#artwor

This intriguing, highly detailed watercolor shows a scene from a classic fairy tale as imagined by English pre-Raphaelite Henry Meynell Rheam.

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"Priestess of Delphi" by John Collier, 1891

Following the example of Édouard Manet (1832 – 1883) and Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) and their paintings of Parisian cafes and theatres, Sickert painted the more raucous nightlife of London’s music halls throughout his career. He was a regular visitor at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town, the subject of this painting. Sickert may have intended it as a sequel to his earlier picture of the child performer Little Dot Hetherington on the stage of the Bedford, in which she is shown pointing to this spot while singing the popular song, “The Boy I Love is up in the Gallery”. As well as recording vividly the atmosphere and setting of a late 19th century performance, this is a brilliant exercise in lighting and composition. Sickert exploits the contrast between the shadowy auditorium and the reflected glare of the stage, and creates tricks of space and perspective by means of the giant mirror on the left.

The Gallery’s double-profile image of Agrippina (14 BC – 33 AD), the granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, and her husband, Germanicus (b. 15 BC), a prominent and highly lauded commander-in-chief in the Gallic and Germanic provinces of the Roman Empire, is one of the most vivid manifestations of Rubens’s interest in antique sculpture. Executed around 1614, it resembles a cameo in subject and composition, yet, as was Rubens’s great talent, the figures feel full of life. He subtly differentiated Agrippina’s luminous, ivory-colored flesh from the ruddy complexion of her husband, and used rhythmic touches of his brush to create accents of light that give life to her wavy golden hair.

Allegorie de la Reddition d'Ulm; General Karl Mack (1752-1828) surrendering to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821); capitulation of Austrian army to French.