Showing posts with label BRITISH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BRITISH. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Lady Lilith 1868
Lilith is a demon associated with the night. She is said to have been Adam's first wife, whom he left for Eve. In another painting, Rossetti shows her vengeance on Adam and Eve.
Comment on striking features of the picture.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
The Lady of Shalott c. 1860
The picture illustrates a scene from a ballad by the romantic poet Alfred Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott
This lady lives near King Arthur's court; she is under a curse and must weave a tapestry of the view from her castle window which she is only allowed to look at through her mirror. When the handsome knight Sir Lancelot passes by, she looks at him directly: the curse descends on her. She dies in a boat which takes her body to Camelot.
The topic and the execution of the painting are typical of the Pre-Raphaelite painters with their interest in the mediaeval period, which they perceived as a better one than their own, and their scrupulous attention to detail.
William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)
The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her last Berth to be Broken up 1838
The Temeraire was Admiral Nelson's flagship in the famous battle of Trafalgar of 1805, which was fought against the French and Spanish fleets. Nelson won the battle but lost his life.
Comment on the emotional qualities of the painting.
Pan and Psyche 1872-74
The Pre-Raphaelite painters were interested in mythology: Pan was the Greek god of shepherds and huntsmen; he had horns and the legs of a goat. He invented the flute. Cupid, the god of love, is charmed by Psyche, a king's daughter; he visits her secretly at night but forbids her to look at him. She does so, however, whereupon he leaves her. She wanders the earth in search of him, subjected to much suffering by Venus until Jupiter takes pity on her and reunites her with Cupid.
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
Stonehenge 1836
The huge structure near Salisbury (unrestored in Constable's time) was built about five thousand years ago : it was a temple of the sun and the moon. The designers were excellent astronomers and ingenious organisers and builders.
Comment on the skyscape, and on the composition of the painting. Compare it with the picture of Salisbury Cathedral.
John Constable
Parham Mill at Gillingham 1826
By 1826, water mills were giving way to the sort of 'mill' painted by de Loutherburg in Coalbrookdale at Night, to the factories with their steam-driven machinery.
Comment on the impression created of English rural life.
John Constable (1776-1837)
Oberon and Titania with their Train (Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream V)
Fuseli's subjects - folk mythology and the Shakespearian world - are Blake's subjects, too. But Blake was also a poet inspired by biblical narratives and by a mythological world of his own creation.
Titania Embracing Bottom (Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream IV,1) 1792-93
This play is a comedy. Titania, queen of the fairies, has had magic ointment put on her eyelids while she sleeps; this makes her fall in love with the first person she sees on awakening. That person happens to be a human being, Bottom. He is a weaver who has gone into the wood with his friends to rehearse a play in which he wears an ass's head.
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