See the Paintings That a 19th-Century Artist Created While Guided by Spiritual Forces See the Paintings That a 19th-Century Artist Created While Guided by Spiritual Forces In the mid-19th century, Georgiana Houghton began creating intricate, abstract drawings unlike anything her contemporaries had seen. Houghton developed a visual language of swirling color and line that she believed was guided by unseen spiritual forces. In Victorian England during the 1860s and 1870s, Houghton produced intricate watercolor compositions she described as “spirit drawings.” These […] READ: See the Paintings That a 19th-Century Artist Created While Guided by Spiritual Forces

See the Paintings That a 19th-Century Artist Created While Guided by Spiritual Forces #Art #19thcenturyart

Monday Mischief
Wilhelm Valentine Volz's 1880s copy of Peter Paul Rubens' "Two Satyrs"

#antiqueart #peterpaulrubens #19thcenturyart #vintageart #antiqueframe #wilhelmvalentinevolz #antique #kunst #twosatyrs #satyr #meninart #art #artforyourhome #decorativearts #antiquario #arte #antiquités

James Sant was one of Victorian Britain’s best-known painters, celebrated especially for portraits of aristocratic women and children, and later served as Principal Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria. Here, instead of court display, he gives us a highly polished private moment. Two young women sit close together in a dense garden, framed by dark foliage and low pink blossoms that spill across the foreground. The woman at left has dark hair, pale skin, and a soft white dress edged with lace. She lowers her gaze with calm concentration as she steadies the other woman’s hand. The woman at right, fair and rosy, leans inward in a blush-pink dress trimmed with ribbons and flowers. Their heads nearly touch. The woman to the left gently removes a thorn from the other’s finger, turning a tiny hurt into the center of the scene. Sant paints skin, lace, petals, and fabric with velvety softness, so that careful, intimate, and unhurried touch becomes the picture’s real subject. The title tells us what has happened, but the painting’s emotional force lies in how quietly it happens as pain is answered by tenderness. The thorn suggests the old idea that beauty carries risk. Roses bloom, but they wound. The painting is less moral warning than study in feminine care, sympathy, and closeness. Because Sant so often idealized women in lush, refined settings, this work also fits late Victorian taste for sentiment, allegory, and cultivated beauty. Painted in 1887 and now in Manchester Art Gallery, it turns a fleeting sting into an image of mutual attention ... like an everyday act made poetic. We do not know the sitters’ identities from the collection record, but Sant makes them feel less like portraits of individuals than embodiments of affection, delicacy, and emotional reassurance.

“A Thorn amidst the Roses” by James Sant (British) - Oil on canvas / 1887 - Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, England) #WomenInArt #JamesSant #Sant #ManchesterArtGallery #VictorianArt #arte #art #artText #19thCenturyArt #BritishArtist #BritishArt #VictorianPainting #RomanticRealism #1880sArt

Serene Saturday

Early to mid 19th c (Qing Dynasty) Chinese sculpture of Mazu, goddess of the sea

#mazu #antiques #antiqueart #sculpture #chineseart #sculpture #19thcenturyart #goddessofthesea #art #qingdynasty #langtrygallery #大明 #interiordesign #林默娘 #LinMoniang #matsu #潮州#antiquario #arte #kunst

I'm selling a HUGE beautifully carved, antique Victorian marble bust of a young woman with a shy or (devious!) look on her face.

#yardleyantiques #MarbleBust #19thCenturyArt #InteriorDesign #AntiqueSculpture #FineArt #ClassicalArt #ArtCollector #AntiqueArt #ClassicalSculpture

Louis Nicolas Adolphe Rinck 1841 "Creole gentleman"

#adolpherinck #creoleart #rinck #art #antiqueart #neworleansart #louisianaart #langtrygallery #creole #creoleportrait #1840s #19thcenturyart #nineteenthcenturyart #louisianacreole #adolphrinck #antique #antiquario #arte #antiquités #kunst

A woman with light skin sits facing us across a marble-topped table in a café in this vertical painting. Her body is angled slightly to our right, and she rests her right elbow, on our left, on the table. She leans her right cheek onto the back of her right hand as she gazes into the distance. She holds a cigarette in her other hand, which rests on the tabletop. Her pale pink dress has long sleeves with ruffles at the cuffs, and buttons down the front of the skirt can be seen under the table. A lace bow or ruffles cascade down at her neck. Straw-colored hair peeks out under a black hat encircled with a wide band of lace. A short, stemmed glass sitting on the table in front of her holds a small, round piece of fruit surrounded by caramel-colored liquid. The white marble tabletop is streaked with gray. The burgundy, patterned banquette she sits on takes up the bottom half of the composition, and wood paneling around a slate-gray metal grate fills the top half. Loose brushstrokes are visible throughout. The artist signed the work as if he had written his name on the surface of the table, near the front edge to our left, "Manet."

Plum Brandy -- c. 1877 -- National gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Edouard Manet

A favourite picture of mine. I've probably posted it before, but no matter, because I never tire of it, and I hope that you don't either.

#Art #FrenchArt #19thCenturyArt #Manet #PlumBrandy

Daniel Urrabieta Vierge -- Woman Smoking a Cigarette -- Etching -- 1888 -- Art Institute of Chicago -- Public Domain

#Art #Print #Etching #Smoking #Cigarette #FrenchArt #19thCenturyArt

Girl with a Cigarette I -- Anders Zorn -- Etching -- 1891 -- Art Institute of Chicago -- Public Domain

#Art #AndersZorn #Print #Etching #Smoking #Cigarette #SwedishArt #19thCenturyArt

A young woman sits on a low divan upholstered in wide, horizontal stripes of tans, blues, and reds against a cool green wall. She is turned slightly toward us, with one knee raised beneath the drape of her clothing. Her loose, pale lavender tunic pools in soft folds, painted with visible, gentle brushstrokes that let pinks, whites, and violets mingle like shifting light. Her left arm reaches forward delicately bent. A slim bracelet circles her wrist. Her other arm lifts, elbow angled outward, as her hand rests on the side of her head like an intimate, weary gesture that frames her face. She has dark, curling hair gathered back with a few curls falling across her forehead. Her skin is rendered in warm, golden-brown tones with subtle shadows at the cheekbones and around the eyes. Her gaze is lowered and slightly off to the side. Her expression inward and almost melancholic. Painted in 1895, this portrait comes from French artist Émile Bernard’s years in Cairo, Egypt after travels away from France. The Museum Folkwang highlights his immersion in local life and dress, and that he lived with the Saati family and married their daughter, Lebanese-born Hanenah Saati in 1894. The sitter may actually be Hanenah. In that light, her faraway look complicates the painting’s title: rather than a type (“the African”), we encounter a loved one rendered with tenderness and gravity, seated in a richly patterned interior. The striped divan is a banded horizon of color that holds her body, turning private space into a stage for mood and memory. Bernard described the Cairo quarter as a kind of paradise that promised life “outside western civilization,” and the painting carries that romantic longing while the woman’s pose, weighted head, and downcast eyes also hint at the costs of being looked at, named, and translated by someone else’s dream. Acquired for the Folkwang collection in 1909, this is an artifact of a cross-cultural encounter, yet it asks us to see the woman’s interiority.

“L'Africaine (The African)” by Émile Bernard (French) - Oil on canvas / 1895 - Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany) #WomenInArt #ÉmileBernard #EmileBernard #Bernard #MuseumFolkwang #Folkwang #Essen #arte #artText #BlueskyArt #FrenchArt #PostImpressionism #FrenchArtist #19thCenturyArt #PortraitofaWoman

Braidense National Library Agostino Comerio Portrait of Maria Theresa of Austria founder of the Library

#AlphabetChallenge
#WeekFForFramed
#Art #ArtYear #19thCenturyArt
#Books #BookLovers
#Library #LibraryAesthetics

#CallForPapers #Neoclassicism #GlobalArtHistory #ArtHistoryConference #CFP #OnlineSymposium #19thCenturyArt #ColonialArtHistory #ArchitecturalHistory #VisualCulture
(5/5)

Painted in Philadelphia in 1839, the work’s full title of “Elizabeth Huddell Cook (later Elizabeth Huddell Cook Bache, 1815–1898) as The Country Girl” signals that this is both likeness and role. American artist Thomas Sully stages an upper-class sitter inside a pastoral “type,” using bonnet, basket, and simple wrap as shorthand for innocence, health, and rural virtue, while the pristine fabrics and satin ribbons quietly reveal this as performance rather than documentary labor. Her double identity can be a kind of social self-fashioning via a portrait that offers a socially admired version of womanhood that is approachable, “natural,” and serene without surrendering dignity or presence. Her direct, steady look complicates the costume’s sweetness because she isn’t merely displayed, but Elizabeth appears aware of being seen. In Sully’s hands, the pastoral becomes a language for aspiration and storytelling, where character and biography overlap … and where a woman’s public image is crafted with both softness and control. In her early 20s, Elizabeth is depicted as a young woman with light skin and dark, glossy hair facing forward in a three-quarter pose, her head gently tilted as she meets our gaze with calm, composed warmth. Soft blush gathers in her cheeks and her lips are lightly tinted while her features are smoothly modeled with delicate shadow. A broad, pale-pink bonnet frames her face as long satin ribbons trail down toward her shoulder. Over her upper body she wears a creamy white capelet that opens at the front to reveal a darker brown dress beneath. Her left arm carries a woven straw basket held close against her torso. Behind her, a wide sky fades from warm peach near the horizon into cool blue, with a suggestion of distant water or low hills for an airy backdrop that makes her figure feel luminous and gently idealized.

“Elizabeth Huddell Cook as The Country Girl” by Thomas Sully (American) - Oil on canvas / 1839 - Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Connecticut) #WomenInArt #ThomasSully #Sully #YaleUniversityArtGallery #AmericanArt #19thCenturyArt #art #artText #artwork #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArtist #Yale

Bullfinches (1895) by Matti Karppanen (1873–1953) 🇫🇮

#Art #Birds #Nature #Painting #DailyArt #MattiKarppanen #ArtHistory #FinnishArt #OilPainting #19thCenturyArt #ArtCommunity #AcademicArt #BirdsInArt #NaturePainting

French artist Rosalie Renaudin worked within a thriving Parisian market for portrait miniatures creating intimate images meant to be held, exchanged, and kept close. A partially preserved mount inscription, “Renaudin peintre… Rue de la Paix… à Paris,” suggests an artist advertising her address in a prestigious district, where clients commissioned likenesses as tokens of affection, status, or family memory. In this oval portrait miniature, an unidentified young woman with pale skin and brown curls faces us in three-quarter view, her expression calm and direct. She wears an extravagant, wide-brimmed pink hat crowned with a sculptural bow. A sheer veil of the similar rose tone falls along one side of her face and shoulder. Gold drop earrings glint beside her cheeks. Her dress is a bright pink bodice with a low, gently squared neckline and puffed white sleeves gathered into bands of pink ribbon. Around her neck, a narrow black ribbon is fastened with a gold clasp and drops to a gold cross pendant. A blue apron painted with soft shading and a striped edge covers her skirt, adding a practical note to the fashionable ensemble. Renaudin’s precise highlights describe satin ribbon, starched folds, and the ivory’s soft luminosity. The sitter’s styling performs a careful balance as the luxurious hat and jewelry signal refinement, while the blue apron and white cloth hint at domestic labor or virtuous practicality (an identity shaped by ideals of femininity as much as by fashion). Painted in 1828, the bold millinery and carefully revealed shoulders align with late-1820s taste for drama tempered by propriety. In choosing miniature on costly, luminous, and unforgiving ivory Renaudin also signals professional confidence in a genre where many women artists found both training and financial independence. Even without her name, the sitter reads as self-possessed and present, preserved through a woman artist’s close, disciplined attention.

“Femme au chapeau… (Lady in a pink hat, blue apron)” by Rosalie Renaudin (French) - Ivory miniature / 1828 - Artcurial (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #RosalieRenaudin #Renaudin #Artcurial #PortraitMiniature #19thCenturyArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #art #artText #arte #FrenchArtist #WomenPaintingWomen

[Artistic male nudity]

Frédéric Bazille -- Pêcheur à l'épervier --1868

Read more in the
online catalogue raisonné entry.

www.bazille-catalogue.com/fisherman-with-a-net-45....

#Art #FrenchArt #Painting #19thCenturyArt #Bazille #Male #Nude #Man

A young, light-skinned woman stands in a narrow Parisian doorway, paused mid-step as she prepares to go out. She wears a dark, gleaming silk day dress with a fitted bodice and sweeping skirt, its surface catching the light in soft velvety folds. Wrapped around her shoulders is a luxuriant cashmere shawl, densely patterned with curving paisley forms in reds, golds, and cool blues that spill down her front like a second garment. Her brown hair is close to her head, framing a composed, thoughtful face turned slightly toward us, her gaze lowered but aware as she looks back over her right shoulder. One hand rests on a bright metal door handle, holding the threshold between interior and street. At her feet, a small white lapdog, Fido, looks up attentively on the polished floor, its pink ribbon collar echoing the refinement of its mistress. Behind them, pale walls, a framed picture, and the edge of an upholstered seat suggest an elegant yet tightly bounded domestic space. Belgian artist Alfred Stevens turns this moment of departure into a quiet meditation on modern femininity under the French Second Empire. Wealth and status are signaled less by jewelry than by textiles, especially the coveted Kashmiri-style shawl that dominates the composition and speaks to the reach of global trade into Parisian interiors. The woman becomes almost a living mannequin for luxury, yet her slight hesitation and inward-looking expression suggest emotions that cannot be read from fashion alone. Painted in 1859, soon after Stevens settled permanently in Paris, the work marks his shift from earlier social-realist subjects to the intimate genre scenes of elegant women. Trained in the realist tradition and inspired by Dutch and Flemish painters, he brought enamel-smooth precision to scenes of contemporary life, using interiors and clothing to reveal social codes. Here, a bourgeois woman’s movements are carefully staged, even as she stands on the brink walking into an unseen modern city.

“Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with Me, Fido?)” by Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens (Belgian) - Oil on canvas / 1859 - Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania) #WomenInArt #DogArt #artText #art #AlfredStevens #BlueskyArt #PhiladelphiaMuseumOfArt #19thCenturyArt #BelgianArtist #FashionArt

In 1878, American artist Winslow Homer was perfecting watercolor as a primary medium, using transparent washes blotted together and touches of opaque white to model light and atmosphere. “Fresh Air” belongs to an early series painted outdoors at Houghton Farm, a patron’s country estate in upstate New York, where he staged “modern shepherdesses”—contemporary girls in fanciful rustic dress against expansive skies. The subject is less a portrait than a type: poised between girlhood and work, self-contained amid grazing sheep and restless weather. A light-skinned young shepherdess stands on a breezy hillside, profile turned left, hands loosely clasped before her. She wears a straw hat trimmed with a fluttering sky blue ribbon, a pale bodice with ruffled sleeves, and a long, wind-lifted skirt as heavy black shoes with large metal buckles anchor her against the slanting grass. Sheep nose through the turf at her feet, while a branch with small leaves edges the sky in the upper right. Behind her, a high, sun-washed bank of cloud fills the canvas. Light catches her cheek, hat brim, and the creases of her skirt, emphasizing the stillness of her stance against the blowing wind across the grassy hilltop. This painting hints at the era’s taste for pastoral retreat while showcasing Homer’s technical confidence with layered sky, scraped highlights, and selective glazing on a modest wove paper sheet that makes it feel monumental. To achieve the subtle coloration in the sky, he applied overlapping washes of grays, pinks, and blues and then blotted them together. Homer, who rose to national prominence in the 1860s for his magazine illustrations and oil paintings of modern American life, took up watercolor in the 1870s. "Fresh Air" foreshadows his lifelong interest in figures set against nature’s forces, from quiet wind to storm-tossed sea, and marks the moment watercolor became central to his American vision.

“Fresh Air” by Winslow Homer (American) - Watercolor over charcoal on wove paper / 1878 - Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #homer #BrooklynMuseum #AmericanArt #AmericanWatercolor #19thCenturyArt #PleinAir #BlueskyArt #portraitofaWoman #AmericanArtist #WinslowHomer

Painted around 1875, just after the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, this painting captures French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s turn from outdoor bustle to intimate, modern interiors. The sitter is unidentified, yet she’s rendered with affectionate immediacy. A young woman, light-skinned with flushed cheeks, sits angled in a cushioned armchair, cradling a brown-black tabby cat held upright so its head nuzzles her cheek. Her light brown hair is swept up. A pale dress with soft blue notes and a tied kerchief almost shines against the chair’s muted burgundy. An emerald ring glints on her supporting hand as the cat stretches its forepaws with her body tucked into the crook of of the woman's left arm. Behind her, a sea-green wall and a slip of a yellow floral curtain frame the scene while loose, multicolored strokes to the right suggest a bouquet of flowers. The brushwork is blended and luminous, softening contours without losing structure as light pools gently across skin, fabric, and fur. The cat, was a common part of Renoir’s use of domestic motifs and it likely represents warmth, tactility, and modern private life. Renoir’s silvery light, supple modeling, and tender color harmonies advance the Impressionist project of depicting contemporary experience without academic finish. Early ownership of the paintng by Ernest Hoschedé, an ardent patron of the Impressionists, placed the work within avant-garde networks that helped propel Renoir toward wider recognition. Subsequent exhibitions across Europe and the U.S. cemented its status as a gem of Renoir's early maturity, when he refined the glowing surfaces and humane intimacy that shaped late 19th-century portraiture.

Woman with a Cat (Femme au chat) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French) – Oil on canvas / c. 1875 – National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #CatArt #arte #artText #art #BlueskyArt #PierreAugusteRenoir #Renoir #Impressionism #NationalGalleryOfArt #NGA #FrenchArt #19thCenturyArt #CatsInArt

The comeback of a Kpop group I like has not lived up to my expectations.

Image: The Disappointed Souls -- Ferdinand Hodler --1892 -- Kunstmuseum Bern

#Kpop #FerdinandHodler #DisappointedSouls #Painting #Art #19thCenturyArt #SwissArt

Although the sitter’s name is unrecorded, British artist William Oliver gives us a vivid story of care and companionship. In Victorian Britain, pet-keeping blossomed in middle-class homes, and pictures of children with animals circulated as emblems of tenderness and moral instruction. Rabbits, especially white ones, often signaled gentleness and domestic innocence. A light-skinned girl in a black velvet jacket and soft cap looks directly toward us with her round blue eyes steady and cheeks flushed. A narrow blue bow peeks from a white collar and a silver rosette pins her black cap. She cradles a large albino white rabbit with pink eyes and soft, drooping ears. Behind them, a rough timber door and a worn wooden hutch suggest a stable. The rabbit’s fur is rendered in feathery strokes against the darker clothing as fine curls at her temples catch the light. The pose reads as careful, protective while the setting smells of hay and wood dust. The girl’s steady hold and the open hutch beside them imply daily routines of feeding, cleaning, and time spent earning a creature’s trust. Oliver’s close framing, natural light, and the contrast of bright fur against dark cloth heighten intimacy, inviting us to meet the rabbit’s quick gaze as much as the young woman’s. William Oliver, born William Oliver Williams, trained at the Royal Academy Schools and worked for the Arundel Society copying Italian frescoes before settling in London. After the 1850s, he became known for carefully finished genre scenes and portraits of young women and children, shown at the Royal Academy and other exhibitions. By the time this was painted, he had refined a popular Victorian blend of sentiment and realism through meticulous textures, luminous skin, and props that carry gentle narrative weight. Often signing “W. Oliver,” he is sometimes confused with an older namesake. “Girl Holding a Rabbit” reflects his intimate, polished, and attuned appeal to the era’s ideals of kindness and domestic virtue.

“Girl Holding a Rabbit” by William Oliver (British) - Oil on canvas / c. 1860–1890 - Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum and Galleries (Aberystwyth, Wales) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #VictorianArt #BritishArt #19thCenturyArt #Portrait #BlueskyArt #Rabbit #Aberystwyth #WilliamOliver

The Misery. Painted by Adolf Werner (1862–1916).

#AdolfWerner #Misery #SymbolistArt #19thCenturyArt #AustrianArt #ParanormalArt #GhostlyFigure #HauntingArt #MelancholyMood #DarkRomanticism #SpectralVision #PsychologicalArt #EerieAtmosphere #HauntedStudio #GothicArt #ArtAndDespair #MysticalArt

#RaimundoDeMadrazo #SpanishArt #19thCenturyArt #ArtExhibition #MeadowsMuseum #PaintingExhibition #Portraiture #ArtHistory #Museums #CosmopolitanArt #SpanishPainting #ParisArtScene #ArtCurator #CulturalHeritage #ExhibitionOpening

American painter Maria Richards Oakey
The Philosopher’s Corner (1873)

#19thCenturyArt #Owls

We've returned to our center

Louis Nicolas Adolphe Rinck 1841 portrait of a Creole gentleman of Louisiana

#LouisNicolasAdolpheRinck #rinck #art #vintageart #antiqueart #neworleansart #langtrygallery #creole #1840s #19thcenturyart #nineteenthcenturyart #louisianacreole #adolphrinck #adolphdrinck

Title: Corner of a Garden with Nasturtiums Publisher: Rijksmuseum Date: 1891 Providing institution: Rijksmuseum Aggregator: Rijksmuseum Providing Country: Netherlands Public Domain Corner of a Garden with Nasturtiums - 1891 - Rijksmuseum, Netherlands - Public Domain.

By: europeana

https://www.europeana.eu
unsplash.com/photos/green-landscape-s...


#art #green #painting #garden #artwork #archival #landscapeArt #19thCenturyArt #pieceOfArt #nasturtiums #outdoors #vegetation

Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Graziella, 1878. The MET, New York. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
#ArtHistory #Art #JulesJosephLefebvre #Paintings #19thCenturyArt #OilPainting #TheMET
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George Hendrik Breitner, The Singel Bridge, 1896. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. id.rijksmuseum.nl/200108317
#ArtHistory #GeorgeHendrikBreitner #19thCenturyArt #19thCentury #Rijksmuseum #Paintings
💻 Visit GildedHistories.WordPress.com for more art and history content! #CreativeHistorian