#english painter

[royalty-nobility]

Queen Victoria's Christmas Tree

Artist: William Corden the Younger (English, 1819-1900)

Date: 1850-51

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: The Royal Collection, United Kingdom

Description

This is a copy by William Corden of the watercolour by James Roberts in the Royal Collection depicting Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1850.

[solcattus]

Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil, 1895

By Edward Burne-Jones

[lepetitdragonvert]

Chilvaric Love

Artist : William Dacres Adams (1864-1951)

[galleryofart]

A Garden

Artist: Albert Moore (English, 1841–1893)

Date: 1869

Medium: OIl on Canvas

Collection: TATE Britain

Description

Albert Moore was influenced by Japanese art. He produced decorative and subtly coloured pictures. He focuses on the colour, texture and movement of draped fabric on the woman’s costume. Art critic Sidney Colvin said Moore’s subjects were ‘merely a mechanism for getting beautiful people into beautiful situations.’ Moore used the flower-like symbol at the bottom of the picture as a signature.

[the-cricket-chirps]

J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm - Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth, 1842

J.M.W. Turner, Peace - Burial at Sea, 1842

[pen-and-umbra]

Le Pandemonium

(John Martin, 1841)

[myteaplace]

Circe Invidiosa, 1892, John William Waterhouse (1883-1917)

[thepaintedroom]

Jessica Hayllar (British/English, 1858-1940) • Fresh from the Greenhouse • 1885

[artandthebible]

Naomi and Ruth

Artist: Evelyn De Morgan (English, 1855–1919)

Date: 1887

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Naomi and Ruth

The story of Naomi appears in the Bible in the book of Ruth. Naomi lived during the time of the judges. She was the wife of a man named Elimelech, and they lived in Bethlehem with their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion. Naomi’s life illustrates the power of God to bring something good out of bitter circumstances.

When a famine hits Judea, Elimelech and Naomi and their two boys relocate to Moab (Ruth 1:1). There, Mahlon and Kilion marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. After about ten years, tragedy strikes. Elimelech dies, and both of Naomi’s sons also die, leaving Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah widows (Ruth 1:3–5). Naomi, hearing that the famine in Judea was over, decides to return home (Ruth 1:6). Orpah stays in Moab, but Ruth chooses to move to the land of Israel with Naomi. The book of Ruth is the story of Naomi and Ruth returning to Bethlehem and how Ruth married a man named Boaz and bore a son, Obed, who became the grandfather of David and the ancestor of Jesus Christ.

The name Naomi means “sweet, pleasant,” which gives us an idea of Naomi’s basic character. We see her giving her blessing to Ruth and Orpah when she tells them to return to their mothers’ homes so that they might find new husbands: she kisses them and asks that the Lord deal kindly with them (Ruth 1:8–14). But her heartache in Moab was more than Naomi could bear. When she and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem, the women of the town greet Naomi by name, but she cries, “Don’t call me Naomi... Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me” (Ruth 1:20–21). The name Mara means “bitter.” The cup of affliction is a bitter cup, but Naomi understood that the affliction came from the God who is sovereign in all things. Little did she know that from this bitter sorrow great blessings would come to her, her descendants, and the world through Jesus Christ.

Ruth meets a local landowner, Boaz, who is very kind to her. Naomi again recognizes the providence of God in providing a kinsman-redeemer for Ruth. Naomi declares that the Lord “has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead" (Ruth 2:20) Seeing God’s hand in these events, Naomi encourages Ruth to go to Boaz as he slept in the threshing floor in order to request that he redeem her and her property. Naomi’s concern was for Ruth’s future, that Ruth would gain a husband and provider.

Naomi’s bitterness is turned to joy. In the end, she gains a son-in-law who would provide for both her and Ruth. She also becomes a grandmother to Ruth’s son, Obed. Then the women of Bethlehem say to Naomi, “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth” (Ruth 4:14–15). Naomi was no longer Mara. Her life again became sweet and pleasant, blessed by God.

[liturgical-agenda]

A Devonshire lane by Henry John Yeend King

[art-portraits]

Mother and Child

Artist: Sir William Rothenstein (English, 1872–1945)

Date: 1903

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain

Description

Rothenstein made a number of portraits of his family and close friends in which the interior is as important as the figure. In this painting the artist’s wife Alice is shown with their first child John, aged about two. The interior is the family’s house in Hampstead. Without any narrative intent, the painting can be interpreted as a simple celebration of motherhood. Rothenstein greatly admired seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and the colouring, lighting and pervading stillness evidently owes a debt to Dutch painter Jan Vermeer.

[frogmuse]

[solcattus]

The Three Graces, 1830

By Edmund Thomas Parris

[lepetitdragonvert]

Arctic Encounter

Artist : Arthur Wardle (1864-1949)

[galleryofart]

The Soul's Prison

Artist: Evelyn De Morgan (English, 1855-1919)

Style: Romanticism

Genre: Symbolic Painting

Medium: Oil in Glycerine on Canvas

Date: 1888

Description:

When a study for this work was exhibited in 1889, a quotation attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo was attached to it "illuminate, oh illuminated my blind soul that sitteth in darkness and the Shadow of Death". The Soul sits in its prison (the body) awaiting its release into the light beyond the prison window - the release of death. This echoes the painter's Spiritualist belief, that the body is merely an earthly shell, an encumbrance, which the spirit longs to cast off in death, to move into the sun of the spirit-spheres.

[the-cricket-chirps]

Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, (1890-1978) The War Widow, c. 1923