Pictures to build

Jigsaw puzzles by painter.

Some painters left enough behind in The Met's open collection to fill an evening on their own. Here they are, each with a note on what their pictures are actually like to put back together, because a painter's hand changes the puzzle more than the subject does.

or browse by art style → or browse by subject →

Artist of the week

Eugène Delacroix

Colour with a pulse 6 pictures →

A new painter every Monday.

Thick paint, seen close

Vincent van Gogh

Paintings from the last five years of his life, all of them from the Met. Roses and irises, olive trees and cypresses, a pair of worn shoes, the people of Arles. Almost every one is built from short, loaded brushstrokes you can follow with your eye.

17 pictures →

Posters and late nights

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Mostly prints and drawings rather than oils. Cabaret bills, the Moulin Rouge, singers and dancers caught mid-gesture, and a handful of quieter portraits. Flat colour, a quick line, a lot of bare paper.

19 pictures →

Rehearsal rooms

Edgar Degas

The dance class runs through most of these. Girls at the barre, a ballet seen from the pit, tulle in pink and green. Around them sit the quieter ones: a woman ironing, a collector of prints, a portrait or two.

13 pictures →

A face out of the dark

Rembrandt

Nearly all of these are people. Aristotle with his hand on Homer, Flora in her spring clothes, Hendrickje, Bellona in her armour, the painter Gerard de Lairesse, a man in a turban. The light finds a face and lets the rest go.

7 pictures →

Bright American afternoons

William Merritt Chase

Loose and quick and mostly sunlit. Children at the seaside, a girl in a park, a vase of azaleas, a table of fish. He painted fast and left the brush showing.

7 pictures →

Portraits and travels

John Singer Sargent

From the famous black dress of Madame X to bright scenes carried home from Egypt and Spain. A society painter with a restless streak.

7 pictures →

River afternoons

Édouard Manet

Paintings from his lighter years. A boat on the Seine, the Monet family under their garden trees, fishing, and one small brioche on a cloth.

6 pictures →

Solid and unsentimental

Gustave Courbet

Paintings with weight to them. A woman in the waves, a fishing boat, village girls out walking, a parrot on a wrist. Thick paint, worked with the knife as much as the brush.

6 pictures →

Soft edges, silver light

Camille Corot

Pictures where the light does most of the work. Hagar in the wilderness, travellers in a landscape, a woman reading, a letter half written. Feathery trees and a grey green hush over everything.

6 pictures →

Fuji, waves and snow

Katsushika Hokusai

Woodblock prints from the years Hokusai was past seventy and at his best. The great wave off Kanagawa with Fuji small beneath it, the lake at Hakone, the torii standing in Noboto Bay, snow on the Sumida River, a rooster and hen among the spiderwort, and a mystical bird with a human face. Prussian blue, firm outlines and a great deal of nerve.

6 pictures →

Rain, moon and the road

Utagawa Hiroshige

Woodblock prints of a Japan seen on the move. Wild geese crossing a full moon, night rain slanting over the great pine at Karasaki, the post town of Ōtsu on the Tōkaidō road, a temple grove beside a village, and a small view of Edo. Hiroshige let one colour fade into the next, so his skies go from deep blue to nothing.

6 pictures →

Warm light on people he liked

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Renoir at his warmest. Madame Charpentier on a sofa with her two children and the family dog, a young girl with a bunch of daisies, Nini sitting in a garden of dappled light, a girl bathing, and flowers heaped beside prickly pears on a table. Soft skin, feathery brushwork, and colour where you would expect shadow.

6 pictures →

Built stroke by stroke

Paul Cézanne

Cézanne in the years he was rebuilding painting from the ground up. Mont Sainte-Victoire above the viaduct of the Arc valley, card players bent over their game, Madame Cézanne in a red dress, apples beside a pot of primroses, a seated peasant, the Domaine Saint-Joseph among its trees. Everything is made of small, square strokes laid side by side like tiles.

6 pictures →

Tahiti, in flat colour

Paul Gauguin

Gauguin's Tahiti. Ia Orana Maria, a Tahitian Mary with her child on her shoulder and an angel half hidden among the flowers, women bathing at the water's edge, the siesta on a shaded porch, two women side by side, a Tahitian landscape, and a teapot set among fruit. Flat colour laid in broad, firm shapes.

6 pictures →

A court painter with a sharp eye

Francisco de Goya

Goya the portrait painter, from the court of Charles III to the years after the war. Manuel Osorio in red with his magpie on a string and three cats watching it, the Countess of Altamira with her baby daughter, a small boy called Pepito, an architect in his shirtsleeves, a lady in a mantilla, and a bullfight in a divided ring. Grey grounds, quick brushwork and no flattery at all.

6 pictures →

Sea, woods and open air

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer out of doors. Schoolboys playing snap the whip in a field, a veteran back from the war cutting wheat, a sailor adrift among sharks in the Gulf Stream, a fisherwoman leaning into the wind on the shore, a camp fire throwing sparks into the dark woods, and a canoe shooting the rapids on the Saguenay. Weather, painted by someone who went out in it.

6 pictures →

Everything in motion

Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens from his earliest dated painting, a man holding a pair of dividers, to the pictures of his last years. A wolf and fox hunt at full stretch, the river god Achelous feasting his guests, Venus holding Adonis back from the hunt, Henry IV riding in triumph, and Rubens himself in the garden with his young wife and their son. Warm flesh, red cloth and nothing standing still.

6 pictures →

Colour with a pulse

Eugène Delacroix

Delacroix across forty years, from a student's study of a model to one of his last pictures. Christ asleep in the boat while the storm breaks, Rebecca carried off on horseback from a burning castle, Ovid in exile among the Scythians, his aunt Madame Riesener, and a basket of flowers tipped over in a park. Colour that moves even when nothing else does.

6 pictures →

Panels, paper and the woodblock

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg, about 1505 to 1523, in paint and in print. Saint Anne with a hand on Mary’s shoulder while the Child sleeps, Christ in blue and red, blessing, the world in his hand, the Virgin and Child against the dark, and a young woman’s profile on green paper. Then the prints: his coat of arms, an open door under spread wings, a knot pattern for embroidery, and two woodcut sheets from the Arch of Honor for the emperor Maximilian.

8 pictures →

Saints, goddesses and red hats

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach, court painter at Wittenberg in the years of the Reformation. Judith in a red hat with white plumes, her sword upright over the head of Holofernes, Venus on a round panel with Cupid beside her, Paris in armour as three goddesses wait and a white horse looks on, Saint Barbara kneeling in red among soldiers, Saint Maurice in silver armour, and the Duke of Saxony in black against red. A workshop Luther hangs with them.

6 pictures →

Merchants, a scholar and Death

Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein’s portraits, from a young man of Lucerne in 1517 to the German merchants he painted in London. Benedikt von Hertenstein in a red cap under a painted frieze, Hermann von Wedigh and Derick Berck in black against blue and green, Erasmus, hands folded, in a fur collar. Then two small woodcuts from the Dance of Death, where a skeleton drags off the abbot and leads an old man to the doctor. A copy and a workshop roundel hang with them.

6 pictures →

Ruffs, laughter and black coats

Frans Hals

Frans Hals in Haarlem, painting fast and leaving the strokes in view. Merrymakers crowding a carnival table of bread and eggs, a young man in a great grey hat raising his glass in an inn while a girl laughs at his shoulder, a boy with a lute, and the scholar Petrus Scriverius and his wife Anna van der Aar, each in a painted oval. Paulus Verschuur stands in black, hand on hip. A copy of a portrait of Hals himself hangs alongside.

7 pictures →

Silk, lapdogs and a quick brush

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard in Paris around 1770, with one dim room from his years in Rome, full of women, babies and a dog. A woman at her desk turning from her letter and a posy of flowers, a small white dog on the chair, two sisters holding each other in yellow and pink, a lady in an old-fashioned ruff holding up her dog, and a girl reading in profile against blue sky. Painted quickly, in silk colours and warm light.

6 pictures →

Venice, masks and gondolas

Francesco Guardi

Francesco Guardi’s Venice in the 1760s and 1770s, painted with a quick, flickering brush. Piazza San Marco with its bell tower against a wide blue sky, the Rialto bridge from further up the Grand Canal, sails and masts crowding the basin of San Marco, figures in black robes in the anteroom of the Great Council hall, and masks mingling at the Ridotto. And one place that never existed: ruins, trees and boats under a curved top.

6 pictures →

Silk, red coats and woodland

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough’s sitters, and the country he liked to paint between them. Grace Dalrymple Elliott at full length in gold silk, Queen Charlotte under a cloud of powdered curls, a musician in a red coat holding his music, an officer in scarlet with gold at the shoulder, cottage children out gathering sticks in a dark wood, and a cart track winding into wooded hills. England in the 1770s and 1780s, with a light, quick brush.

7 pictures →

Big hats, red coats and a lamb

Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds and the families who sat for him, from the 1740s to the end of the 1780s. Two children and their tutor with a lamb, three gentlemen at a table under the trees with a dog at their feet, Anne Dashwood holding a shepherd’s crook, Lady Smith gathering her three children close, Captain Coussmaker leaning on a tree beside his horse, and a little girl in a pink cap, sitting very still with her hands folded.

8 pictures →

Faces in a strong light

Henry Raeburn

Henry Raeburn’s portraits, painted in Edinburgh around 1800. Young William Fraser in a dark coat against a darker ground, Mrs Oswald in white with an orange sash and trees going dark behind her, the Drummond children with their pony under the trees, George Harley Drummond beside a tall bay horse, Janet Law in white, and two older men at ease in their chairs. The light falls hard on faces and linen, and the rest sinks into brown.

7 pictures →

Oaks, heath and still water

Théodore Rousseau

Théodore Rousseau in the French countryside, much of it in and around the forest of Fontainebleau, from the 1840s to the 1860s. Bare trees going dark against a winter sunset, a pond under a heavy sky, a small boat on a slow river, a red evening over the rocks near Arbonne, a great oak at the edge of the woods at Monts-Girard, and a young birch catching the sun on an early summer morning. Every tree has its own shape, like a face in a crowd.

7 pictures →

Roses, pansies and a pear

Henri Fantin-Latour

Henri Fantin-Latour at his table of flowers, from the 1860s to the 1880s. White roses in a glass beside one ripe pear and a few grapes, pansies in clay pots with green apples beside them, a crowded summer bouquet in pink, white and red, and a basket of fruit with a knife on a small wooden table. Between the flowers, two people: the painter himself as a young man, half in shadow, and a woman in black with her hands folded.

7 pictures →

Village hills and city mornings

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro, from the hills of Pontoise to the windows of Paris and Rouen, between 1867 and 1899. A lane climbing out of the village at Jalais Hill, women bent over the harvest on a slope under tall trees, a barge with a red stripe on the river, pink haystacks at Eragny, the Boulevard Montmartre on a winter morning seen from high up, and the Tuileries gardens in spring. Ordinary days, looked at for a long time.

8 pictures →

Roads, riverbanks and moving sky

Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley in the small towns along the Seine and the Loing, from the 1870s to the 1890s. The suspension bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne, chestnut trees along the river with a carriage in their shade, the road from Versailles to Louveciennes under a grey sky, a snowy street at Moret, a red-roofed house on the road to Saint-Mammès, and a meadow at Sahurs gone gold in the morning sun. Sky over almost all of it, and the light changing in it.

8 pictures →

Black, grey and a touch of pink

James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler, an American who settled in London, in the 1870s and 1880s. The critic Théodore Duret in evening dress with a pink cloak over his arm, the actor Henry Irving as Philip II of Spain, a lady in grey against the dark, a woman leaning back by the fire in a yellow room, evening crowds at Cremorne Gardens, and the market square at Dieppe. He called his pictures arrangements and notes, and meant it.

7 pictures →

Lakes, sea and quiet light

John Frederick Kensett

John Frederick Kensett, an American painter of lakes and shores, from the 1850s to 1872. Mountains in mist over Lake George, the same lake again in a quick turquoise study, the Hudson between green hills, people resting under tall trees by Conesus Lake, the sun going down on a flat sea, a rocky point under a foggy sky, and cedars at Darien with the last red light behind their trunks. Very little happens, very slowly.

8 pictures →

Blossom, oaks and golden haze

George Inness

George Inness, from the Delaware valley to the hills outside Rome and back to New Jersey, between 1861 and the 1890s. A rainbow over the Delaware Water Gap with cattle by the river, red and gold oaks under a storm sky, a red barn and dark trees against an orange evening at Medfield, olive trees above the plain at Tivoli, and an orchard at Montclair in white blossom and green mist. The air is the real subject.

8 pictures →

Lanterns, plum blossom and rain

Suzuki Harunobu

Woodblock prints from Edo in the 1760s, the years when Harunobu made some of the first full-colour prints. Slender young women in quiet scenes: one holding a lantern up to plum blossom against a black night, two sharing a yellow umbrella in a storm, women playing the shamisen while men peer in through a lattice window, tea things on a red stand on a rainy night, and a woman alone at a shrine at the hour of the ox.

7 pictures →

Women of Edo, close up

Kitagawa Utamaro

Woodblock prints from Edo, most of them from the 1790s, with Utamaro’s women drawn close, often head and shoulders. Two women with their heads together, one in black with white dots, a woman wiping her face after the bath, two ladies each holding part of a lacquered mirror, a mother with her baby at midnight, children at play around a standing screen, and a household scrambling under a green mosquito net as a thunderstorm comes in.

8 pictures →

Ghosts, wrestlers and rain

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Woodblock prints from Edo around the middle of the nineteenth century, many of them three sheets wide. Two sumo wrestlers locked together while a judge and the referee look on, the ghosts of the Taira rising from the sea around a ship at Daimotsu Bay, a crowd of fighters on the steep roof of the Hōryūkaku from the tale of eight dogs, women on a pleasure boat under the autumn moon, and grey rain over the river at Ochanomizu.

7 pictures →

Silk, lace and a sea god

John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley in Boston, from his teens in the 1750s to 1773. Neptune rides the waves with his trident and a golden ball, drawn by grey sea horses while a triton blows a shell. Then the portraits: little John Greenleaf in a red cap with white plumes, hugging a lamb, Elizabeth Greenleaf in white satin with roses, Mrs. Storer in teal silk with a pink rose, her husband in a soft green cap, and Mrs. Winthrop, her hands and a sprig of fruit mirrored in a polished table.

6 pictures →

Powdered hair and rosy faces

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart, the American portrait painter, from 1785 to around 1820. Captain John Gell in blue and gold points out to sea from a rocky shore, a ship behind him, and Josef de Jaudenes sits at a green table in a red suit stitched with silver. Then closer portraits: George Washington, white-haired, in black against green, John Shaw in a red chair with a book, Matthew Clarkson with a gold epaulette and a sword, and Mrs. Sigourney in a white turban and a red shawl.

6 pictures →

Poets, pines and pale ink

Ike no Taiga

Ike no Taiga in Kyoto, from the 1730s to the 1760s, painting nanga, the scholars’ art Japan learned from China. The Orchid Pavilion gathering twice, as a tall scroll and across a folding screen: poets sit along a winding stream as little wine cups float past. Then a finger painting of a grey mountain in blotted ink and one boatman, a cycad in quick grey strokes, an old pine under a few large characters, and steep autumn peaks over a thatched house, with a poem written above.

6 pictures →

Hermits, birds and misty hills

Yosa Buson

Yosa Buson, the haiku poet who also painted in the nanga manner, from the late 1750s into the 1780s. Hanshan and Shide in grey robes, one turned away with a broom, the other grinning, a scroll tucked behind him. Jurōjin with a long white beard and a crane at his side, two long-tailed birds in willow and peach blossom, a thin waterfall in misty mountains, a traveller crossing a little bridge on a folding screen, and his own hokku on the New Year’s crow, written beside an old courtier.

6 pictures →

White dresses and a red bridge

J. Alden Weir

J. Alden Weir, an American Impressionist, in the late 1880s and the 1890s. A woman in white rests on a green divan while a small girl holds a guitar, Anna Dwight Weir reads a letter beside a pot of flowers, green apples hang on a branch over ripe red fruit, and two faces under black feathered hats sit either side of a gilt frame. Outside, a red iron bridge doubles in a still river, a mill chimney smokes over a green town, and sailing boats rest in a pale bay.

7 pictures →

Satin, a letter and a lute

Gerard ter Borch

Gerard ter Borch, the Dutch painter of satin, from about 1650 to the late 1660s. A young woman in pink satin fastens her bodice as a maid brings a silver jug, a woman in blue plays a long-necked lute for a cavalier, and a girl leans over a chair to read a letter as it is written. Then portraits in black: Burgomaster Jan van Duren, his hat on a red table, Margaretha van Haexbergen at a red armchair, and a father showing an open watch to a child in a feathered hat.

7 pictures →

Snow peaks and falling water

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt, the German-born painter of the American West, from 1863 to about 1890. Lander’s Peak rises snowy above a waterfall and a camp of tipis and horses, granite walls stand over the still Merced in Yosemite, and visitors in hats pause below the white rush of Nevada Falls. Then Lake Louise with dead trees in the water, the Matterhorn glowing pink above the mist at sunrise, a snow peak over a quiet lake, and a white beach curving round a turquoise cove.

7 pictures →

Boats, pines and red autumn leaves

Shitao

Shitao, born Zhu Ruoji, an early Qing painter with a free, quick brush, from about 1690 to 1705. Two boats with tan sails come in to a white house on an orange headland, and a man in white sits hunched in a small boat below misty hills. Then hills thick with blue and green dots at Zhang Gong’s Grotto, pines in grey ink at Mount Huang, a house by a fenced field under a long poem for the Double Ninth, and people at ease under red autumn trees by an arched bridge.

6 pictures →

Old masters, snow and wild geese

Wang Hui

Wang Hui, an early Qing painter who worked in the manner of the old masters, from 1662 to 1713. Snowy peaks stand white against a grey ink sky in a scene after Li Cheng, a waterfall drops in steps through a rock arch on the brown silk of Mount Taihang, and lines of wild geese cross a wide river past a tall cliff. With his assistants he painted the Kangxi Emperor’s tour on the road to Mount Tai: green mountains, red-walled temples and crowds in blue at a walled gate.

6 pictures →

Moonlit sails and dark varnish

Albert Pinkham Ryder

Albert Pinkham Ryder, an American painter of moonlight and sea, from about 1880 into the 1900s. His paint has darkened and cracked with time. A dark boat rides a yellow wave under a full moon, another leans under a great black cloud, two figures in red and white ruffs stand by a pale stream in the Forest of Arden, a bridge of low arches sits in a brown dusk, a herdsman stands with his cattle by a river, and a ship lies beached below a dark cliff.

6 pictures →

Saints, a giant and a dragon

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin, a French painter who worked in Rome, from the 1620s to 1658. Peter and John stand over a lame man on the temple steps, Romulus, in red, looks down as his soldiers seize the Sabine women, two soldiers in silver armour face a dragon while a woman waits in a golden boat, and blind Orion strides through a forest, a guide on his shoulders. Then two dark pictures: Midas with his face in the river, and Christ reaching for the cup an angel brings as his disciples sleep.

6 pictures →

Satin, silk and gold braid

George Romney

George Romney, a British portrait painter of the late 1700s. Lady Elizabeth Stanley sits under dark trees in white satin with a pink sash, her chin on her hand. Mrs. Charles Frederick wears rust-orange silk and a striped scarf wound through her piled hair, her arms folded on a ledge. Then a young woman in a cream wrap looking away, Admiral Ogle in gold braid, a man in a powdered wig against a cloudy sky, and Romney himself in 1795, white-haired, looking back over his shoulder.

6 pictures →

Parasols, sand and big skies

Eugène Boudin

Eugène Boudin, the French painter of beaches and skies, from 1863 to 1892. At Trouville a horse pulls a grey bathing cabin into the shallows while a bearded man and a black dog stand nearby, and at Dieppe women in wide blue and white skirts gather under grey clouds. Princess Metternich walks the sand in white over a red underskirt, a crowd on wooden chairs faces the sunset, a village and its red-brown sails double in a still river, and red roofs line a deep blue bay at Beaulieu.

6 pictures →

Actors, heroes and early summer rain

Utagawa Kunisada

Utagawa Kunisada, an Edo printmaker of actors and heroes, from 1819 to 1863. Ichikawa Danjūrō VII glares from under huge black tufts of hair, white peonies behind him and a poem in white on black. Mitsuuji in blue brocade holds a sprig of yellow mountain roses, and grey rain falls on a red horse in a flooded field. Guan Yu, red-faced and long-bearded, sits among a peacock, a deer and a red ogre, all basketwork, and the tattooed heroes of the Water Margin crowd together on deep blue.

6 pictures →

Tall figures, blossom and a bridge

Torii Kiyonaga

Torii Kiyonaga in Edo, from 1781 to about 1791, drawing tall figures in groups. Three women and a man stroll past a dark cherry trunk at Gotenyama, pink blossom overhead, and Ichikawa Danjūrō V walks with his family, a small boy in red on a young man’s shoulders. Under the yellow timbers of Azuma Bridge a woman stands in the prow of a boat, her robes blowing. A woman in red looks down at a black dog on her hem, and Danjūrō II sharpens a huge arrow on a whetstone.

6 pictures →

A face, a carp and quiet still lifes

Keisai Eisen

Keisai Eisen, an Edo printmaker, from about 1812 to the 1840s. A woman’s face fills one print, tilted close, tortoiseshell pins fanned out in her black hair, a red robe with white dots at her neck. A dark carp swims down through turquoise water, and snowy roofs, pines and a shrine gate stand by the water, all in blue. Then surimono, prints issued privately with poems: a stone marked with a sun, a moon and stars, a little pine above a koto, a pink bookcase stacked with blue books.

7 pictures →

Slender women, boats and lanterns

Chobunsai Eishi

Chōbunsai Eishi in Edo, in the 1790s, drawing tall, slender women on quiet grounds. Takigawa of the Ōgiya raises a hand to the long pins in her hair, and another woman, seen close, holds up a painted shell from the shell-matching game. Two women stand in slanting rain by a river, printed in black ink alone. Pleasure boats crowd the Sumida under the long grey legs of a bridge, and on a yellow ground hung with wisteria and red lanterns, a figure in black dances among the women.

7 pictures →

Faces, gold chains and grey silk

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a French painter of smooth, exact portraits, from about 1820 to 1848. Madame Leblanc sits in black silk with a gold chain and a striped shawl, her husband holds a book by a red carpet, Edmond Cavé wears a quick white cravat, his wife bows her head against a pale, unfinished ground, and Saint John looks down under a thin halo. Tintoretto holds a gun to Aretino’s chest. Ingres and his workshop painted the Odalisque in shades of grey on purpose: a woman in a turban looks back over her shoulder.

7 pictures →

Field work in all weathers

Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet, a French painter of country work, from the 1840s to the 1870s. A woman hurries a child home before a storm, a bundle of sticks in her arms, another rakes hay beside a stack on a misty day, and a shepherdess knits in the shade of a hedge. In the 1870s, a herdsman blows his horn against an orange sky, a woman in a long cloak minds her turkeys under a bare tree, and three tall haystacks stand under a dark sky, sheep grazing at their feet.

6 pictures →

Rivers, boats and apple blossom

Charles-François Daubigny

Charles-François Daubigny, a French painter of rivers and riverbanks, from the 1850s to the 1870s. Stone houses and cows by still water at dusk in Optevoz, ducks on a dark river under an orange sunset, a stream under tall thin trees leading to a sunlit house, a woman washing at the edge of the Oise among turning trees, fishing boats beached on the sand at Etaples, an orchard in white and pink blossom with cows grazing in the shade, and a wide grey river under big white clouds.

7 pictures →

Sunny grass and a circus at night

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat, a French painter who built his pictures from small touches of colour, from the late 1870s to 1888. A mower in a white shirt swings his scythe through gold wheat, a gardener bends over the earth in yellow sunlight, two men pole a boat on the bright Seine, and people rest on the riverbank in a study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Pale trunks rise from green flecks at Pontaubert, and a trombone player stands on a night stage of tiny dots in Circus Sideshow.

7 pictures →

Sunlight, tiled floors and open doors

Pieter de Hooch

Pieter de Hooch, a Dutch painter of rooms and the people in them, from the late 1650s to about 1670. A woman in a fur-trimmed red jacket raises a glass under a green arbour, sunlight turns a wall yellow behind a card game, and by an open window a young woman touches her hair. A gentleman in a red coat pays the hostess beside a big cart wheel, a woman carries a pitcher on a tray across a chequered floor, and the walls of one room are patterned in gold.

7 pictures →

Ruins, river bends and a giant goblet

Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole, an American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, in the 1830s. An ivy-hung ruined arch rises over the plain near Tivoli, and from Mount Holyoke a storm moves off as the river loops through sunny fields, once in a quick sketch and once in full. By the Catskill, a woman in pink holds up wild flowers under tall trees. A cloud piles up white and pink over a strip of land, and a giant stone goblet holds a lake with sailboats, spilling over its green rim.

6 pictures →

Palms, a tiger and a sculptor’s studio

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme, a French painter with a smooth, exact finish, from the 1850s to about 1890. Fan palms stand against a pale violet sky, and a tiger lies with her cubs above a dark pool. Men pray in rows under red and white arches, others cast bullets at a stove in a Cairo coffee house, a soldier in pink satin wears a tall wrapped headdress, and a woman in a green scarf leans on a carved wooden balcony. In a studio, Pygmalion embraces his statue as she comes to life.

7 pictures →

Faces, satin and spilled eggs

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a French painter of faces and feelings, from the 1750s to the 1780s. In Broken Eggs, a young woman sits on the floor by a spilled basket, an old woman grips a young man’s arm, and a boy leans on a barrel. A princess in white ruffles puts a wreath of blue flowers on her little dog, the Comte d’Angiviller wears pink silk and gold brocade, and two young women look anxiously away. Aegina looks up from a white bed as Jupiter’s eagle appears in a golden cloud.

6 pictures →

Bruges panels in blue, red and gold

Gerard David

Gerard David, a painter in Bruges, from about 1500 to about 1520. On a gold ground, Christ raises a hand to his mother as a young woman dries her tears, and in a small arched panel he looks straight out, blessing. Three kings bring gold cups under a ruined arch, a little dog trotting past, and angels fly over the Nativity, with kneeling donors on the side panels. Gabriel greets Mary in pale greys under a dove, and Christ carries the cross, then rises in a red cloak.

6 pictures →