Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century, the “official” academic channels of professional painting considered still life to be at the bottom of the totem pole. It didn’t have the heroic content of [...]

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” -Robert Henri Define art however you like, but the act of making it is a gesture of hope.  [...]

Look too long at Cesar Santos’ newest paintings and you risk feeling something akin to those myths and fairytales where someone who’s enjoying a meal is told they’ve been unknowingly eating human flesh.  Milan’s gallery [...]

Disciple of light, master of color, portraitist to presidents and kings, Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) sits high in the pantheon of painterly realists of any age.  In 1884, his first large painting was acquired by the Spanish government. [...]

“The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers …. The artist must not think of critical rewards or money he will get for [...]

In Jan Vermeer’s great painting, The Geographer, of 1662, we have a paradox: a wanderer’s spirit suspended in the confines of an interior. Vermeer is forever painting light coming through windows, but in this painting, [...]

Art historians call George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) one of the leading "Amsterdam Impressionists." However, his paintings don't align with the kind of artwork we commonly associate with Impressionism.  That’s because Breitner and his peers ignored [...]

“Poetry is a man and a woman and the distance between them.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti Edward Hopper’s figures have no one talk to. They’re entirely self-absorbed, isolated from each other even when together, and most [...]

There’s an odd distinction some people make between being “someone who paints” and being an artist. Beginners, especially, aren’t sure what to call themselves; they’re far more likely to say they’re “learning painting” than to [...]

By David Molesky The Chilean artist Guillermo Lorca (b. 1984) and I first met years ago at the master painter Odd Nerdrum’s farm in southern Norway. Initially he struck me as a South American James Dean, handsome [...]