Paintings

Jan van Eyck. In 1434 Jan van Eyck painted a couple in a richly furnished room. The man is usually identified as Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges.

Camille Corot. Hagar and her son Ishmael have been driven from Abraham’s home and left in the desert without water.

Matthew Pratt. Artists gather in Benjamin West’s London studio. West stands on the left; Pratt probably sits at the easel. Younger artists draw nearby.

Zhou Chen. Ragged people stand separately, as though each has stepped forward before a viewer. Zhou Chen painted them in Suzhou in 1516.

Hubert and Jan van Eyck. On this panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, many people gather around a small white lamb. It represents Christ offering himself in sacrifice.

Gustave Courbet. This reclining nude provoked divided responses at the Salon of 1866. Manet painted a related subject that year, and Cézanne reportedly kept a photograph of Courbet’s work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder. Ryder’s nocturnal seascapes combined observation with literary interests. This title may refer to Victor Hugo’s novel. Thick layers of paint changed over time.

Dong Qichang. Dong Qichang painted this autumn landscape around 1624–1627 and supplied a bold inscription.

Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch’s open triptych combines Eden at left, a world crowded with pleasures in the centre and Hell at right.

Honoré Daumier. Daumier places passengers in the cheapest railway carriage at the centre of his painting. The shared, crowded space belongs to industrial urban life.

John Singer Sargent. Sargent painted Virginie Gautreau without a commission, hoping to advance his reputation. Following criticism at the Salon of 1884, he repainted a fallen shoulder strap.

Bada Shanren. Two fish remain among rocks, although water is scarcely marked. Bada Shanren, also known as Zhu Da, painted the scroll in the later seventeenth century.

Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer painted Delft around 1660–1661, looking across the harbour from the city’s southern side.

Jacques Louis David. Socrates prepares to drink poison while remaining faithful to his convictions.

John Singer Sargent. Sargent’s sister Emily sketches in Granada’s Generalife gardens with Jane de Glehn and Dolores Carmona.

Shen Zhou. Shen Zhou painted this flowering crab-apple branch in 1500 as an informal presentation picture.

Frans Hals. In this 1624 portrait the man is not laughing aloud; the corners of his mouth merely rise slightly. Nor does the familiar word “cavalier” establish a military rank.

Jacques Louis David. Marie Anne kept records of her husband’s experiments and illustrated his publications.

John White Alexander. John White Alexander painted Repose in Paris. The pale dress occupies much of the canvas, while the sitter's face lies near the upper edge.

Yun Shouping. Yun Shouping painted these peonies in 1685. Flowers were his principal subject, and his native Changzhou was known for paintings of plants and insects.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow in 1565 for a cycle of six seasonal pictures decorating the country house of the Antwerp merchant Nicolaes Jonghelinck.

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas. An enormous bouquet occupies space normally reserved for a portrait’s sitter. The displaced woman is probably Madame Paul Valpinçon.

James McNeill Whistler. Critic and collector Théodore Duret sat in Whistler’s London studio. A pink masquerade cloak and red fan balance his formal black suit.

Rembrandt van Rijn. Two people in elaborate old-fashioned clothes stand together. The name The Jewish Bride came later than the painting.

Georges de La Tour. While an older woman tells a young man’s fortune, her companions rob him. The viewer sees actions he has not noticed.

Sarah Goodridge. According to Daniel Webster’s descendants, Goodridge made this miniature self-portrait for the statesman.

Johannes Vermeer. A woman pours milk into a kitchen vessel. She is a domestic servant preparing food, rather than a milk seller.

Georges de La Tour. Mirror, skull and candle belong to a traditional language of devotional painting. They evoke vanity, mortality and, probably, spiritual illumination.

Gilbert Stuart. This Washington belongs to Stuart’s Vaughan group. Technical examination found a brown wool coat beneath the appearance of formal black silk velvet.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel’s Tower of Babel resembles a construction project that has absorbed an entire city. It was painted in 1563.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. Labille-Guiard portrays herself working with Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond.

Robert S. Duncanson. Duncanson established his Cincinnati practice with patrons including abolitionists.

Édouard Manet. This painting brought Manet his first Salon success in 1861. He assembled the Spanish persona from studio costume and props.

Jules Tavernier. Banker Tiburcio Parrott commissioned this Elem Pomo ceremony after witnessing it in 1876. Nearly one hundred figures occupy the roundhouse.

Édouard Manet. Manet painted this boating scene at Argenteuil in 1874. Freer handling meets broad colour areas and diagonals associated with Japanese prints.

George Wesley Bellows. Two boxers grapple in the cramped room of Sharkey’s club in New York. George Bellows painted them in 1909.