He left only his clothes and a few artist’s materials. But he also left an immense body of work that has never been surpassed in its insight into the human condition. An artist who portrayed himself and the world as it really was rather than it might like to see itself. Who could paint something close to perfection. But who celebrated the physical imperfection. ibid.
Look at a Vermeer painting and everything seems crystal clear. Simple scenes of women going about their daily tasks. And then you look again. And realise that nothing is quite what it seems. There’s a mystery unfolding before your eyes. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e12: Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632 here in Delft, a thriving market town. ibid.
He takes us away from the street – from the outside – into a domestic closed private world, and creates some of the most memorable images of Western art. ibid.
So what Vermeer is doing in this image, as he does throughout the rest of his career, is make the everyday seem epic. ibid.
As well as his use of colour, it’s Vermeer’s meticulous composition which makes him stand out as such a major artist. ibid.
He is now one of the most cherished of all the great artists by the gallery-going public. ibid.
J M W Turner is widely regarded as the greatest artist Britain has ever produced. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e13: J M W Turner
He took landscape painting into new territories, using paint in magical ways which capture the wildness of the natural world around him but border on distraction. ibid.
Fishermen at Sea was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796. Turner had only just started using oils three years before so it’s a remarkably accomplished work. ibid.
And Turner was awestruck. Most significantly by the works of Claude Lorrain, the great seventeenth-century French landscape painter who was to inspire him throughout his life. ibid.
Although Italy became a major source of inspiration throughout the rest of his life, images of Britain continued to dominate Turner’s canvasses. He became a chronicler of contemporary history in 1834 when he produced stunning images of the burning of the Houses of Parliament. ibid.
Rain, Steam, Speed – The Great Western Railway completed by Turner somewhere around 1843, 1844. ibid.
Piero Della Francesca has been seen as one of the mystery men of Western art. A painter of enigmatic images rendered with mathematical precision and monumental vision. But which are often strange and illusive, haunting even. He was overlooked for centuries. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e1: Piero Della Francesca
Piero seems to have ended a career with a picture for himself ... Piero died in 1492. ibid.
Hans Holbein has claims to be the greatest portrait painter who ever wielded a brush. A central figure in the spread of the renaissance in northern Europe whose deftness and pinpoint accuracy captured the spirit and the faces of his age. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e2: Hans Holbein
One of the most eloquent examples of painting inspired by the ideas of the Reformation as well as being one of the most powerful works in the entire history of religious art is this one: Holbein’s image of the dead Christ painted in 1521. ibid.
He can’t find work in Basel. So in the end, in 1532, he goes back to England and never returns, leaving the family effectively to fend for themselves. ibid.
Holbein is commissioned to paint what becomes his more celebrated, famous and complex work – this one The Ambassadors, painted in 1533 ... This form here in the foreground that you can only see when you start to walk and look from another perspective, then you see clearly from this angle that it’s a skull. ibid.
Within three years of painting The Ambassadors Holbein got the position he really wanted: painter to the King. And began a series of portraits that have defined how that most familiar of English monarchs has been seen down the ages. ibid.
Holbein’s influence on British painting is enormous. He made the human individual seem more real and more exposed than any artist before him. ibid.
Of all the great artists Caravaggio seems to speak most intensely to the modern world. A man whose art seems obsessed with sexuality and sensuality, youth and beauty, fear and violence, loneliness and intense self-awareness. He lived a brief and tumultuous life, mocking authority, even murdering a man. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e3: Caravaggio
The painting which caught the eye of the Roman art world and announced the dramatic arrival of a new talent was this one called The Card Sharps. It’s a piece of theatre on canvas. ibid.
His [Caravaggio’s] death has fuelled conspiracy theories ever since. ibid.
He left a body of work that has had perhaps more influence on Western painting over the last four-hundred years than any other single artist. ibid.
George Stubbs is the greatest painter of horses who ever lived. He was a sporting artist but so much more than that. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e4: Stubbs
George Stubbs was born in Liverpool in 1724. ibid.
Stubbs took a popular but low-regarded form of painting and gave it gravitas and authority. ibid.
Goya has often been described as the last of the great old masters and the first of the new. He painted sublime portraits of the Spanish royal court, and celebratory pictures of the good life in Spain. But he also produced some of the most harrowing images of human cruelty ever created. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e5: Goya
A year after completing The Milkmaid, Goya died in Bordeaux on 16th April 1828. He was 82. ibid.
Goya is a pivotal figure in the history of art. ibid.
David was a revolutionary artist in every sense. His work spoke the classical language of ancient Greece and Rome. Austere, self-controlled, heroic. But he brought European painting away from the sentimental fantasy of the Rococo, and gave it a harder edge. He was also a fully committed supporter of the French Revolution and Napoleon, using his art as a powerful instrument of political propaganda. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e6: David
David’s influence on European painting was immense. ibid.
There have been few more powerful painters of landscape than John Constable. He brought a scale, ambition and impact to a subject long considered amongst the lowest forms of art, but he is largely celebrated as a nostalgic painter of a lost England. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s2e7: John Constable
He says at the beginning though that he wants to produce a pure and unaffected view of nature. ibid.