offers 14 in-depth studies of works by various artists represented in the National Gallery of Art. The studies include information on the artist, technique, and history behind each painting.
examines Vermeer's use of light, proportion, symbolism, and other techniques in this 17th century masterpiece. How the museum restored the painting is also explained.
takes students on a virtual journey with the artist and ethnologist to meet Native Americans of the 1830s. His portraits, scenes of American Indian life, and writings depict cultures prior to U.S. expansion into tribal territories. The site is designed to enrich the study of U.S. history, geography, and environmental conservation, as well as leadership and character development.
features nine paintings, a history, and a chronology of the life of this ingenious Dutch painter. Van Gogh was 27 years old when he decided to become an artist after unsuccessful attempts at being an art dealer, a teacher, and a clergyman. He taught himself mostly by studying the prints and reproductions he collected. The paintings he produced before his death at age 37 set the direction for many of the expressionist tendencies in 20th century art.
lets kids of all ages compose their own still life paintings (on the web) using images of fruits, flowers, and other objects and artistic elements. Experiment with perspective, size, and spatial arrangements; add textured brushstrokes. See a slideshow of 38 still life paintings. Identify common elements; try to guess the artists who painted them.
lets you paint on the web. More than 40 brushes and textures are offered with a full palette of colors and effects that blur, ripple, and fragment your designs. Click "auto" to see the computer generate screen designs.
explores why the artist, stung by critical comments in 1864, cut his painting Incident in a Bullfight in two and then painted The Dead Toreador and The Bullfight on the resulting two canvasses. Using x-rays and intensive scientific analysis of the two existing paintings, historians have discovered fascinating connections between these seemingly unrelated works.
explores the paintings (and accompanying texts) to holdings at the National Gallery of Art. The Gallery states that "the 15th and 16th centuries saw the rise of capitalism and a burgeoning middle class, the creation of modern nation states, and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. For artists, an innovation of equally far-reaching importance was the perfection of oil paints in the Low Countries, which allowed northern painters to depict the world with unprecedented precision.
features American paintings from the late 1700s-1900s. Included are works by John Copley, Henry Tanner, John Sargent, James Whistler, Gilbert Stuart, and more. Much art of the American colonial period consisted of portraits, as settlers sought to establish their identities in a new world. After the new nation achieved its independence, landscapes and scenes of native flora, fauna, and folk customs began to express its unique qualities and illustrate its untapped resources.
was one of the major landscape painters of his day, and painted some of America's most prominent natural treasures, including the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone. He also arranged for the first government-sponsored survey of Yellowstone, and his images "were later reported to have played a decisive role in the debate that led to the establishment of Yellowstone as the first national park in March 1872."
provides a brief overview van Gogh's life and looks at seven of his paintings.
Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943) was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto (Poland) in 1939 and later deported to a concentration camp in Majdanek where he died. This site features some of his surviving paintings of Jewish life in prewar Poland. They capture a culture that has been lost to the holocaust and modern ways.
For a woman living in the seventeenth century, Judith Leyster was remarkable. She was a successful artist, one of the few women who joined the painters' guild in her city of Haarlem in the Netherlands.
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.” -Georgia O'Keeffe
American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) is known for her paintings of flowers, bones, shells, stones, leaves, trees, mountains, and other natural forms.
“I have had a joy from which no one can rob me —I have been able to touch some people with my art.” -Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844 – 1926) is best known for her portrayals of mothers and children. She became a successful professional artist at a time when it was very difficult for a woman to do so.
Vigée-LeBrun was one of late-eighteenth-century France’s most successful portrait painters—often she had a waiting list! Why was she so popular? Because Vigée-LeBrun pleased her clients by making them look attractive, with graceful poses and happy expressions.
