Curated by the editors
Themes
Galleries gathered by idea rather than catalogue — by the mood, light and setting that painters return to across the centuries. Each is a curatorial note by Alexander Knigge, followed by the works themselves: night made the subject of a picture, the single flame, the grey day, the storm, the quiet room. 22 themes in all.
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Nocturnes Night as the subject of a painting, not merely its setting. 1,417 works -
The Chiaroscuro Masters Light wielded as a moral force, carving figures from the dark. 1,457 works -
Interiors of Quiet The Dutch private room, where ordinary stillness becomes the subject. 29,519 works -
Storm & Sublime Terror made beautiful — the painting that overwhelms the sea and sky. 531 works -
The Gilded Hour The Impressionists' end-of-day light, when the world turns to honey. 113 works - Candlelight A single flame, and the warm pool of attention it carves from the dark. 1,257 works
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Moonlit Silvered Romantic landscapes, lit by a cold and distant lamp. 160 works -
Vanitas — On Mortality The skull and the guttering candle: still life as a memento mori. 1,227 works -
The Rural Idyll The pastoral dream — countryside as a vision of innocent ease. 5,647 works -
The Modern City The street as spectacle — the boulevard, the crowd, the electric night. 6,469 works -
Ruins & Reverie Broken architecture, the passage of time, and the pleasure of decay. 333 works -
Into the Forest The wood as threshold — shelter and danger under a closed canopy. 794 works -
The Sea Marine painting from glassy calm to full gale. 2,792 works -
Gardens Cultivated paradise — nature ordered into pleasure. 2,203 works - Intimacies Intimisme — the unobserved moment, painted as if through a keyhole. 10,744 works
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The Melancholic Saturn's temperament — the mood of pensive sorrow and inward weather. 3,452 works -
Joy & Play The fête galante — pleasure, music and amorous ease in the open air. 10,629 works -
The Uncanny Symbolist dread — the familiar made strange and faintly threatening. 1,036 works -
The Monumental Painting that overwhelms — grandeur of scale, subject and ambition. 1,257 works -
Overcast The grey day — the flat, true, even light of the North. 5,086 works -
The Romantic Hour Love and longing — the painting of desire, courtship and reverie. 1,277 works -
Sky Only The cloud study — weather raised to the dignity of a subject. 143 works