Paintings

Georges Seurat. Seurat developed this leisure scene in 1884–86 through many preparatory studies. The people on La Grande Jatte appear almost motionless.

Lucas Cranach the Elder. An ancient judgment of beauty enters the world of a sixteenth-century German court.

George Wesley Bellows. In January 1914 Bellows wrote to a friend that he was waiting for snow and felt he had to paint at least one winter scene each year.

Sesson Shukei. The monk-painter Sesson Shukei made this pair of screens around 1560. Travelling through eastern Japan, he developed an individual style away from Kyoto, the cultural capital.

Wen Zhengming. A solitary traveller with a staff climbs through autumn mountains. Wen Zhengming, a leading Ming scholar-painter, made this handscroll in the early sixteenth century.

Unidentified Korean painters. Several older officials meet among mountains. The museum connects the gathering with men around sixty who entered government service at about the same time.

Master of the Jaunpur Kalpasutra. Fourteen dreams foretell the coming of a great teacher. On this Kalpasutra folio, Devananda experiences them.

Attributed to Painting attributed to Bihzad. Sufis gather in a garden. Some dance while others listen or sit at the edges.

Attributed to Aniko. A small monk sits beneath Tara’s extended hand, enormous by comparison. He commissioned this thangka, a Buddhist image on cloth.

Unidentified painters of Roman Egypt. A young man’s face survives on a small scrap of linen.

Unidentified painter of Poseidonia. A young man dives into water, but his image was made for a sealed tomb. It was discovered in 1968 near ancient Poseidonia, now Paestum in southern Italy.

Vasily Maximov. An elderly mistress and her servant sit beside a small house. A larger mansion with boarded windows stands behind them.

Unidentified Spanish painters. In 1396 Pedro Lopez de Ayala commissioned this altarpiece for his family’s funerary chapel in their northern Spanish palace.

Antonio da Correggio. Around 1515 the young Correggio painted Mary with two children for close devotional viewing. Christ sits on her lap while the young John the Baptist kneels beside them.

John Singer Sargent. In 1897 Elizabeth Swinton was celebrated in society as an amateur singer. During the following decade she began performing professionally.

Rembrandt van Rijn. Rembrandt painted this old man in 1631. Rich costume and a turned head resemble formal portraiture, yet the work belongs to another category: a tronie, a study of face…

Paul Cézanne. Cézanne painted The Basket of Apples around 1893. Every object is recognisable, yet the table edges fail to align across the cloth.

Albrecht Dürer. A child sleeps in his grandmother’s arms while his mother joins her hands in prayer. Albrecht Dürer brings Mary, the infant Christ, and Saint Anne into a close family group.

Albert Bierstadt. Albert Bierstadt exhibited Mountain Brook in 1863. Critics particularly admired its light and shadow, which made the forest seem strikingly convincing.

Kishi Ganku. This early-nineteenth-century pair of screens could surround a viewer with bamboo inside a room. Kishi Ganku retained large stalks, a few leaves and a pale bank.

Tang Yin. In 1509 Tang Yin painted a tea gathering to remember his friend Wu Kuan, who had died five years earlier. The scholar shares a favourite activity with a Buddhist monk.

Unidentified Korean painters. This is Yun Dongseom, a Korean scholar, calligrapher, and government official. He sits in formal dress on a high-backed chair.

Devidasa of Nurpur. A game of chaupar has ended in a dispute. Shiva has cheated Parvati out of her necklace, and she asks for it back.

Unidentified Iranian painters. A bier moves among mourners. This is the funeral of Isfandiyar, a hero of Firdausi’s Persian Shahnama.

Unidentified Tibetan painters. This thangka was made in Central Tibet around 1150–1200. Its great golden figure combines characteristics of two Buddhist forms.

Unidentified painters of Roman Egypt. A woman looks towards us from a second-century CE funerary portrait.

Victor Borisov-Musatov. Borisov-Musatov began The Pool at Zubrilovka in 1902 and finished it the following year. His sister and fiancée posed for him.

Diego Velázquez. A young woman pauses at a table among jugs, bowls and kitchen tools. Velazquez painted her in Seville in 1618–20, early in his career.

Sandro Botticelli. Mary presses her cheek to Christ as he embraces her neck. Botticelli painted this image in 1475–85. A familiar maternal movement becomes the basis of religious painting.

James McNeill Whistler. In this Nocturne of 1872, Whistler reduces Southampton Water to dark silhouettes and golden lights.

Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Judith holds a sword beside Holofernes’s severed head. In the biblical account, the widow enters the enemy commander’s tent and kills him to save her people.

Claude Monet. Wheat stacks near Monet’s home at Giverny became the subject of a major series in 1890–91. He worked at several easels outdoors, then continued in the studio.

Caspar David Friedrich. Two men stop on a woodland path before a crescent moon. One rests his hand on the other’s shoulder. Caspar David Friedrich painted this version around 1825–30.

William Merritt Chase. William Merritt Chase painted this small city park around 1887. During the late 1880s he made a group of views in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Noguchi Shohin. In 1900 Noguchi Shohin depicted the celebrated gathering at the Orchid Pavilion.

Chai Zhenyi and Chai Jingyi. Two Hangzhou sisters, Chai Zhenyi and Chai Jingyi, made Flowers and Insects during the Kangxi reign, between 1662 and 1722.