Thomas Gainsborough - Mr and Mrs Andrews
Henry Fuseli – The Nightmare
The work was likely inspired by the waking dreams experienced by Fuseli and his contemporaries, who found that these experiences related to folkloric beliefs like the Germanic tales about demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone.
Caravaggio – Conversion on the Way to Damascus
This represents the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. He was a Roman, big on persecuting the Christians. In this painting he is temporarily blinded by the light of Christ and hearing Jesus words, which admonish him for his persecution. Saul became St Paul one of the early and most important apostles. His writings were the foundation for the New Testament.
Caravaggio was paid 300 scudi for this painting. Which was a pretty good chunk of change in its day. At the time a painters assistant might make about 30 scudi a year. The Scudo may have been worth about 75¢, but it converts to more than 20 times that in today’s currency. One hundred years before, Leonardo was paid about 100 scudi for a painting and Michelangelo was paid 200-450 per statue.
To see the original: https://bit.ly/2EqfuYX
Caravaggio – Conversion on the Way to Damascus – 1601
Santa Maria del Popolo
Johannes Vermeer – The Art of Painting
Although Vermeer began as an art salesman, he considered himself more of a painter. He only worked on commission and did not produce more than two or three paintings a year. This allowed him to provide for his wife and their eleven children. For this reason he only produced 45 works. Only 35 still exist.
Considered the most iconic of Vermeer’s existing masterpieces. The Art of the Painting has had a rough ride in the last century. In 1935 Andrew Mellon sought to purchase the painting from its Austrian owners for $1 million, but failed. In 1940 Adolf Hitler acquired the painting for considerably less. It was to be hung in his Fuhermuseum, which was never built. Instead it ended up in a bunker in an Austrian salt mine where it waited out the war. It was one of many masterpieces of art that were rescued by the US Army Monument Men division. Link to original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Painting
Johannes Vermeer - The Art of Painting – 1666
Kunsthistrisches Museum, Vienna
Edward Hopper - Nighthawks
Hopper said the painting "was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet. I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger." Hopper posed for the two men in a mirror and wife Jo for the girl. Nighthawks was probably Hopper’s most ambitious essay in capturing the night-time effects of manmade light. This interior light comes from more than a single lightbulb, with the result that multiple shadows are cast, and some spots are brighter than others as a consequence of being lit from more than one angle. Light was the most powerful and personal of Hopper's expressive means. He used it as an active element in his paintings to model forms, define the time of day, establish a mood, and create pictorial drama by contrasting it with areas of shadow and darkness.
Hopper made many small sketches of concepts and details of his pictures before working on the final paintings. Many of the sketches for this painting still remain. To see the original : https://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/nighthawks
Edward Hopper – Nighthawks - 1942 - Art Institute of Chicago
Henri Rousseau - The Dream
Created in the same year as his death, The Dream was Rousseau’s last painting, which was debuted at the MOMA only a few months before his untimely death.
Henri Rousseau was a self-taught artist who worked as a customs agent on the outskirts of Paris. He was considered one of the great naïve artists. In today’s art market his work would be considered “Outsider Art”. Much of his work was ridiculed, but he did have a small following. Pablo Picasso was one of his big fans and promoted his work. His characteristic paintings, in particular, those on the theme of the jungle captivated the art world with their representations of lush plant and animal life painted with incredible detail and precision. What's interesting though is that Rousseau himself never set foot outside France. His imaginary scenes were informed by visits to the Paris zoo and botanical gardens, and images from postcards, photographs, and illustrated journals. To see original: https://bit.ly/2GWMjin
Henri Rousseau - The Dream - 1910
MOMA
Georges de la Tour - The Fortune Teller
Georges de la Tour was a 17th century painter whose work lived in obscurity until the 1930’s. He reappeared when the Louvre mounted an exhibition of French 17th century painters. Then his work began to sell for millions. This painting was purchased by the Met in 1960 for an undisclosed ,but ”very large sum of money”. The French were outraged, but like several other de la Tours the Louvre may have considered it a fake. Among the evidence is a claim that the word "MERDE" (French for "shit") could be seen in the lace collar of the young woman second from left. Two members of the Metropolitan curatorial staff accepted that the word was there, regarding it as the work of a recent restorer, and it was then removed in 1982. See the original: https://bit.ly/2GnOXvR
Georges de la Tour – The Fortune Teller – 1630
Metropolitan Museum of Art