Impasto: A Digital Museum

  The artist Albert Joseph Moore (1851-1893) was best-known for his pictures of women in colourful fabrics, lounging in resplendent interiors with flowers, pillows, sofas, and coloured objects. Often, the women in his paintings appear to repeat each other. Poses reappear throughout, most famously in three works made in 1875:  Apples, Beads,  and  A Sofa .                                                              Moore,  Apples,  1875, oil on canvas, 29.2 x 50.7 cm, private collection                                               Moore,  Beads ,  1875, oil on canvas, 28.9 x 50.1 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh...

                                  John Everett Millais,  Ophelia , 1851-1852, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 111.8 cm, Tate Britain, London  The Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896) is well-known today for his depiction of Ophelia, from Shakespeare's  Hamlet , at the moment of her drowning. It hangs in Tate Britain, London, and attracts visitors from all over the world. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1852, however, there were mixed opinions. Some reviewers admired its colours, relishing in every detail of the plants and flowers. Millais was particularly successful in rendering realistic plants, to the point that they were seen as botanical studies, because he followed John Ruskin's dictum "to reject nothing, select nothing, and scorn nothing". In other words, depict nature in painstaking detail.  In 1851, Millais set out to ...

Western museums proudly display that some of the artists whose work they exhibit were inspired by Japanese art and aesthetics. When Japanese trade reached western countries like Britain and France in the mid-19th century, there was indeed an appreciation for all things Japanese. Artists like Vincent Van Gogh, James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James Tissot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Claude Monet were drawn into what would become known as japonisme, a term coined by Philippe Burty in 1872 to describe the popularity of Japanese artworks in Paris and London.    Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, The Admirer of Japan , c. 1865, oil on canvas, 112.4 x 86.5 cm, Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens  Sure, japonisme  was a western phenomenon that led to a widespread appreciation of Japanese art and also led to major new developments in western art, such as the impressionist emphasis on everyday subject matter; the unique perspectives applied in ukiyo-e, the Japanese wo...

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, born in the Netherlands but not a successful painter until his emigration to England, was best-known for his depictions of the antique, or classical, past. Many of his works feature around recreations of ancient Rome or ancient Greece, focusing on the social life of individuals, ancient festivals and customs, and providing to his Victorian audience a window into a past they cherished and saw as their own. In an age devoid of television or cinema, Alma-Tadema’s images were perceived by many to be literal windows into the classical past; visual invitations into the Greek and Roman past that western European countries liked to claim as their own. Think of ancient Greek sculpture influencing western European painters; the classical Greek statues that inspired the first western art historians, such as Johann Joachim von Winckelmann and, later, Walter Pater; or think of the principles of Roman architecture that lies at the foundation of all medieval architecture; and, o...