state of weather

Self Defense

In Self Defense, a boy prepares a snowball, likely in response to one just launched at him. Yet the painting is not just of child’s play. In the background are advertisements for a notorious lottery scheme, a lowbrow musical rabble rouser, and an announcement for a performance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the first staging of […]

Houses of Parliament in the Fog

In the early 1900s, Impressionist painter Claude Monet made a series of views of the Houses of Parliament in London. He worked from a balcony of Saint Thomas’s Hospital, directly across the River Thames. In this view, the Thames is covered by thick fog, and the Houses of Parliament loom in the distance. As is […]

Antwerp, Boats on the Scheldt

As a child, Eugène Louis Boudin worked aboard a ship with his father, and it was there he first observed the interplay of sky and water that would dominate many of his canvases. In 1871, Boudin traveled to Antwerp, Belgium, where he executed many paintings of the busy port. In this scene, Boudin […]

Portrait of a Young Boy Wearing a Straw Hat

Born and trained in Toulouse, France, Henri Martin was influenced by Pointillism in the late 1880s. He executed this portrait of an anonymous boy with small, discrete brush strokes in the early 1890s. Martin managed to capture the bleaching effect of the strong, out-of-doors sunlight, which just barely touches the boy’s chin.