'Fifth Avenue, Evening,' (c1893) depicts an elegant woman navigating a Manhattan sidewalk on a blustery and grey wintry evening. The work references both the restrained colour palette of similar tones found in Hassam's earlier Boston scenes as well as the diagonal, expansive…

'The Young Orphan' (1884) William Merritt Chase has been described as a painter’s painter, typified in his artistic style by exact detail and an interest in the formal qualities of painting. More so than any other genre, his portraiture exemplifies his status as such an artist…

John White Alexander achieved international success with his studies of female figures gracefully posed in elegant interiors. 'Study in Black and Green,' painted around 1905, justifies the description of Alexander as 'the painter of the flowing line.'

'The New Necklace,' (1910) the women in William Paxton’s finely detailed interiors helped define idealised female roles for upper-class American women at the turn of the 20thC - his career was greatly celebrated for the realistic intimacy portrayed in his work, a style that…

Painted in 1897, 'Portrait of a Child Sewing,' possesses all the traits of Frank Weston Benson's personal and celebrated style with its bold brushwork and mastery of light and atmosphere.

Around 1905, the majority of the Boston painters (particularly Benson) began to look to

One of the most innovative painters of his day, John Henry Twachtman advanced the tenets of Impressionism further than the majority of his American contemporaries. 

His primary subject was nature and like the majority of his late landscapes the elements in 'View of the Brush…

Today, we're looking at the Boston School of painters in America - a group of painters based in the city who were active in the first three decades of the 20thC.

This is 'In the Station Waiting Room,' (1915) by Edmund Tarbell, a prominent artist in the group who was admired

Arches featured in many of James Pryde’s compositions. We get a sense of drama in this picture, the possibility that someone or something may lurk on the other side of the arch. The effect is one of uncertainty, a hesitation between what we can see and what we can't. This picture…

'Convoy Air Cover.' (c1942) In Norman Wilkinson’s own words, his 'whole interest in painting was ships and the sea.' He was an illustrator and maritime painter and devised a camouflage system, Dazzle Painting for the British Admiralty - used extensively during WW1 and to a…

'Theatre of Young Artists.' (1890)
Walter Sickert spent each summer in Dieppe from 1885 until he went to live there permanently in the autumn of 1898.  It was here he maintained his connection to European culture and contemporary French painting, setting him apart from his peers…

'Boulevard de Clichy and the Corner of the Rue de Douai.' (1904) Pierre Bonnard said about his own day and age that 'few people know how to see, to see well, to see fully.' In our visual age, it's truer now. Fortunately, Bonnard's work is still around to show us a different truth

'Gurnards Head.' (1947) Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a small but vital component of the St Ives school, arriving in Cornwall in 1940 just as Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth were transforming the small fishing town into an unlikely hot-bed of British modernism.…

'A Suffolk Estuary, Low Tide.' (1960) Edward Seago's paintings contradict the cliché that watercolours are mild. In this work, it's the freshness, spontaneity, and evanescence that perfectly sums up a day's end or a day's beginning.

'Fireworks.' (1900) In 1891 Félix Vallotton began making woodcuts, something which brought him recognition and a steady income throughout the decade.

Many of these works capture vignettes of daily life, while others expose the sometimes unsavoury underside of the city but all…

In the mid-1950s, when portrait painting seemed to be at its lowest ebb, Peter Greenham's portraits stood out for their beauty of touch, their grasp of form, and their sympathetic character.

Like much of his work 'Portrait of an Old Lady,' was continually reworked, particularly…

Soon after moving to London in 1930, the Australian artist Roy de Maistre began a close friendship with the then 21 year old Francis Bacon who had begun to establish himself as a fashionable furniture designer. de Maistre provided technical advice and support, which helped Bacon…

'An Unkempt Bouquet.' (1946) A master of the still-life as few in the 20thC could claim, Georges Braque saw himself as the heir of Chardin and Cézanne. We are used to seeing Braque's Cubist pictures (miracles of dematerialisation, as one art critic once put it) but his life after…

Several people have suggested I launch a podcast. What would appeal to me are interviews with collectors, artists, historians and exhibitions. But what would you like to hear?

'Spring in the Ravine.' Frances Hodgkins was born in New Zealand and studied at the Dunedin Art School before moving to Europe in 1901. She taught in Paris and settled in England in 1914. She was a member of the Seven and Five group from 1929 and exhibited alongside Ben…

'Shore Pattern,' (c1950) is painted in Alfred Joseph Casson's crisp, assured style of working. He owed much to his friend Franklin Carmichael, a member of the Group of Seven from its inception in 1920; through his influence, a feeling of otherworldliness is added to the scene.