A young man sits at a chessboard, chin in hand, staring at the pieces as if the floor had just dropped away beneath him. Across the table his opponent leans back, calm and amused. It is the Devil, and the stake is the young man's soul. Behind the player stands an angel, silent and sorrowful. Moritz Retzsch's The Chess Players (c. 1831) is a small panel that has had an unusually long afterlife, first as a popular engraving and later as the painting everyone calls "Checkmate". Quick facts Artist: Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857) Date: c. 1831 Medium: Oil on panel, about 32 x 39 cm Collection: Private collection (sold at Christie's in 1999) Notable fact: Also known as "Checkmate" or Die Schachspieler ; it circulated widely as a print and became the subject of a famous chess legend Moritz Retzsch, The Chess Players, c. 1831. Oil on panel. Private collection. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. The Painter of Faust Retzsch spent h...

A ghostly warship, pale as bone, glides up the river behind a squat black tug belching smoke and fire. Beyond them the sun goes down in a blaze of orange and red. J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (1839) shows a veteran of Trafalgar on its way to the breaker's yard, and it turns a routine piece of salvage into one of the great elegies in British painting. Quick facts Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Date: 1839 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: The National Gallery, London (Turner Bequest, 1856) Notable fact: Voted the greatest painting in a British collection in a 2005 BBC Radio 4 poll, and chosen for the back of the Bank of England £20 note in 2020 J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A Ship That Fought at Trafalgar HMS Temeraire was a 98-gun ship of the line. At Trafalgar in 1805 she sailed into action directly behind Nelson's flagship, Victory...

A crown twisted from thorns. A reed pressed into his hand like a scepter. A soldier's grin inches from his face. Carl Bloch's Christ with Mocking Soldier (1880) takes a scene the Gospels cover in a few verses and narrows it to two men and a joke that has already stopped being funny — because the man wearing the crown is looking straight out of the canvas, and he is not looking away. Quick facts Artist: Carl Bloch (1834–1890) Date: 1880 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: BYU Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (held privately for decades before its rediscovery) Notable fact: Painted the year after Bloch completed his 23-painting cycle on the life of Christ for the chapel at Frederiksborg Castle Carl Bloch, Christ with Mocking Soldier, 1880. Oil on canvas. BYU Museum of Art. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A Scene the Gospels Sketch in Three Lines Matthew, Mark, and John each give this moment barely a paragraph: Roman soldiers strip Jesus, th...

The Scene Everyone Skips: George Edward Robertson's Lady of Shalott Arrives at Camelot (1900) Picture "The Lady of Shalott" and one image almost certainly comes to mind: a woman alone in a boat, hair loose, candles guttering, drifting down a river toward her death. That is John William Waterhouse's 1888 painting, reproduced on more posters and postcards than perhaps any other single scene from Tennyson. But Tennyson's poem does not end with her drifting alone. It ends with her arrival — already dead — at Camelot, and with the crowd of knights and ladies who come out to see what has washed up at their door, Lancelot among them. Almost nobody paints that part. George Edward Robertson, a Royal Academy regular better known for scenes of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, did. Quick facts Artist: George Edward Robertson (British, 1864–1920) Date: 1900 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 137.8 × 194.3 cm (54¼ × 76½ in) Location: Private collectio...

A knight's helmet dangles loose in one hand. His armor presses against a woman's vivid blue dress as they meet -- for the last time, though neither says so -- on a narrow stone stairwell. She holds him with both arms; his sword stays sheathed at his side, and he is already half-turned toward whatever is waiting below. Frederic William Burton's The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) is only a watercolour, barely larger than a cafe tabletop, and yet the National Gallery of Ireland has had to build a queuing system around it. Quick facts Artist: Frederic William Burton (1816-1900) Date: 1864 Medium: Watercolour and gouache on paper, 95.5 x 60.8 cm Collection: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin Notable fact: Voted Ireland's favourite painting in a 2012 public poll; now shown only two hours a week to protect its pigments from light damage Frederic William Burton, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864. Watercolour and gouache on paper. Na...

In February 1814, with Napoleon's armies retreating and a king about to reclaim his throne, Spain's provisional government asked an aging court painter to immortalize the day ordinary Madrileños first said no to an empire. Francisco de Goya delivered one of the most devastating images of war ever painted. Then the government whose victory it was supposed to celebrate put it in storage — and left it there for most of the century. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) Date: 1814 Medium: Oil on canvas (268 × 347 cm) Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Commissioned by Spain's provisional government to honor the 1808 uprising against Napoleon — then kept out of public view for roughly three decades, uncatalogued by the Prado until 1872. Francisco de Goya, The Third of May 1808 , 1814. Oil on canvas, 268 × 347 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Madrid Says No On May 2, 1808, Madrid rioted. Napoleon had mar...

John William Waterhouse kept returning to the same kind of woman: the one who looks, opens, pours, or steps past the rule that was meant to keep her safe. Circe offers the cup. Circe tips poison into the pool. Psyche lifts the golden lid. The Lady of Shalott turns from the mirror to the window. A sorceress draws a ring of fire on the ground. Five paintings, one habit of mind - and five essays already on this site. Quick facts Artist: John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) Theme: Forbidden looking, pouring, and opening Paintings in this guide: Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus (1891), Circe Invidiosa (1892), Psyche Opening the Golden Box (1903), The Lady of Shalott (1888), The Magic Circle (1886) Notable fact: These are late Pre-Raphaelite canvases that treat myth and Tennyson as modern drama - one figure, one decisive gesture, almost no crowd John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa , 1892. The pour is the whole plot. Why the Rule Breaks on Purpose Waterhouse rarely ...

Dusk is a job, not a metaphor. In Erik Henningsen's The Lamplighter (c. 1895), a man leans into a street lamp with a pole and a flame while the city keeps walking. Cobblestones, coats, and half-lit faces fill the middle distance; the lamp is the hinge between day and night. This is Copenhagen street life painted by a Social Realist who knew how to make ordinary labour look monumental without turning it into a sermon. Quick facts Artist: Erik Ludvig Henningsen (1855–1930) Date: c. 1895 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Private collection Notable fact: Henningsen made his name with Social Realist scenes of Copenhagen — workers, the poor, and the lighter textures of street life — around the same decade as this lamplighter Erik Henningsen, The Lamplighter (old street lamps at dusk), c. 1895. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. The Man Who Turns the City On Before electric grids made night automatic, someone had to climb ...

The face barely moves. Everything else does. In Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait of September 1889, orange hair and beard lock against a field of turquoise and blue that coils like weather. The eyes hold you with a hard, green-rimmed stare while the background refuses to sit still. Painted at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, this is the Van Gogh most visitors meet at the Musee d'Orsay: not the work jacket and palette of other self-portraits, but a man in a suit, framed by motion. Quick facts Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Date: September 1889 (Saint-Remy-de-Provence) Medium: Oil on canvas (65 x 54.2 cm) Collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF 1949 17; F627) Notable fact: Gift of Paul and Marguerite Gachet, 1949; painted months after The Starry Night , with a swirling ground that answers that sky Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait ( Portrait de l'artiste ), 1889. Oil on canvas. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Saint-Remy, After th...

Christ stands in midair with the cross like a banner of victory, while below him the old gods tumble into darkness - shattered idols, broken thrones, a classical world losing the fight in one theatrical sweep. Gustave Dore's The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism (1868) is not a quiet devotion. It is an illustrator's ambition turned into a huge oil: allegory at full volume, light against ruin, faith staged as spectacle. Quick facts Artist: Gustave Dore (1832-1883) Date: 1868 Medium: Oil on canvas, 300 x 200 cm Collection: Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario (Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Collection) Notable fact: Dore was already Europe's most famous illustrator; this canvas was part of his campaign to be taken seriously as a painter of grand religious history Gustave Dore, The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism , 1868. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario. When the Illustrator Wanted the Stage By the 1860s Dore's wood engravings for Dante, the...

The sword has already fallen. In Eugene Trigoulet's Le Precurseur (1894), Saint John the Baptist kneels headless in a stone cell, wrists still bound as if in prayer, while his severed head lies on the floor and throws out a blast of white-gold light. Blood spreads into the clear shape of a Latin cross. The executioner stands in shadow with a curved, stained blade and stares as if the miracle had arrived a second too late. Quick facts Artist: Eugene Trigoulet (1864-1910) Date: 1894 (signed "E. TRIGOULET 94") Medium: Oil on canvas (215 x 270 cm) Collection: Musee Paul-Dini, Villefranche-sur-Saone Notable fact: Former French state deposit (1896); transferred to the museum in 2015 Eugene Trigoulet, Le Precurseur , 1894. Oil on canvas. Musee Paul-Dini, Villefranche-sur-Saone. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Aftermath, Not the Swing of the Blade Many Baptist pictures linger on Salome's dance or the charger waiting for a trophy. Trigoulet skips the court and s...

There is almost no story here - and that is the point. No farmer, no cart, no church steeple. Just a field of green wheat rising in waves, a pale dirt path slipping in from the lower right, and a sky full of soft, restless clouds. Vincent van Gogh painted Green Wheat Fields, Auvers in 1890, in the village north of Paris where he spent his last months. The canvas is "pure" landscape: nature under wind, thickened into paint. Quick facts Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Date: 1890 (Auvers-sur-Oise, likely May) Medium: Oil on canvas (28 1/2 x 36 in / 72.39 x 91.44 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Paul Mellon Collection) Notable fact: A "pure" landscape with no figures or buildings; entered the NGA in 2013 from the Mellon gift Vincent van Gogh, Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 2013.122.1. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum ...

At first glance it is only a goodbye. A knight in chain mail turns in the saddle; a woman on the stone steps leans toward him with both hands busy at his arm. Between them is a strip of red cloth - not armour, not a banner, just a sash. In Edmund Blair Leighton's God Speed (1900), that small gesture is the whole drama. The Middle Ages on the canvas are costume. The feeling is modern: someone you love is leaving, and all you can give them is a token and a prayer. Quick facts Artist: Edmund Blair Leighton (1852-1922) Date: 1900 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Private collection Notable fact: Shown at the Royal Academy in 1900; Leighton scraped out a week's work and remade a passage in two hours just before the painting left the studio for exhibition Edmund Blair Leighton, God Speed , 1900. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Victorian Dream of Chivalry Leighton belonged to a late-Victorian taste for medieval romance: knig...

There is only one rule that will save your life: do not look back. In Genesis, angels pull Lot and his family out of Sodom before fire falls from the sky; the cities of the plain are erased in a single divine storm. Lot's wife turns anyway. The text gives her no name and almost no psychology - only the consequence. She becomes a pillar of salt. In 1852, the English painter John Martin made that instant into an apocalypse so large that the woman herself nearly disappears inside it: a ribbon of scarlet cloud, a city already melting, and, if you know where to look, one small human mistake at the edge of the world. Quick facts Artist: John Martin (1789-1854) Date: 1852 Medium: Oil on canvas, 136.3 x 212.3 cm Collection: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (TWCMS: C6975) Notable fact: Martin showed the picture at the Royal Academy in 1852; Victorian viewers already knew him as the painter who made private drawing rooms feel too small for the end of the world John Martin,...

In 1893, a Spanish painter who had once trained for a career at sea set down a reclining woman on gold and violet silk, her eyes half closed, one arm thrown back over her head in the oldest pose in Western painting. There is no myth attached to her, no witch's sabbath, no comet streaking overhead — just a body, a fall of drapery, and the quiet confidence of a painter who had spent fifteen years learning exactly how to render both. Luis Ricardo Falero built his reputation on flying witches and moonlit nymphs. This canvas shows what he could do without any of that machinery. Quick facts Artist: Luis Ricardo Falero (1851–1896) Date: 1893 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 38 x 75 cm (15 x 29.5 in) Collection: Private collection Notable fact: Falero trained for a career in the Spanish Navy before walking, on foot, to Paris to study painting instead Luis Ricardo Falero, Reclining Nude, 1893. Oil on canvas. Private collection. A Naval Cadet Who Walked to Paris Falero's pa...

In Book Seventeen of the Odyssey , an old dog lies dying on a heap of manure outside his own house, crawling with ticks, too weak to lift himself off the ground. A stranger walks past in a beggar's rags — and this dog is the only living creature on the island of Ithaca who knows him. Twenty years earlier, before the Trojan War and the decade of shipwrecks that followed it, the dog had been a puppy raised by the hands that now hold a beggar's staff. In the half-second of recognition, he manages only to drop his ears and wag his tail once before death takes him. In 1872, at the height of his reputation as one of Victorian England's finest animal painters, Briton Riviere set out to paint the moment just before that — and produced one of the quietest, most devastating pictures of the nineteenth century. Quick facts Artist: Briton Riviere (1840–1920) Date: 1872 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Private collection Notable fact: Homer never lets Odysseus touch the dog — rec...

In 1880, a grieving widow asked Arnold Böcklin for "a picture to dream by." What she got back was so quietly unsettling that it went on to haunt the next century: hung in cheap reproduction over the desks of Vladimir Lenin and Sigmund Freud, bought for a private collection by Adolf Hitler, reworked by Salvador Dalí, and set to music by Sergei Rachmaninoff — who later admitted he might never have composed a note of it had he seen the original in color. Böcklin painted the same silent island six times. Only five of those paintings still exist. Quick facts Artist: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) Date: 1883 (third of six painted versions, 1880–1901) Medium: Oil on panel, 80 × 150 cm (31.5 × 59 in) Collection: Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin Notable owner: Adolf Hitler, who bought this version in 1933 Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead (third version), 1883. Oil on panel, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Picture to Dream By In Florence in 188...

In the spring of 1863, two paintings of nude women divided Paris — and only one of them made an emperor fall in love. At the official Paris Salon, Alexandre Cabanel's The Birth of Venus stopped visitors in their tracks: a goddess reclining on a bed of sea-foam, luminous and weightless. Napoleon III liked it so much that he bought it on the spot for his own private collection. Today the painting is one of the most visited works at the Musée d'Orsay — and one of the clearest examples of how 19th-century France decided which nudity was art, and which was scandal. Quick facts Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) Date: 1863 Medium: Oil on canvas, 130 × 225 cm (51.1 × 88.5 in) Collection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris Notable owner: Napoleon III, who bought it at the 1863 Salon Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus , 1863. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Goddess Born From Sea-Foam Cabanel took his subject from classical...