Category: Works

Portia (1886)

Millais, John Everett (1829-1896) Portia 1886 Oil on canvas, 125.1 x 83.8 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York In Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, the resourceful heroine Portia disguises herself in lawyer’s robes. Her intention is to outwit the…

Femme avec un râteau (1856-1857)

Millet, Jean-François (1814-1875) Femme avec un râteau (Woman with a Rake) 1856–1857 Oil on canvas, 39.7 x 34.3 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Millet first treated this subject in a woodcut, one of ten in the series Labors of the…

Meules de foin, Automne (c.1874)

Millet, Jean-François (1814-1875) Meules de foin, Automne (Haystacks: Autumn) c.1874 Oil on canvas, 85.1 x 110.2 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York This picture is from a series depicting the four seasons commissioned in 1868 by the industrialist Frédéric Hartmann.…

First Steps, after Millet (1890)

Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-1890) First Steps, after Millet 1890 Oil on canvas, 72.4 x 91.1 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York In fall and winter 1889–90, while a voluntary patient at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after…

Les Premiers pas (c.1859-1866)

Millet, Jean-François (1814-1875) Les Premiers pas (First Steps) c.1859–1866 Black chalk and pastel on wove paper, 29.5 x 45.9 cm Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland At the time this drawing was made, many critics disparaged Millet‘s depictions of peasants as politically…

Mariana (1851)

Millais, John Everett (1829-1896) Mariana 1851 Oil on mahogany, 59.7 x 49.5 cm Tate Britain, London When it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, this picture was accompanied by the following lines from Tennyson‘s Mariana (1830): She only said,…

Beata Beatrix (c.1864-1870)

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) Beata Beatrix c.1864–1870 Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 66 cm Tate Britain, London Dante Gabriel Rossetti identified closely with the medieval poet Dante Alighieri. Rossetti saw his own despair at the death of his wife, the artist and…