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Walter Greaves - Hammersmith Bridge on Boat Race Day [c.1862]]

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Walter Greaves - Hammersmith Bridge on Boat Race Day [c.1862]]
Walter Greaves was the son of a Thames boatman and a self-taught painter. A dense crowd is assembled on Hammersmith suspension bridge to watch the annual university boat race. There were fears that the bridge was not strong enough to support the weight of heavy traffic when around 12,000 people gathered there for the event in 1870. Greaves captures the diversity of London at this time, although this work, painted in his early style, simplifies and caricatures the individuals in the crowd.

[Tate, Britain - Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 139.7 cm]

Andre Derain - Harlequin and Pierrot [c.1924]

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Andre Derain - Harlequin and Pierrot [c.1924]
Harlequin and Pierrot, with one knee raised and both playing the guitar, appear against a neutral background in a never-ending dance like marionettes or puppets. Their gazes do not meet and they have serious expressions on their faces. Therefore the painting is suffused with a certain melancholy quality. Derain prepared for this work by making several preliminary drawings. He also paid close attention to the small still life in the bottom right of the painting that anchors the composition.

[Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris - Oil on canvas, 175 x 175 cm]

Pablo Picasso - Acrobat Leaning on His Elbow [1922]

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Pablo Picasso - Acrobat Leaning on His Elbow [1922]
[Sotheby’s, New York - Watercolour and brush and ink on paper, 16.5 x 10.5 cm]

John William Godward - A Greek Beauty [1905]

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John William Godward - A Greek Beauty [1905]
A beautiful dark-haired model leans languorously against a marble wall, dressed in a brilliant-white toga tied with violet ribbons and a striped stola at her waist. The white of her gown and that of the marble add to the sense of bright, Mediterranean light, the white-heat of the south where fair-skinned women must shield their faces from the glare of the midday sun with feathered fans. Cypress trees, azure-blue sea and distant mountainous shorelines further reference the sunlit climes of Greece and Italy. Godward created a world of care-free languor in which female, statuesque beauty is the main theme. In A Greek Beauty the inactivity of the woman is contrasted with the vigour of the carved relief behind her, depicting Centaurs and Lapiths locked in battle.

[Sotheby’s, London - Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 38 cm]

Max Beckman - Large Still Life with Telescope [1927]

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Max Beckman - Large Still Life with Telescope [1927]
One of Germany’s leading 20th-century artists, painter, draftsman, and printmaker Max Beckmann created bold, figurative artworks that attempted to make sense of human existence and the turmoil that surrounded him.

[Art Resource, New York - Oil on canvas, 141 × 207 cm]

Salvador Dalí - Atomic Leda [1949]

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Salvador Dalí - Atomic Leda [1949]
[Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Art Archive - Oil on canvas, 60 × 44 cm]

Philip Evergood - Railroad Men’s Wives [c.1933]

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Philip Evergood - Railroad Men’s Wives [c.1933]
Philip Howard Francis Dixon Evergood (New York, October 26, 1901 - Bridgewater, Connecticut, March, 1973) was an American Social Realist painter, etcher, lithographer, sculptor, illustrator and writer. He was particularly active during the Depression and World War II era.

[Robert Funk Fine Art, Miami - Oil on canvas laid down on board, 63.5 × 91.4 cm]

Emil Nolde - Self Portrait [1917]

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Emil Nolde - Self Portrait [1917]
Nolde's short affiliation with Die Brücke and tempestuous relationship with the Berlin Secession along with his long periods of isolation and travel tend to define him as a somewhat isolated figure in the art world of his time. Nevertheless, his influence was felt there for much of his long career. His commitment to printmaking revitalised a dwindling medium. The re-popularisation of printmaking not only as an art form, but as a way of proliferating images and ideas (as practiced by the Die Brücke artists with their catalogues and members-only pamphlets), draws a clear line towards the use of prints and art as propaganda in World War II. Despite being a member of the Nazi party, Nolde is ironically known as the artist most confiscated by them, with over 1000 works taken from across Germany. His flower paintings, now known collectively as his Unpainted Pictures, are seen as a symbol of resistance against the party and its policies towards modernism.

[Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek - Oil on plywood, 83.5 × 65 cm]

Vilhelm Hammershøi - Sunbeams or Sunlight (Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams) [1900]

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Vilhelm Hammershøi - Sunbeams or Sunlight (Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams) [1900]
Hammershøi took drawing lessons beginning at the age of eight, later studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Known for his velvety brushstrokes and subtle palette of deep mauves, greys, and pale yellows, Hammershøi depicted calm, enigmatic architectural spaces whose emptiness invites quiet contemplation. He produced some of his most famous works between 1898 and 1909, which portray the patterns of light that came in through the window of his apartment; these earned him the reputation as a master of light.

[Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark - Oil on canvas, 70 × 59 cm]

Alfred Sisley - Summer at Argenteuil (Summer at Bougival) [1876]

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Alfred Sisley - Summer at Argenteuil (Summer at Bougival) [1876]
Sisley had spent most of his adult life in poverty, often having to request loans for modest sums of money. He and his family relocated along the outskirts of Paris looking for cheaper housing more than a dozen times. While his lack of recognition and dire financial situation caused him emotional distress that led him to avoid social engagements, he managed to remain friendly and well-liked throughout his life.        

It was not until late in life, 1897, that Sisley married his wife. Marie died of cancer in October of 1898, soon after they returned to France from their wedding in Wales. In January of 1899, Sisley himself was in poor health. He invited his good friend Monet to visit him, and while Monet was there, he asked him to care for his children. Sisley died a week later of throat cancer and was buried at Moret cemetery. A bust was erected in his memory.

[Emil Bührle Collection, Zurich - Oil on canvas, 47 x 62 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - The Factory [1887]

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Vincent van Gogh - The Factory [1887]
In the late nineteenth century, the French landscape was becoming increasingly marked by signs of industry. Van Gogh depicts a glass factory in Asnières, a suburb northwest of Paris where the artist painted frequently in the summer of 1887. The round objects stacked along the sides of the pathway are balls of glass awaiting melting inside the buildings. They would have been formed into lantern globes for gas streetlights and interior fixtures.

[Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia - Oil on canvas, 46 x 55.6 cm]

Henri Lehmann - The Bathers (The Girls of the Spring)

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Henri Lehmann - The Bathers (The Girls of the Spring)
Henri Lehmann (Kiel, April 14, 1814 - Paris, March 30, 1882) was a German-born French historical painter and portraitist. The present work is not the only version of this subject that the artist created in oil during his lifetime, but it is the only extant version still located. The primary version, Femmes près de l'eau, was submitted to the Paris Salon in 1842 and acquired by the Belgian Royal Collection before it was destroyed in the fire at Palace Laeken in 1890.

[Christie’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 90.2 cm]

Lesser Ury - Victory Alley with Victory Column in Summer, Berlin [c.1925]

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Lesser Ury - Victory Alley with Victory Column in Summer, Berlin [c.1925]
Impressionist painter and printmaker Lesser Ury (né Leo Lesser Ury) was born into a Jewish family in Birnbaum, then in the Prussian province of Posen (now Kreis Birnbaum, Poland), on November 7, 1861; his father, a baker, died during his childhood and the family relocated to Berlin. Ury was initially apprenticed to a merchant before leaving to study painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, and then in a succession of European cities: Brussels, Paris, Stuttgart and Munich. In Paris, he developed a fascination with the modern metropolis and nocturnal urban life, the subject matter for which he is most celebrated. Lesser Ury died in Berlin, Germany on October 18, 1931. 

[Ludorff, Dusseldorf - Oil on canvas on wood, 23.4 × 39.9 cm]

Thomas Hart Benton - Weighing Cotton [1939]

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Thomas Hart Benton - Weighing Cotton [1939]
Weighing Cotton is one of a series of agriculture scenes in which Thomas Hart Benton articulated a personal vision of the American heartland. At that time, cotton was still hand-harvested almost entirely by Black workers, whose daily wages depended on the amount of cotton each individual picked. The cotton was weighed with a simple pole counterweight and then emptied into wagons to be transported to a large cotton gin. 

Weighing Cotton presents a narrative of an ordinary day in a cotton field. It is also a tale of solitary labour directed toward a common purpose: the wagon must be filled. But this is not a community of equals, which Benton subtly emphasises through composition and palette. Where the Black men are dressed in muted greys and tans that blend readily into the landscape, the white man is dressed in eye-catching re[University of Yale Art Gallery.

[Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven - Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on wood panel, 81.4 × 100.3 cm]

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Fights (Torments of Love) [1915]

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Fights (Torments of Love) [1915]
The fairy-tale story Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story, 1813 by Adelbert von Chamisso became a parable for Kirchner of his own loss of identity during the First World War. In Chamisso's story, Schlemihl sells his shadow for endless wealth, but as a result becomes an outsider in society. Kirchner read the fairy tale as the story of a “persecution maniac” who “sells his innermost peculiarity,” the shadow. He falls in love, but the love remains unhappy and he is also ostracised from society. When he meets the little grey man on the country road to whom he once sold the shadow, the deal can no longer be reversed. Schlemihl travels sadly through the country and unexpectedly encounters his shadow, but he is unable to pin it back on his heels. After Chamisso, Schlemihl finally runs around the world with seven-league boots - a conciliatory motif that was impossible for Kirchner to implement.

[Stadel Museum, Frankfurt - Colour woodcut of two sticks in blue and red over black on grey blotting paper, 57.1 z 41.8 cm, sheet 3 from the episode Schlemihl]

Max Ernst - City with Animals [c.1919]

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Max Ernst - City with Animals [c.1919]
[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York - Oil on burlap, 66.6 x 62.3 cm]

Théo van Rysselberghe - Levant Island seen from Cap Bénat, Provence [c.1893]

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Théo van Rysselberghe - Levant Island seen from Cap Bénat, Provence [c.1893]
This work dates from the very height of Théo van Rysselberghe’s passionate engagement with Pointillism, the revolutionary technique pioneered by the Neo-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat. Van Rysselberghe quickly embraced and absorbed the central tenets of the Pointillist style, and began painting in a Divisionist manner in 1888, swiftly becoming one of the movement’s foremost apostles. ‘Like you, I am more convinced than ever of the excellence of our technique,’ he wrote to Paul Signac in 1892. ‘I find it genuinely voluptuous, it’s so logical and good.’

[Christie’s, London - Oil on canvas, 45.3 x 65 cm]

Camille Pissarro - The Washerwomen at Éragny (Sketch) [1902]

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Camille Pissarro - The Washerwomen at Éragny (Sketch) [1902]
Executed in 1902, this work is a wonderful depiction of washerwomen in on orchard near Pissarro’s house in Eragny, a small village on the banks of the river Epte. Pissarro and his family moved to Eragny, situated some three kilometres from Gisors, in the spring of 1884. In July 1892 Pissarro purchased the house his family had been renting for the previous eight years with the financial help of Claude Monet, who lived in the neighbouring Giverny. The house exists to this day, in a street named after the artist. 

[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 73.4 x 92.4 cm]

Maurice Utrillo - Le Maison Bernot [1924]

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Maurice Utrillo - Le Maison Bernot [1924]
This painting depicts a group of people going down the Rue du Mont-Cenis on the hill of Montmartre in Paris. The bell tower of the Sacré Coeur basilica, which was completed in 1912, is recognisable on the right. The angle chosen, which must have been taken from a post card, allows the ‘Bernot house’ to be seen on the left. Utrillo painted this canvas while he was living in the department of Ain, far from the capital, and according to one of his biographers, he "remembered the most humble of details and, under his brush, he arranged them into a precise and charming list..." The post card probably served as framework for his memories. Utrillo had lived in Montmartre since his birth, and when he was temporarily removed from Paris, it seems as though he missed this neighbourhood.

[Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris - Oil on canvas, 100 x 146 cm]

Raimundo de Madrazo - Coming out of Church [before 1875 ]

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Raimundo de Madrazo - Coming out of Church [before 1875 ]
This painting explores the inequalities of modern life; the population of 19th-century European cities ballooned as rural workers migrated to urban environments looking for employment. The artist highlights the social and economic disparities that resulted. As wealthy, fashionably dressed women leave a church, they pass numerous men and women seated on its steps who have no source of income and are asking them for money.

[Walters Art Museum, Baltimore - Oil on canvas, 64 x 100.01 cm]

Lee Krasner - Porcelain [1955]

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Lee Krasner - Porcelain [1955]
“It started in 1953, I had the studio hung solidly with drawings... floor to ceiling all around. Walked in one day, hated it all, took it down, tore everything and threw it on the floor, and when I went back, it was a couple of weeks before I opened that door again, it was seemingly a very destructive act….When I opened that door and walked in, the floor was solidly covered with these torn drawings that I had left and they began to interest me and I started collaging.” [Lee Krasner]

[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on paper and fabric collage on Masonite, 76.2 x 122.2 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - The Road Menders [1889]

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Vincent van Gogh - The Road Menders [1889]
Vincent van Gogh painted two versions of The Road Menders in 1889. The first variant, the final work of many outdoor scenes of that year, was executed in plein air, and the Phillips version, which followed shortly thereafter, was created in the studio.

On December 7, van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in Paris, describing a first version: “The last study I have done is a view of the village, where they were at work, under some enormous plane trees, repairing the pavements. So there are heaps of sand, stones and gigantic trunks, the leaves yellowing and here and there you get a glimpse of a house front and small figures.” The Phillips version, which van Gogh called “a copy,” followed most likely in mid-December. On January 3, 1890, van Gogh referred to both paintings in a list that accompanied a shipment of paintings sent to Theo: “The big plane trees, the chief street or boulevard of Saint-Rémy, study from nature – I have a copy which is perhaps more finished here.”

[Phillips Collection, Washington - Oil on canvas, 73.66 x 92.71 cm]

Alfred Stieglit - Georgia O’Keefe [1918]

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Alfred Stieglit - Georgia O’Keefe [1918]
Stieglitz had seen and exhibited Georgia O’Keeffe’s work a couple of years before, but when he invited her in June 1918 to live with him at his family home in Lake George, New York, thus began one of the most fertile love affairs in American art. Stieglitz had found his muse and O’Keeffe had found her benefactor. Stieglitz began the most prolific period of photographing in his entire life. It is as though he had to start over, to learn how to photograph again, in order to discover how to see and portray his new world. He photographed O’Keeffe incessantly. Stieglitz was so taken by her that he wrote to Arthur Dove in 1918, “O’Keeffe is a constant source of wonder to me, like Nature itself.”

[Christie’s, New York - Platinum print, flush-mounted with dry mount tissue to a second, platinum print of Georgia O'Keeffe also by the artist, 24.2 x 19.2 cm]

Georgia O’Keefe - Black Iris VI [1936]

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Georgia O’Keefe - Black Iris VI [1936]
“It was the flowers that begat the O'Keeffe legend in the heady climate of the 1920s,” declares publisher Nicholas Callaway, and indeed Georgia O’Keeffe has been a sensation since the debut exhibition of her flower paintings in 1923. Their sensuous beauty magnified to large scale has attracted both admiration and notoriety for the artist. Among her most famous and powerful flower subjects is the black iris.

[Christie’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 60.9 cm]

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Gandalf's Gallery was founded as a non-profit making, educational vehicle. The gallery claims no copyright over the art exhibited. Visitors may, therefore, download images for purely non-commercial purposes. If you feel that your copyright has been infringed, please contact the gallery immediately. Please note that the nude figure is a tradition in Western Art and is included within the gallery’s collection. 





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