Favourite artist?

[Garmard]

Who is your favourite artist and why.
I know it's a bit of a cliche in art circles, but mine has got to be John Constable.
His landscape art to me is of romance as well as story telling....I love it.

[Ellipsis]

Thanks Mr V, I will read more of that later.

Here is the "Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba":

http://www.nationalga...of-the-queen-of-sheba

Here are the other paintings in the room (room 15 of the National Gallery, it turns out), including two Turners:

http://www.nationalga...plans/level-2/room-15

The scene where Frodo, Gandalf and the Elves are leaving near the end of the Lord of The Rings film reminds me of the Queen of Sheba painting. I loved the painting long before the film was mde, though.

[Mr Veritas]

Thanks Ellipsis,
I had forgotten how much Turner's Dido building Carthage owed to the Lorraine painting.
I think either of them would make a wonderful operatic/drama backdrop.
I know very little of Lord of the Rings,but will consult the local expert(my wife) and see what she thinks.

[andy-hughes]

Dali does it for me - the light in his skies is just breathtaking, before you get to the images he crafts from his wonderful mind.

[jno]

Kinkade

http://www.thomaskink...me.web.tk.HomeServlet

[jake-the-peg]

Parody of Kinkade

http://www.somethinga...s-light-ii.php?page=1

[DrFilth]

http://www.utexas.edu...931_salvador_dali.jpg Media URL: http://www.utexas.edu/research/memoria/memoriae/the_persistence_of_memory_1931_salvador_dali.jpg
Description:

[DrFilth]

can i have 2

http://trickyrelativi...com/2009/09/bosch.jpg

[Canary42]

Impossible to choose a favourite, I love so many, from many periods.

But my favourite picture is undoubtedly Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring (see tonyted's earlier post) - to me it has a really enchanting quality and I can sit and look at it for ages.

Also high on my list is Picasso's Weeping Woman, a startling contrast to the Vermeer of course, but fascinating nevertheless

http://www.inminds.co...man-picasso-1937.html

[craft1948]

I find Canaletto's paintings fascinating.........all that detail and with the most wonderful light.

[Garmard]

A portraiture of Lady Jane Smijth by Sir Godfrey Kneller, not sure of the year it was painted but she is a picture of beauty to me.

[sara3]

John William Waterhouse. I love this.. http://www.arbib.org/...adyOfShallot_1888.jpg

[Garmard]

Did he paint The Lady in the stream?

[sara3]

he did a mermaid painting.. maybe more than one.. I'm not an art expert ;o)

[Canary42]

By The Lady in the Stream, do you mean Ophelia ?

By Millais

http://www.staroilpainting.com/p_11398.htm

[Garmard]

Thats the one Canary!

[mollykins]

an artists whose name i can't remember. She does mosaics made out of beads and stone and glass and i studied her for a art project coursework. It'll come to me in a moment. . . . . sonia king.

[kawakiri]

In agreement with ummmm

[boxtops]

I like all the Breughels - their view of the human condition is very perceptive, and having just read "Headlong" by Michael Frayn, I now have a greater understanding of what I'm looking at. I also like the works of Vermeer - the Dutch school appeals to me, especially Girl with a Pearl Earring. If I could afford old masters, it would those two painters I would choose.

[Mr Veritas]

There is a funny story attached to Maillais painting of Ophelia.

The background painting,of the stream and flowers,was sketched first in the outdoors.

Millais asked the model (Lizzy Siddal) to lay in a bath of water(in the dress) to get the look of the floating fabric correct.However Miillais took so long that the water got colder and colder,so Millais and friends lit nightlights under the (cast iron) bath to keep the water at least tepid.
However,itis conjectured she might have contracted pmneumonia because of this.
Lizzy Siddal was the mistress(and then wife) of the pre raphaelite poet and artist Dante Gabriele Rossetti.
By the time she married him (aged 31) she was already a Laudanum Opium used for pain etc) addict.She very quickly fell pregnant,but her child (she was very ill by then) was born stillborn.This drove her more and more into the drug,and she died aged 32.
Rossetti was distraught.He buried all hiw poetic works with her in her coffin.
In 1869,he seems toi have thought better of it,and(quite illegally and without permission) had her coffin exhumed and opened to retrieve theHe never forgot the horror of doing this,especially as when the lid was opened Lizzies crowning glory,her auburn hair,seems not to have stopped growing after death and filled the coffin!
Very Gothic isn't it. poems.
We never know just what lays behind works of art,do we?