The stories behind the paintings

What happens when beauty asks you to come closer, and the water is already doing the asking? In Henrietta Rae’s Hylas and the Water Nymphs (1909), the answer is a pool under trees, not a struggle. Hylas kneels on the bank in a blue tunic, one hand lifted, while the naiads rise out of the lilies and reach for him. No one is dragging him yet. The picture stops on the moment before he disappears. Henrietta Rae, Hylas and the Water Nymphs , 1909. Oil on canvas. Public-domain artwork by Henrietta Rae. Fine-art print available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → License Artwork Quick facts Artist: Henrietta Rae (1859–1928) Title: Hylas and the Water Nymphs Date: 1909 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 142.3 × 222.8 cm (56 × 87¾ in.) Exhibition: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 1910, no. 447 Subject: Hylas, companion of Heracles, at the spring where the naiads take him Status: Public-domain...

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 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. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → A Goddess Born From Sea-Foam Cab...

A young woman sits on wet sand at the edge of the sea, propped on both hands, her body turned away from us and her face turned back over her shoulder. Behind her, a green wave is rising to its full height, its crest already breaking into foam. She is smiling. In The Wave ( La Vague ), painted in 1896, William-Adolphe Bouguereau sets the most polished figure an academic painter could produce against the one thing in the picture that cannot be polished: moving water. Quick facts Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) Date: 1896 Medium: Oil on canvas Subject: A nude seated at the water’s edge as a wave breaks behind her Notable fact: Painted in the same year Bouguereau married the American painter Elizabeth Jane Gardner, his former pupil William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Wave (La Vague), 1896. Oil on canvas. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. What does The Wave show? The composition is simple to the point of bluntness. A single figure fills the lower half...

A naked young man lunges forward out of the dark, pressing his hands against his ears as if he could shut out a sound. Behind him, three women with wild hair and furious faces crowd in, one pointing at him, one raising a torch. On the left, they hold up the pale body of a woman in a red robe, a dagger still buried in her chest. In Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1862), William-Adolphe Bouguereau turns the most famous family tragedy of ancient Greece into a single moment of panic: the instant the son understands that what he has done will never leave him. Quick facts Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) Date: 1862 Medium: Oil on canvas, 231.1 × 278.4 cm Collection: Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia (gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.) Notable fact: The canvas is signed and dated on the lower right, “W-BOVGVEREAV-1862” William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1862. Oil on canvas. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. Image via the...

In a shady forest pool, four laughing nymphs have caught a satyr. They pull him by the arms and push him from behind, dragging the goat-legged creature towards the water, which he clearly does not want to enter. One of his hooves is already at the edge. In the shadows on the left, other nymphs watch and beckon. William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr , the great success of the Paris Salon of 1873, turns the usual myth upside down: here the women are the hunters and the satyr is the prey. Quick facts Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) Date: 1873 Medium: Oil on canvas, 260 × 180 cm Collection: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (acquired by Robert Sterling Clark in 1942) First shown: Paris Salon, 1873 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, 1873. Oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → What does the painting show? In Greek myth, satyrs were half-man...

Troy is burning, and in the temple of Athena a Greek warrior strides down from the goddess's pedestal with a woman thrown over his shoulder. She twists upward, one arm stretched towards the statue above her, her fingers still tangled in a veil that clings to the stone. This is Ajax and Cassandra , painted in 1886 by the young British artist Solomon Joseph Solomon: a canvas three metres tall that shows the most sacrilegious moment of the fall of Troy at life size. Quick facts Artist: Solomon Joseph Solomon (1860–1927) Date: 1886 Medium: Oil on canvas, 304.5 × 152.5 cm Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia (purchased 1887) First shown: Royal Academy, London, 1886 Solomon Joseph Solomon, Ajax and Cassandra, 1886. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Ballarat. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → What is the story? Cassandra was a princess of Troy, daughter of King Priam. Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy, and when she ...

High above a narrow sea gorge, a hero on a white winged horse bursts out of a blaze of light. Far below, a pale young woman is pinned against a rock, and over her spreads the vast dark wing of a dragon whose head turns towards the sky with fire in its mouth. An arrow has already struck its back. Frederic Leighton's Perseus and Andromeda , shown at the Royal Academy in 1891, tells the most famous rescue in Greek myth from the point of view of the woman who has to wait for it. Quick facts Artist: Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) Date: 1891, exhibited at the Royal Academy that year Medium: Oil on canvas, 235 × 129 cm Collection: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (gift of Sir William Hartley) Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses , Book IV Frederic Leighton, Perseus and Andromeda, 1891. Oil on canvas. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → What is the story? Andromeda was the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia o...

In a sunlit wood, a young couple sit together on a rope swing. The girl, in a white gown so fine it is almost transparent, has wrapped her arms around the boy's neck and leans her cheek against his. He holds the ropes and gazes at her from a few centimetres away. Butterflies drift through the light, irises grow at their feet, and the whole forest seems to hold its breath. Springtime , shown by Pierre-Auguste Cot at the Paris Salon of 1873, was the greatest success of his career, and it is now one of the most loved French paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Quick facts Artist: Pierre-Auguste Cot (1837–1883) Date: 1873 Medium: Oil on canvas, 211.6 × 127.8 cm Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012.575), gift of Steven and Alexandra Cohen, 2012 First shown: Paris Salon, 1873 Pierre-Auguste Cot, Springtime, 1873. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a ...

A young couple runs barefoot along a forest path as a storm breaks over them. The girl holds a billowing golden cloth over both their heads with her raised arms and glances back over her shoulder, frightened, her thin white dress pressed against her body by the wind. The boy, bare-chested and dressed in an animal skin, runs at her side with his arm around her waist, looking not at the sky but at her. Behind them, lightning flashes through the dark trees. Pierre-Auguste Cot's The Storm , shown at the Paris Salon of 1880 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is one of the most reproduced love scenes of the nineteenth century. Quick facts Artist: Pierre-Auguste Cot (1837–1883) Date: 1880 Medium: Oil on canvas, 234.3 × 156.8 cm Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (87.15.134), bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887 First shown: Paris Salon, 1880 Pierre-Auguste Cot, The Storm, 1880. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Im...

A young woman lies curled up asleep on a marble bench, her head resting on her arm, her body folded into an almost perfect circle. Her dress of sheer orange silk glows like fire and clings to her limbs. Behind her, beyond a balustrade, the sea shimmers in the afternoon heat, and in the top right corner hangs a branch of oleander in flower. Frederic Leighton's Flaming June , shown at the Royal Academy in 1895, is the most famous image of sleep in Victorian art, and one of the most reproduced paintings of the nineteenth century. Quick facts Artist: Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) Date: 1895 Medium: Oil on canvas, 120 × 120 cm Collection: Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico (bought in 1963) Notable fact: In the 1960s it failed to sell at auction Frederic Leighton, Flaming June, 1895. Oil on canvas. Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → What does the painting show? The canvas is perfectly square, and ...

A young man with dark wings and a mane of red-brown hair lies on a rock, his body twisted, his arms crossed in front of his face. Only his eyes show above them, and they are full of anger. A single tear runs down from one of them. Behind him, in a pale blue sky, a procession of angels drifts away in a glow of light, leaving him behind. This is Lucifer after the fall, as the young Alexandre Cabanel imagined him in 1847. The Fallen Angel , now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, has become one of the most shared images of the devil in Western art. Quick facts Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) Date: 1847 Medium: Oil on canvas, 121 × 189.7 cm Collection: Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France Notable fact: Painted when Cabanel was only 24, as a student in Rome Alexandre Cabanel, The Fallen Angel, 1847. Oil on canvas. Musée Fabre, Montpellier. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → What does the painting show? Cabanel gives Lucifer the body...

Outside the mouth of a sea cave, a ship is breaking apart on the rocks. Its masts lean, its hull is splitting, and green waves smash over the wreck. Inside the cave, three nymphs pay no attention to the drowning sailors. One crouches on a rock playing a golden lyre made from a scallop shell. Another kneels and reaches back towards a treasure chest that has washed in. The third lies on the wet sand among scattered gold coins and spilled jewels. The Cave of the Storm Nymphs , shown at the Royal Academy in 1903 by Sir Edward Poynter, is one of the last great mythological fantasies of British academic painting. Quick facts Artist: Sir Edward John Poynter (1836–1919) Date: 1903 (an earlier version dates from 1902) Medium: Oil on canvas, about 146 × 110 cm First shown: Royal Academy, London, 1903 Collection: Private collection; the 1902 version is in the Hermitage Museum and Gardens, Norfolk, Virginia Sir Edward John Poynter, The Cave of the Storm Nymphs, 1903. Oil on canvas. Privat...