Paintings
Famous paintings, and why they stay with me
These are essays about famous paintings and what they mean, starting with a simple question: why does this one stay with me? Each essay answers the obvious question first, then follows the feeling.
- John Constable
Why Does Constable's The Cornfield Make Me Nostalgic for a Time I Never Lived In?
A boy, a lane, a hot summer day. Nostalgia for a countryside that may never have existed quite like this.
- John Everett Millais
Is Ophelia Already Dead in the Painting?
A young woman floating in a river of flowers, and the uneasy question of why something so painful looks so beautiful.
- J. M. W. Turner
Why Is The Fighting Temeraire So Beautiful and So Sad?
An old warship on its last journey, and the sunset Turner gave it on the way.
- Caspar David Friedrich
Why Does Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Feel So Lonely?
A man alone on a rock above the fog. Lonely, yes, but not in a miserable way.
Next on my list
These are the paintings I want to write about next.
- The Lady of Shalott, John William Waterhouse (coming soon)
- The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli (coming soon)
- The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (coming soon)
- The Slav Epic, Alphonse Mucha (coming soon)
- The Monk by the Sea, Caspar David Friedrich (coming soon)