-
Before the Gnome: Hermits in the Garden
Hermits in the Garden We all know and love garden gnomes. And who doesn’t love to have a cute fellow with a little red pointed hat, doing garden things and minding his business? But imagine, if those gnomes were real persons living in your garden? To you this sounds more than absurd and over-the-top eccentric? Well… yes. But, you know, they existed. Only they were not gnomes but ornamental hermits. To learn more about it, let’s go on a little time travel back into the 17th century. The change of garden style in the 17th Century At the beginning of the 17th century the ornamental baroque garden was the predominant type of…
-
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was born on the 14th May 1727 and was one of the most important British artists in the second half of the 18th century. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1769 but the relationship to the Royal Academy was not the best and he stopped sending his paintings to the Academy’s exhibitions in 1773. He was widely known for his portraits and indeed one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his time. He was always in competition with the then more famous Sir Joshua Reynolds whose paintings were a bit more conservative and less experimental than Gainsborough’s works. Gainsborough…
-
Impression Soleil Levant – the Birth of Impressionism
Perhaps you have asked yourself one or two times how the impressionist movement came to be called „Impressionism“. In fact, painter Claude Monet was directly responsible for this name. And, in fact, it was meant as an insult for the raw, quick and seemingly unfinished style of the paintings shown in the „Painters, Sculptors, Engravers etc. Inc“-exhibition of 1874 You may probably know all of this but I talk about this nevertheless. Because – why not? Claude Monets painting „Impression, Sunrise“, shows the harbour of Le Havre, a french town in the Normandy where Monet grew up. Monet left the town in 1859 but would always return for a visit.…
