In the last year of his life, Vincent van Gogh painted this delicate ‘Almond Blossom’ as a gift to brother Theo & his wife Joanna to celebrate the birth of their newborn son, whom they named after Vincent (1890)

Millet’s The Gleaners (1857) depicts impoverished rural women collecting stray bits of crops left over after harvesting. Criticised by some at the time for its subject matter (“working class/ugly/gross”) & even its large size! (previously reserved for “noble” topics) artinsociety.com/millet-and-t...

Ancient Greek donkey-head drinking vessel (“rhyton”), with cheeky expression, dating from 470BC. Apparently popular at drinking parties, it was designed without a flat base to encourage drinking to the last drop (Art Inst Chicago)

English photographer Bill Brandt believed “the power to see the world as fresh and strange lies hidden in every human being” ~ here’s his East End Girl Dancing the Lambeth Walk / Snicket [Alley] in Halifax / Young Girl, Eaton Place (1937-1955)

Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase ~ if you look very closely, it’s not really “still”, as it’s actually crawling with ants, caterpillars, bugs, flies and a snail. And, BTW, admire the reflection of latticed window in glass vase (detail at R)

Elegant 2,200-year-old Greek gold bracelet with bulls heads joined with a Herakles (reef) knot, thought to cure wounds and ward off evil (Getty Villa Collection) thegetty.tumblr.com/post/3808997...

Édouard Manet believed that "a painter can express everything he wants with fruits or flowers…My main ambition is to become the Saint Francis of still life". Here’s his Peonies on a Marble Table / Carnations & Clematis in a Crystal Vase

Coming up for its 600th birthday, this blue-and-white drug jar, decorated with a boar and oak leaves, was made by an unknown artisan in Florence in 1431. Love it! thegetty.tumblr.com/post/3536880...

Golden sunlight bathes the hills of Los Angeles in this detailed landscape by Seth Armstrong (Electric Avenue, 2021)

Lit only by a burning candle, a young woman in Russian folk dress looks into an ornate mirror. In accordance with a common romantic belief, she is nervously hoping to see the face of the man she will marry (Karl Bryullov, ‘Fortuneteller Svetlana’ (1836)

Italian artist Giuseppe De Nittis had a number of his paintings included in the Impressionists’ first groundbreaking exhibition in 1874. Here’s his later ‘In a Canoe’ and ‘Breakfast in the Garden’

This superb 18th century still-life is not just a random collection of food ~ it’s a visual recipe for a traditional Galician dish. Artist Luis Meléndez highlights the ingredients ~ cauliflower, cod, leeks, eggs, oil, garlic & spices. Try it tonight! (1777) www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2019/06/06/b...

Tooth blackening was an ancient custom in many cultures. In Japan, it was a sign of female beauty (& supposedly protected the teeth), but the custom largely died out in 20C. Blackening agent was made from dissolving iron filings in vinegar (Kitagawa Utamaro, 1802/03)

Charles Dickens described this painting “mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting” as it depicted the Holy Family as an ordinary family from the (gasp!) working class ~ John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents (1850)

Meet Alan Shipp, pioneering cultivator of 243 varieties of hyacinth, and Custodian of the National Collection, at work with his extensive plantings in the silted water-meadows of the River Cam. I bet van Gogh would have loved painting these! spitalfieldslife.com/2026/04/15/a...

Emily Osborn highlights precarious position of 19C women ~ recently-orphaned young woman, respectable but poor, tries to sell painting to calculating dealer, as seated gents look up furtively from bare-legged ballerina to watch her predicament (Nameless & Friendless, 1857, Tate)

French artist Gustave Caillebotte’s many passionate interests included gardening ~ in his Les Jardiniers (1875), bare-foot gardeners water the lettuces, a line of bell-shaped glass cloches protect tender young plants, & the back wall holds espaliered trees and tall cypresses

From 1881 onwards, when van Gogh was making a serious start on becoming an artist, and before he “discovered” colour, he moved constantly, assiduously chronicling the neighbourhoods where he lived ~ Parsonage Garden / Sien’s Mother’s House / Carpenters’ Yard & Laundry

Nicolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky was born into a life of abject poverty, but was able to get admitted to a special peasant school by demonstrate his early prowess at drawing. Here he remembers a boy like himself, nervously about to enter the school for the first time (1897)

Morning sunlight in the valley of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, by US impressionist painter Daniel Garber (c 1916)

Family ties ~ here’s Andrew Wyeth’s painting of his thoughtful six-year-old son Jamie (‘Faraway’) ■ and seventeen years later, Jamie would paint this portrait of his father

Colour images of Monet’s garden at Giverny can be beautiful, but black-and-white images also have their own special appeal. Here's Pierre Choumoff's photo of Monet contemplating the water garden with Japanese footbridge in background, over 100 yrs ago artjourneycurator.substack.com/p/monet-expl...

Van Gogh was a great admirer of Millet, and during his stay in the Saint-Rémy asylum made over 20 copies of his works. His ‘The Siesta’ (1890) is closely based on Millet’s earlier pastel ‘Noonday Rest’, though with reversed composition, more vibrant colours & obvious brushstrokes

In a village near Monet’s house at Giverny, he painted this mill on a branch of the river, attracted by the effect of the sunlight, the vibrant foliage and the shimmering reflections on the water (Claude Monet, Moulin de Limetz, 1888)

Consider the calmness and sense of order evoked by Swiss artist Albert Anker’s ‘Still Life with Coffee’ (1877), with its porcelain cups, sugar cubes, coffee pot and liqueurs ~ and notice the subtle shadings of whiteness that the artist uses

In 1816, Mary and Percy Shelley visited the Villa Diodati, near Lake Geneva, which was being rented by Lord Byron ~ it’s where Mary started dreaming up the idea for Frankenstein. Here’s the villa as it was then ■ & now www.artinsociety.com/dr-jekyll-fr...

I’m sure you know the feeling ~ 19th century Catalan artist Ramon Casas i Carbó’s ‘Woman Getting Ready to Meet the Day’ (aka Late Morning). Looks like ‘meeting the day’ may not really be a high priority….

Get a real 24/7 bird’s-eye live stream of nesting ospreys atop a huge research crane that towers over the Daintree rainforest in Australia. These two ospreys have been returning to mate and nest there for the last 15 years www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I'm loving the quiet joy of this angel playing the lute, carved from linden wood more than 500 years ago (Bode-Museum, Berlin) (photo: Daderot)

Self-taught US artist Edward Gordon conveys light effects with a crystalline clarity, and enjoys paying homage to the masters. Here’s his ‘Wind from the Sea’ (see Vermeer’s ‘The Astronomer’ on the wall?) and at R is Andrew Wyeth’s same-named work

It’s remarkable how much of the detail of this painting by Raoul Dufy is just suggested or hinted at ~ Interior with Musical Instruments (1940)

Engulfed in 79AD, this recently-unearthed fresco at a house in Pompeii depicts a silver plate with a circular focaccia that resembles a pizza, served with pomegranate, dates & condiments, plus a goblet of wine ~ but no tomato (believed poisonous) or mozzarella www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/p...

My apologies to those confused by my mention of a mirror in yesterday's post on Charles Spencelayh ~ here's the image I meant to post (The Artist's Studio)

Charles Spencelayh achieved a precise, almost photographic level of detail in his domestic interiors. Here he depicts the prized possessions from the long lives of an elderly couple~ we can see them in the mirror (Grandfather’s & Grandmother’s Treasures, 1945) www.evelynwaugh.org.uk/styled-96/in...

British artist Briton Rivière depicts this young girl optimistically trying to teach her long-suffering but patient bloodhound to read ~ no doubt inspired by the controversial introduction of compulsory education for children in the 1880s (‘Compulsory Education’, AGNSW, 1887)

Check out the impressive detail in this 17th-century marriage portrait of a young woman, wearing a black satin dress with delicate white lacework and gold-embroidered bodice, by Dutch artist Nicolaes Eliasz www.getty.edu/art/collecti...

Interior of the farmhouse of Andrew Wyeth’s neighbours, the Olson family (Woodstove, 1962). One day, from the window of the small studio he maintained there, he saw the disabled Christina Olson crawling through a field, inspiring his classic Christina’s World (1948)

Japanese National Living Treasure Kawase Hasui’s woodblock print of waves crashing on the rocky coast below a soft dawn sky (Morning at Cape Inubo, 1931)

Marie Bashkirtseff’s painting of an orphanage child in ‘The Umbrella’ (1883), one of her few works to survive WW2, was painted just before she died from TB at 25. Her journal became a widely-praised novelistic account of 19C European life publicdomainreview.org/essay/marie-...

US Impressionist Daniel Garber plays with light and shadows in ‘The Old Mill’ (1921)

Forget all the annoying stuff in the world for a few moments and enjoy the natural beauty of Brazil’s Seven-coloured Tanager (Tangara fastuosa) Photo: Luiz Cavalcanti Damasceno

At the intersection of science, nature and art ~ a microscopic image of pollen grains on a jumping spider (Javier Rupérez, 2026) mymodernmet.com/evident-imag...

Here’s the dramatic effect of recent restoration work to remove layers of yellow oxidised varnish on Jan van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (1435) www.louvre.fr/en/exhibitio...

On his first try with a metal detector, David Booth made the most significant discovery of Iron Age metalwork in Scotland ~ the “Stirling Hoard”, which included these beautiful 2,000-yr-old gold necklaces (torcs). His treasure trove reward? £462,000 www.bbc.com/news/uk-scot...

Against a Tuscan background, a young woman tempts (or teases) her serious-looking companion with a glass of red wine, in Danish artist Harald Slott-Møller’s ‘Primavera’ (1901)

Mycenaean bronze daggers, inlaid with scenes featuring animals, sea creatures, birds and a lion hunt, made an astonishing 3,500 years ago (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)

The world in a reflection ~ Olga Antonova says that her still-life paintings aim “to catch that moment of solitude, that quiet harmony that people can relate to” olgaantonova.com/biography/

St Anne, traditionally regarded as the grandmother of Christ, places a finger to her lips~ the only known depiction of its type (8/9th century, Nubia). Possibly she’s asking for silence, or maybe it’s to prevent the devil from entering while she was praying

From his elevated viewpoint in an upper side box, Edgar Degas creates a memorable pastel ‘snapshot’ of a dancer performing on a stage ~ notable for the radical cropping of the other dancers at L and the deft impressionist decoration of the tutus (Dancer in Green, 1879)

These two codgers turned up at our local craft market, doggedly trying to make a dollar selling their ceramic plates. Hah! Neither could even draw a straight line! Who do they think they are ~ Picasso and Chagall? 😃 (yes! In 1948, at Madoura workshop) blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-...