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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 1: Vlaminck

I enjoyed doing an advent calendar of birds last year, and I could easily have done the same again: I can talk about birds pretty much endlessly. But I thought I’d make a change, and after considering...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 2: Hockney

Yesterday, because it was cold and snowy, I posted a snow painting: today, because it’s cold and snowy, I’m posting a sun-drenched one. David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)....

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 3: Rembrandt

I went to the London Wetland Centre for a spot of birding today, in the hope that the very cold weather might have conjured up something a bit special… which it hadn’t particularly. But some nice...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 4: Ernst

In theory, the coming of abstraction opened up a world of infinite possibilities. In practice, I guess inevitably, an awful lot of artists ended up producing a lot of very samey paintings. The...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 5: Jordaens

I saw this one at the Royal Academy’s exhibition Treasures from Budapest (it normally lives in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest). The Fall of Man by Jacob Jordaens: I was really struck by frailty and...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 6: Ingres

Ah, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, what a lot of names he had. And what a fabulous painter he was. Not in a style which is particularly fashionable these days; Neoclassical history paintings and...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 7: Doig

Something a bit more contemporary for a change. Today we have White Canoe, by Peter Doig: Like so many of these paintings it loses some of the effect when you shrink it right down to 500 pixels — it’s...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 8: van der Weyden

Today’s painter is Rogier van der Weyden. This is, perhaps self-evidently, The Annunciation: I have a real thing for the painters of the Northern Renaissance: Jan Van Eyck, Memling, Dürer, Holbein,...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 9: Saville

Whoops, nearly forgot to post one for today. So here’s Plan, by Jenny Saville: It’s another one where the size is relevant — it’s actually 9 feet tall and 7 wide. So it’s a big painting; it changes it...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 10: Cuyp

Oops, nearly forgot again. I suppose I could cue up a few in advance, but I rather enjoy the semi-random process of picking the paintings. This is A Herdsman with Five Cows by a River by Aelbert Cuyp....

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 11: Unknown

Yesterday I featured a picture by a great painter of cows. To be fair, Aelbert Cuyp had many other notable qualities, including being a fine painter of skies and light… but one way or another an awful...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 12: Renoir

Has there ever been a supposedly great painter who produced as many awful paintings as Renoir? I mean, look at this: It’s not just the fact that it is, in the least subtle way possible, a painting of a...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 13: Baugin

I thought it was about time for a still life. This is Le dessert de gaufrettes by Lubin Baugin, from about 1630. ‘Gaufrettes’ are wafers, in this case ones which have been rolled up like brandy snaps...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 14: Matisse

I was looking over the paintings I’ve posted so far, and it’s weirdly unrepresentative of my personal taste. I mean: Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob Jordaens, Jenny Saville, Lubin Baugin… these are fine artists...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 15: Nolan

2AM tonight is the start of the third Ashes test, with England one-nil up in the series and with the opportunity to ruthlessly grind Australia into the dust in the same way the Aussies have done so...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 16: Poussin

I think it’s interesting how much particular styles and periods can go in and out of fashion. The fact that whole artistic movements can gain and lose popularity for no simple reason serves as a...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 17: Velázquez

There are some great self portraits in the canon — Dürer, El Greco, Van Gogh, Van Eyck, all those Rembrandts — but I’m not sure any of them is as fabulous as this one by Diego Velázquez: It’s like the...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 18: Bosch

I’m feeling ill today — perhaps I managed to poison myself with homemade chicken soup — so I thought perhaps I’d see if could find a painting with a medical theme. So here’s a cracker by Hieronymus...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 19: Carrà

This is The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli by Carlo Carrà. To quote Wikipedia: The subject of the work is the funeral of Italian anarchist Angelo Galli, killed by police during a general strike in...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 20: Manet

This is Le Déjeuner dans l’atelier by Édouard Manet. I don’t have much to say about it. Good though, innit. Some related posts: Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 9: Saville Harry’s advent...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 21: Lear

Despite being a birdwatcher, I’m not actually a huge fan of bird paintings. Or at least not a certain kind of bird paintings done by the certain kind of wildlife artist. Ducks huddling against the cold...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 22: Ofili

Contemporary art is incredibly obsessed with ideas, and with the idea of ideas — when you read the exhibition blurb, it’s always full of stuff about the conceptual background to the work, and the ideas...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 23: Goya

This is The Straw Manikin, by Goya. It’s actually a cartoon for a tapestry, according to the blurb at the Prado. It’s a great image: fun, surprising, silly and a little bit creepy. I suppose that...

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Harry’s advent calendar of paintings, day 24: El Greco

I have a thoroughly secular approach to Christmas — family, a tree, presents, turkey with all the trimmings, booze, the Doctor Who Christmas special — but still, the obvious choice for the last...

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D

This is the Werner Herzog documentary about the Chauvet cave paintings in France. It was definitely worth seeing, but mainly, I think, for the incredible paintings themselves, rather than anything...

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