Sir Joshua Reynolds was an English painter who specialised in portraits. John Russell said he was one of the major European painters of the 18th century. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting, which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts and was knighted by George III in 1769.
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, in it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi.
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
John Constable was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home – now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson was a British painter of still-life, landscape and portraits. He also worked as a printmaker in techniques including woodcut, wood-engraving and lithography, as an illustrator, as an author of children's books and as a designer for the theatre.
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is a public art gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. It is named after William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who funded the building of the gallery and assembled the original collection. It opened in 1959 with over 300 works, including paintings by J. M. W. Turner and Salvador Dalí. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is New Brunswick's officially designated provincial art gallery.
The Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 18 gallery spaces – six in New York City, two in London, three in Paris, and one each in Basel, Gstaad, Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong.
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery holds the main public art collection of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Located in The Octagon in the heart of the city, it is close to the city's public library, Dunedin Town Hall, and other facilities such as the Regent Theatre.
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
A combine painting or Combine is an artwork that incorporates elements of both painting and sculpture. Items attached to paintings might include three-dimensional everyday objects such as clothing or furniture, as well as printed matter including photographs or newspaper clippings.
The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, also known simply as Holy Conversation, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Titian. It is one of his several versions of the canonical image of the Madonna and Child.
Colnaghi is an art dealership in St James's, central London, England, which is the oldest commercial art gallery in the world, having been established in 1760.
The Lenox Library was a library incorporated and endowed in 1870. It was both an architectural and intellectual landmark in Gilded Age–era New York City. It was founded by bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox, and located on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the building, which was considered one of the city's most notable buildings, until its destruction in 1912.
Portrait of Mai (Omai) (also known as Portrait of Omai, Omai of the Friendly Isles or simply Omai) is an oil-on-canvas portrait of Omai, a Polynesian visitor to England, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, completed about 1776.
Lawrie & Co. was an art dealership and gallery in London, England.
Arthur Joseph Sulley was a London-based art dealer best known for selling Dutch Old Master paintings, including the record-setting Rembrandt van Rijn's The Mill.
The Lady's Last Stake, originally entitled Piquet: or Virtue in Danger, is a painting by William Hogarth, c. 1759. The work is a conversation piece, capturing the moment when the woman has to make a fateful decision: to be ruined financially, or morally. It was one of Hogarth's last works, commissioned by James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount Charlemont, who allowed Hogarth to select the subject and price.
The Lost Leonardo is an internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Andreas Koefoed, released in 2021. It follows the discovery and successive sales of the painting the Salvator Mundi, allegedly a work by Leonardo da Vinci, an artist for whom there are only a few attributed works in existence. The film chronicles the dramatic increases in the painting's value from its original purchase in 2005 for $1,175 to its auction in 2017 for $450 million, when it became the most expensive artwork ever sold. The use of high-end artwork for hiding wealth, as well as the conflicts created by large commissions and other economic incentives, are explored in the film. It includes interviews with leading art experts and art critics on issues regarding the provenance and authenticity of the work.
