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Curated playlist

Oil paintings on canvas

  • A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery5 minA Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery is a painting completed in 1766 by Joseph Wright of Derby, and it holds a quiet but radical claim. A lamp sits at the center of a mechanical model of the Solar System, substituting for the Sun itself.…
  • The Peacemakers6 minThe Peacemakers is an 1868 painting by George P.A. Healy, and it captures a moment that almost no one alive at the time knew had happened. On the morning of the 28th of March, 1865, four men gathered aboard a steamer called the River…
  • Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole3 minBonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole is an oil-on-canvas portrait that began with an unusual problem: the man it was meant to capture could not sit still. In November 1796, during the Battle of Arcole, General Napoleon Bonaparte led his troops…
  • Bonaparte, First Consul5 minBonaparte, First Consul is a portrait painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1804, showing Napoleon Bonaparte at the height of his early authority. It hangs today in the Curtius Museum in Liège, a city whose own history is woven into…
  • The Last Day of Pompeii9 minThe Last Day of Pompeii is a large history painting by Karl Bryullov, produced between 1830 and 1833, depicting the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. When it was first shown at Bryullov's studio in Rome, Sir Walter Scott studied it for…
  • The Coronation of Napoleon7 minThe Coronation of Napoleon is a painting nearly ten meters wide and more than six meters tall, completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David. It hangs today at the Louvre Museum in Paris. At that scale, it does not simply record a moment in…
  • The Persistence of Memory5 minThe Persistence of Memory hung in a New York gallery for the first time in 1932, and on that day it sold for just $250. Salvador Dalí had painted it a year earlier, and today it counts among the most recognizable works of Surrealism ever…
  • Amor Vincit Omnia (Caravaggio)7 minAmor Vincit Omnia, the painting by Caravaggio completed around 1601-1602, shows a boy with enormous dark eagle wings sitting astride a heap of trampled objects: a violin, a lute, armor, a crown, a square and compasses, a pen, a manuscript,…
  • The Lament for Icarus4 minThe Lament for Icarus arrived at London's Royal Academy exhibition in 1898 and was purchased the same year through the Chantrey Bequest, a public fund established by the sculptor Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey to acquire modern art for the…
  • The Third of May 180812 minThe Third of May 1808 is a painting that asks you to look at something almost unbearable. Francisco Goya completed it in 1814, and it shows the moments before dawn on the 4th of May 1808, when French soldiers lined up hundreds of Spaniards…
  • Bonaparte Crossing the Alps6 minBonaparte Crossing the Alps is an 1848-1850 oil painting by French artist Paul Delaroche, and it begins with a choice that scandalized some viewers from the moment it was unveiled. Napoleon is not shown astride a rearing warhorse,…

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