Art and Eye

  Graceful, petite and delicately moulded, this 4th Century B.C. sculpture, sitting at 14cm in height, is now part of the British Museum's Collection. It is known as a Tanagra figurine, named after the Boeotian town in Greece where many of these types of sculptures were excavated, normally associated with grave markers. This figure may be typical in many ways, yet through the use of draperies, contrasting with the softness of the facial features, alongside the unusual pose, the small object becomes a key example of the unique skill of Hellenistic Greek sculptors, whose names may be lost to history, but whose works live on.  The Tanagra figure was acquired by Charles Merlin, arguably the most important collector of antiquities for the British Museum in the mid nineteenth century. Across a thirty year period, Merlin acquired more than 450 objects for the museum. Most notably, he was involved in the recasting of the Parthenon Marbles - the casts which Lord Elgin has repeatedly us...

  Piero del Pollaiolo's depiction of Faith draws a viewer in through detail. The seated figure remains tantalisingly close, as her foot hovers above the edge of the fictive throne she sits upon. Mapped out by complex, crisp, three-dimensional draperies, Pollaiolo celebrates his astute handling of perspective on the knees of Faith, which push into a viewer's space with surprising force. From the various artistic attributes, to the recessional niche behind the figure, Pollaiolo's panel includes diverse pictorial imagery whilst continuing to drive the central message of devotion home.  Created for the audience chamber in the Tribunale di Mercanzia in Florence, a gathering place off the Piazza della Signoria to resolve disputes between Florentine merchants, this allegorical figure was part of a series of Virtues and is now in the Uffizi. The panel, painted in tempera, with its large size and tilted perspective indicates that it was seen from above, looming over onlookers in jud...

  Charles West Cope's memorialisation of fellow painter Samuel Palmer, who died three years before this work was produced, is a small yet thoughtful etching which pulls a viewer closer. Palmer is aged and stooped, almost swaddled in layers of clothing, and leaning on the back of a chair as if to support himself, yet his gaze remains captivating and knowing. It is an interesting choice by Cope to choose the medium of etching to honour Palmer, and perhaps an oil of the same subject did at one point exist, as this was his favoured material. Training at the Royal Academy and travelling to Paris in the 1830s to expand his artistic knowledge, Cope built a career initially upon copying Old Masters which he then sold, before he created his own painted representations of historical scenes and looked to imagery centred on rural life for further inspiration. Often, he drew on the minute detail and vivid colouration found in the Pre-Raphaelite mode of working: his The Thorn of 1866, for exampl...

  Pale, uninterrupted colours seep, merge and flow together in Krøyer's Summer Evening on Skagen's Southern Beach, painted just before the turn of the century, and depicting the well-known artists' colony in Denmark. It is a painting of peacefulness personified, a quiet, contemplative scene where two figures and the boundless idyllic natural world live together in harmony. Through Krøyer's sweeping brushwork, the artist successfully closes the gap between sea, land and sky, as layers of blue and white bleed together into an expansive natural beauty.  Despite his merging of boundaries, Krøyer maintains an effortless three-dimensionality to his landscape, captured in the use of perspective: placing a viewer essentially on the same plane as the two strolling figures enables the coastline to stretch out before them and us, allowing a viewer to almost become involved in the painting. This additionally furthers the sense of nature's endlessness, as it disappears both ...

  In the dimness of candlelight, Joseph Wright of Derby depicts three figures gazing intently at the Classical nude sculpture in the centre of the work. The viewer joins in this exploration, taking their own seat at the table right in front of the the leaning, contrapposto figure, which seems to be an imitation of the Borghese Gladiator. From light to dark, from flesh to marble, Derby's painting is typical of his tenebristic style, yet here he takes on a new subject that expands beyond his oeuvre of portraits, or even beyond his most well known work An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. Certainly, the work in question bears similarities to the  Air Pump , particularly in the sudden explosion of light cast across the sculpture. Not only does this illuminate the musculature of the lean, stretching gladiator, but it also allows to viewer to catch a glimpse of the faces which surround the table, all of whom are individualised - in fact, the work is even said to include a portra...

  The Laughing Cavalier is a man on the cusp of unseriousness. His eyes follow a viewer around the room, his curled moustache twitches endearingly as if he struggles to maintain composure, whilst his lip is pursed to stop laughter escaping. The pose, meanwhile, is proud and monumental, filling the canvas with a foreshortened elbow and shoulder pushing into a viewer's world, serving to emphasise the silks and expensive dress against the monochromatic background.  Frans Hals was first and foremost a portrait painter. His oeuvre includes wedding portraits of solo male and female sitters, multifigure works including The Banquet of Officers from 1627, yet his depictions often turned to peasants or comical characters, notably his Jester with a Lute now in the Louvre, proving that portrait painters also had range. The Laughing Cavalier remains an equally intriguing work: despite being Hals' most famous piece, the sitter remains anonymous. Yet, the smile is so familiar to a viewer, an...