seeming to care. And just as, thirty years later, Pei's pyramid made the Louvre an international talking point: not that the museum was lacking in claims to fame, but this relatively marginal architectural intrusion ensured that the "Grand Louvre" programme got plenty of global media coverage. Whatever one may think of their artistic merits, there is no denying that these three "gestures" were highly successful in terms of communication. And that, it would seem, was Malraux's main concern at the Opéra.

Likewise, all three interventions brought an element of continuity as well as rupture. Pei's pyramid certainly broke with the Renaissance and Napoleon III facades of the Louvre, but it echoes the obelisk on Place de la Concorde. Buren's columns clearly continue the colonnade of the Galerie d'Orléans, even if they are truncated and striped; and Chagall's ceiling, while it incontestably breaks with the harmony of the auditorium, is, in many respects, in profound continuity with Garnier's work (Chagall was an attentive reader of "Le Nouvel Opéra").

First of all, with his sharp, fresh hues - his "admirable prismatic colours" (André Breton) - Chagall continues and completes the reintroduction of colour, which was so important to Garnier. Chagall's own gift for colour is something he had discovered when he came to Paris: "In Russia everything is dark, brown, grey. When I came to France, I was struck by the shimmering colours, the play of light, and I found what I had been blindly groping for, this refinement of matter and uninhibited colour." In Paris, "things, nature, people were lit up by this 'light-freedom' and seemed to bathe in a coloured bath." Moreover, this ceiling completes the Palais Garnier's "pantheon" of illustrious composers throughout the ages.

It thus adds some of the architect's contemporaries, such as Wagner [1]and Berlioz[2] who were "over-looked" in his iconographic programme (Verdi was the only living composer to be represented by a statue at the inauguration in 1875). It also introduces some major composers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including three from the relatively recent Russian school (unknown in France until Diaghilev's time). What's more, Chagall evokes these composers through an "Olympus" of characters from their operas. As readers will recall, "Olympus" was Garnier's generic term for theatre ceilings.

Chagall was a lyric painter, and the correspondence, the sympathy linking his ceiling to Garnier's building runs deeper that one might think. Chagall's painting is, to borrow the word used by Guillaume Apollinaire when he first visited the artist's studio at La Ruche in 1912, "super-natural" (this world would later be replaced by surrealist"), and so is Garnier's enchanted palace. Chagall's was a religious, even mystical spirit for whom love was the force that bound together and moved everything in the universe, whose creatures and objects were part of a total motion without top or bottom, gravity or resistance - perfect for painting an opera ceiling!

Even more profoundly, Chagall was drawn to an ideal of total theatre. Already, in his home town of Vitebsk, during his brief spell as director of the Academy of Fine Arts, he scandalised local Communist leaders by getting all the local house painters to help him decorate the place with green cows and flying horses in the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution. And when he worked on the renovated Jewish State Theatre in Moscow, between 1919 and 1921, his vision embraced the whole of the auditorium, so that spectators were surrounded by panels whose designs echoes the sets and costumes on stage. Total theatre, just like Garnier. Like him, Marc Chagall dreamed of a theatre in which setting and action were one.

Chagall refused to be paid for his ceiling. The State covered only the material costs of the work, which was executed between January and August 1964. The painter worked at the Musée des Gobelins, then at the workshop built by Gustav Eiffel at Meudon (it later became an aviation museum) and finally at Vence. Chagall ceiling was inaugurated on 23 September 1964.

The ceiling consists of twelve canvas panels plus a round central panel totalling about two hundred and forty square metres and mounted on a plastic structure. The work is signed "Chagall Marc 1964" on the central and main panels.

Going clockwise from stage right, the central panel evokes the following four composers and works:

Bizet, "Carmen". Dominant colour: red. Carmen with the bullring, plus a bull and a guitar.

Verdi, work not specified, possibly "La Traviata". Dominant colour: yellow. Behind a young couple, a bearded man (Germont's father?) holds a half-unrolled scroll.

Beethoven, "Fidelio". Dominant colours: blue and green. Leonora's movement towards the blue cavalier, who brandishes his sword.

Gluck, "Orpheus and Eurydice". Dominant colour: green. Eurydice plays the lyre (Orpheus's instrument) and an angel proffers flowers.

Moussorgski, "Boris Godounov". Dominant colour: blue. In the middle, at the centre, the Tsar sits on his throne wearing the insignia of power; above him we see a winged, monster-headed fame and, in green, the city of Moscow; on the right, on the other side of Walter and Bourgeois' "Hebe", at the centre of the scene, the people (Chagall: "I consider the people the most sensitive element of society").

Mozart, "The Magic Flute". Dominant colour: light blue. As in "The Apparition" (1917, Gordeiev Collection, Moscow), a giant angel fills the blue sky while a bird (according to some sources, a cock), plays the flute. Chagall, who in 1965-1966 designed the sets and costumes for the 1967 Metropolitan Opera production of The Magic Flute, here takes an amiable liberty with the opera, in which the magic instrument is given to Tamino and not to the bird-man Papageno.

Wagner, "Tristan and Isolde". Dominant colour: green. Leaning languorously towards Walter and Bourgeois "Daphne", the couple nestles below the Arc de Triomphe, lit up with the red of passion, and Place de la Concorde, two of Chagall's favourite subjects, along with other Parisian monuments ("My art needs Paris as a tree needs water," he wrote).

Berlioz, "Roméo et Juliette". Dominant colour: green. The embracing lovers are seen with a horse's head and a " character sign " redolent of Chagall's 1911 painting "The Holy Coachman" ("Le Saint voiturier au-dessus de Vitebsk", private collection, Krefeld): it ends in a nimbus or glory (?) which frames their faces.

Rameau, work not specified. Dominant colour: white. On the illuminated façade of the Palais Garnier, which is also red with passion, Carpeaux's "The Dance", covered in gold, takes monumental proportions.

Debussy, "Pelléas et Mélisande". Dominant colour: blue. Lying alongside the head of "Clytia" sculpted by Walter and Bourgeois, Pelléas watches Mélisande from the window in a playful reversal of roles (according to Jacques Lasseigne, Chagall endowed his Pelléas with the physiognomy of André Malraux). Above them, a crowed head (King Arkel?).

Ravel, "Daphnis et Chloé". Dominant colour: red. Along with the (blue) sheep and temple of the first act, the extraordinary figure of the Siamese couple ("There was a time when I had two heads / There was a time when these two faces / were coated in amorous dew / And melted like the fragrance of a rose..." - poem by Chagall), which Chagall had already included in the curtain that he painted for the Opéra in 1858, and which can be seen as completing the amorous osmosis begun in "The Walk", a painting from 1929 showing a couple standing/walking head-to-foot in the street. It is naturally accompanied by a Eiffel Tower, a recurrent motif in Chagall's paintings. In 1958 Chagall designed the sets and costumes for Georges Skibine's revisiting of the choreography of "Daphnis et Chloé" [3] In 1961 he illustrated the publisher Tériade's edition of the original tale, attributed to Longus.

Stravinsky, "The Firebird". Dominant colours: red, green and blue. In the top left area, the painter (Chagall) with his palette and the bird which, curiously, is green; on the right, an angel musician whose cello is also its body, stands near the magic tree containing the bird. Below are the domes and roofs, no doubt of the magic castle, and a bird, red this time, flying down towards a crowned couple beneath a canopy. To one side, a young married couple, a peasant carrying a big basket of fruit on his head and an orchestra. Should the proximity of the Eiffel Tower (in the Ravel section of the ceiling) be taken as an allusion to "Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel" (1928)? To the right, above the head of Walter and Bourgeois' "Pomona", a violinist bends lovingly over his instrument. Chagall designed the sets and costumes for the Metropolitan Opera's production of "The Firebird" in 1945 (choreography by Massine).

Tchaikovsky, "Swan Lake". Dominant colour: golden yellow. At the bottom, a swan-woman on a blue lake, leaning backwards and holding a bunch of flowers; at the top, a surprising angel-musician, whose head and body are one and the same as its instrument.

Adam, "Giselle". Dominant colour: golden yellow. The peasants' dance under the village trees at the end of the first act.

[1] The State commissioned a bust of Wagner from Bozzi (1903). Although originally intended for the corridors around the auditorium, this marble object was used to decorate the upper landing on the west staircase leading to the Library-Museum.

[2] Since 1885, however, a bust of him by Carlier has stood in the auditorium.

[3] Cf. André Boll, "Les décors de Marc Chagall pour Daphnis et Chloé," "Spectacles", Paris, no. 3.

Gérard Fontaine, with the kind permission of Éditions du Patrimoine - Paris.

"Le Plafond de Marc Chagall." In Gérard Fontaine. 2004. "L'Opéra de Charles Garnier Architecture et décor intérieur". Paris : Éditions du Patrimoine. pp.86-88

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Marc Chagall's Ceiling for the Paris Opéra - Marc Chagall - Google Arts & Culture

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In 1960, the Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux made what in those days was the bold as well as spectacular gesture of commissioning Marc Chagall to paint a new ceiling for the Opéra. True, there was a recent precedent, the rather unsuccessful ceiling painted for the Louvre's Salle Henri II by George Braque in 1952.

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Maple Viewers - Kano Hideyori — Google Arts & Culture

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Maple Viewers - Kano Hideyori — Google Arts & Culture

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This painting depicts people enjoying the view of maple foliage beside the Kiyotaki river at Takao, north of the city of Kyoto, which is famous for the beauty of its maples in autumn. Beyond the thick clouds are the roofs of Jingoji temple with a red pagoda. Atago shrine covered in snow suggests the arrival of winter.On the right bank of the Kiyotaki river, beautifully dressed women with children are seated in a relaxed manner. A tea vendor is making tea, and the women, who are drinking tea and sake, seem to be enjoying this splendid autumn day. Two men are playing flutes on a bridge in the center. Meanwhile, Buddhist priests and young apprentices are about to cross the bridge. On the left bank of the river, warriors seated in a circle are singing and dancing at a sake party while white herons fly overhead.It is thought that there was another screen depicting spring and summer scenes, and the pair originally formed a meisho-e (painting of famous place) of the four seasons. Judging from the artist's seal the work is attributed to Kano Hideyori. Hideyori was active around the Eiroku era (1558-1570), when the city of Kyoto was recovering from the damage it incurred during the Onin War (1467-1477). Although rendered in the traditional style of the time, this work is most noted for its innovative characteristics, as seen in the vivid depictions of merrymaking under the autumn maples, focusing on the enjoyment of people of the Muromachi period.

Details

Title: Maple Viewers

Date Created: 16th century

Physical Dimensions: w3655 x h1502 mm

Object Title: 観楓図屏風

Object Notes(Japanese): 画中に押された印章から、狩野秀頼筆とわかる。元信の次男の秀頼とする説、孫の秀頼とする説がある。 画面右奥の伽藍は京都・高雄の神護寺、左奥の雪に閉ざされた参道は、愛宕神社に続く道と見られ、一般に「高雄観楓図（たかおかんぷうず）」と呼ばれている。紅葉の名所として名高い高雄の清滝川のほとり、紅葉の下で着飾って酒食を楽しむ男女や僧の姿と、寺社へ向かう橋を前景に描く。楓の葉の赤が全体に散りばめられ、画面の彩りは豊かであるが、色調はむしろ重厚で、落ち着いた風格がある。 画面を秋の景物で埋めながら、一部に冬の景色も描いてあり、平安時代以来の四季絵の伝統を踏まえた構成になっている。失われた他の1隻の屏風には、おそらく春夏の景物が描かれていたものと見られる。

Object Date: Muromachi - Azuchi-Momoyama period, 16th century

Medium(Japanese): 紙本着色

Type: Painting

External Link: http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100150

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Maple Viewers - Kano Hideyori - Google Arts & Culture

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This painting depicts people enjoying the view of maple foliage beside the Kiyotaki river at Takao, north of the city of Kyoto, which is famous for the beauty of its maples in autumn. Beyond the thick clouds are the roofs of Jingoji temple with a red pagoda.

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Proceeding Lion, detail from the Processional Way of Babylon - Unknown — Google Arts & Culture

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Proceeding Lion, detail from the Processional Way of Babylon - Unknown — Google Arts & Culture

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As it entered the square in front of the Ishtar Gate (see pp. 14-15), the Processional Way was flanked by two magnificently decorated monumental walls at least 180 metres long. Assembled from hundreds of thousands of brick fragments, the presentation of these walls is based on information about their construction gained in the course of the excavation, and involved reconstructing the patterned bands, the rosettes and the frieze of striding lions from sometimes tiny pieces. Parts of the base, the plastered upper wall and the stepped battlements at the top, however, are modern additions from 1928-30. This magnificent street, called 'May the Enemy not Prevail', was given this special decorative treatment to provide a suitably impressive backdrop for the celebrations at the beginning of spring that marked the Babylonian New Year: after several days of festivities the cult images of the principal Babylonian gods were paraded along this colourfully decorated street, paved in flagstones, as they were returned to the city. The depiction on these walls - which are defensive in nature, towers alternating with curtain wall - of the striding lions sacred to the goddess Ishtar, expresses her ambivalent character as the goddess of both love and war.

Details

Title: Proceeding Lion, detail from the Processional Way of Babylon

Creator: Unknown

Date Created: 6th century BCE

Location: Babylon, Iraq

Physical Dimensions: w30 x h12.5 x d8 m

Type: Moulded relief in parts

Medium: Fired clay bricks with polychrome glaze, moulded relief in parts

Inv. no.: VA Bab 1379-1402

ISIL no.: DE-MUS-815718

External link: Pergamonmuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Copyrights: || Text: © Scala Publishers / Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Ralf-B. Wartke Audio: © Tonwelt / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz Photo: © b p k - Photo Agency / Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Olaf M. Teßmer

Collection: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

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Proceeding Lion, detail from the Processional Way of Babylon - Unknown - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As it entered the square in front of the Ishtar Gate (see pp. 14-15), the Processional Way was flanked by two magnificently decorated monumental walls at least 180 metres long.

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The Harvesters - Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Google Arts & Culture

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The Harvesters - Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Google Arts & Culture

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This panel is part of a series showing the seasons or times of the year, commissioned from Bruegel by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series included six works, five of which survive. The other four are: "The Gloomy Day," "Hunters in the Snow," and "The Return of the Herd" (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and "Haymaking" (Lobkowicz Collections, Prague). This remarkable group of pictures is a watershed in the history of Western art. The religious pretext for landscape painting has been suppressed in favor of a new humanism, and Bruegel's unidealized description of the local scene is based on natural observations.

Details

Title: The Harvesters

Creator: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Date Created: 1565

Physical Dimensions: w1619 x h1191 mm

Type: Paintings

Provenance Extent: Complete

Provenance: Niclaes Jongelinck, Antwerp (by 1566); [Hane von Wijke, Antwerp, until 1594; sold for fl 1,400 to Antwerp City Council as a gift for Archduke Ernst]; Archduke Ernst, governor of the Netherlands, Brussels (1594-d. 1595; inv., 1595, nos. 7-12, listed as "Sechs Taffell, von 12 Monathenn des Jars von Bruegel"); Emperor Rudolph II, Prague (until d. 1612); Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands, Brussels and Vienna (until d. 1662; inv., 1659, nos. 582-86, "Fünff grosse Stuckh einer Grossen, warin die Zeithen desz Jahrs von Öhlfarb auf Holcz . . . Original vom alten Brögel"); Emperor Leopold I, Vienna (1662-d. 1705); Imperial collection, Vienna (until 1809); comte Antoine-François Andréossy, Vienna and Paris (1809-16; his sale, Pérignon, Paris, March 11, 1816, no. 1, as "Par un maître de l'ancienne École allemande . . . Un paysage du plus grand détail, offrant les travaux de la moisson . . . L. 58 p[ouces]., h. 44 p[ouces]. . . . Avec la date de 1546," for Fr 90.11); Jacques Doucet, Paris (until shortly before 1912; sold to Cels); Paul Jean Cels, Brussels (until 1919; sold to MMA)

Medium Extent: Complete

Inscription Extent: Complete

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): BRVEGEL / [MD]LXV [now largely illegible]

Description Extent: Complete

Credit Line Extent: Complete

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1919

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, Breda (?) ca. 1525-1569 Brussels)

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The Harvesters - Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This panel is part of a series showing the seasons or times of the year, commissioned from Bruegel by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series included six works, five of which survive. The other four are: "The Gloomy Day," "Hunters in the Snow," and "The Return of the Herd" (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and "Haymaking" (Lobkowicz Collections, Prague).

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Sailing, Storm Bay, Tasmania - Haughton Forrest — Google Arts & Culture

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Sailing, Storm Bay, Tasmania - Haughton Forrest — Google Arts & Culture

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Sailing, Storm Bay, Tasmania - Haughton Forrest - Google Arts & Culture

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This untitled painting, known as 'Sailing, Storm Bay, Tasmania', shows Cape Pillar in the background and is attributed to Haughton Forrest. The date of the...

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Post impressionist

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(1) Experiencia Virtual dentro del mundo de Vincent Van Gogh HD - YouTube

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(1) Experiencia Virtual dentro del mundo de Vincent Van Gogh HD - YouTube

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Experiencia Virtual dentro del mundo de Vincent Van Gogh HD