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Thread: 2020 has been challenging for all of us. I know that art has been scientifically proven to be an antidote to anxiety so as a relaxing break here’s a series of great artworks about love to boost your spirits & make you feel good!
Here’s The Kiss (1907-8) by Gustav Klimt. It’s intense passion, use of gold, & millefiori-style colours stand out as a masterpiece of Viennese art.
Here’s a special offer. I’m trying to make more room so am happy to offer 2 original ink drawings, Magic Tulips (2020) & Flower Garden (2020), for the price of one at just €149/£135/$177 with free shipping. Save €149. Message me to set up a link to buy them.
Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride (c1665-9) is, in my opinion, the best love painting in history. The ballet of hands & gesture are superlative. Rembrandt needs to be seen as a storyteller & this is the most joyful of all his works.
Harry Clarke is one of the key Western artists in his creation of astonishing stained glass. His Geneva Window (1927) includes many beautiful Irish lovers. Clarke is relatively unknown outside of Ireland as much of his amazing work is housed in churches up & down the country
As the most important artist of the 20th Century we’re used to seeing Picasso’s progressive and avant garde images However this painting, The Lovers (1923) is in his classical manner. Compare The Kiss (1969 & 1929). Picasso was a lover & each of his loves was also a self-portrait
Egon Schiele created the Embrace in 1917. It’s a passionate, exciting vortex of sensuality. It is almost animal in its energy. It seems to sum up the idea of ‘we two against the world’. Sheer, authentic, romance.
Alice Neel, the landmark American artist, painted Ian & Mary in 1971. She captured the earnestness, intensity & compulsion of young love. The urgency of that hand grasp is power. Neel’s importance is now being recognised.
From Ireland I’ve chosen Gerard Dillon’s On the Beach (c1950). It’s a wonderful image of the tension & attraction of first love. All the more so by being forbidden at the time. It wasn’t until the end of the century that homosexuality was effectively decriminalised
Titian, the great Venetian artist, celebrated love in his Bacchus & Ariadne (1522-3). The sweeping gesture of Bacchus is one of the stunning compositions of Western art. One can spend ages studying gestures & detail under the vault of that shimmering blue sky
Scottish artist Henry Raeburn painted middle aged love in 1791 in his Sir John & Lady Clerk of Penicuik. It’s considered his masterpiece & in the National Gallery of Ireland . @NGIreland
American Paul Cadmus, one of the finest painters of the human form, painted Jerry in 1931. It’s an intense & intimate picture of his lover Jared French. Another observation of forbidden love is his matter of fact scene of gay domesticity (The Bath, 1951)
Giorgione is one of the masters of the Renaissance. We know curiously little about him. One picture, The Tempest (1506-8), defies a clear analysis. However I think it’s about spiritual love. And all the more beautiful for that.
John Singer Sargent depicted his forbidden love in a series of portraits & drawings of his partner Albert de Belleroche (1882-3). He kept one over his fireplace throughout his life.
Käthe Kollwitz is an artist who touches one to the core. Her pictures of lovers are deeply moving & urgent. However it is her depiction of a mother’s love that is triumphant! If I could only have one artist, I’d choose her.
Michelangelo, the most famous Renaissance sculptor, depicted his love for Tommaso dei Cavalieri in his Genius of Victory (1532-4). The young muse stands with his foot on the artist’s head. Amor Vincit Omnia?
Velázquez painted his Venus between (1647-51). We know nothing of who the model was or her relationship with the master. It is an astounding homage to the female form. Who was this woman? Whoever she was the artist painted her with love.
Watteau was the great French painter of love. His Pleasures of Love (1718-9) depicts his sensitive vision of an Arcadia peopled by those enjoying the interaction of pleasure.
Rubens painted a number of paintings about love. His most unusual was of George Villiers for his lover, the English King, in the 1620s. Here’s Ruben’s image of his 2nd wife Helena Fourment (1636-8) & his 1st Isabella Brant (c1609)
From Spain we have Goya. His drawings include a number of lovers. However it’s his El Sueño (c1800) that throbs with sensuality. Described as pornography by the Irish media when acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1969 it’s now considered one of their treasured works.
Suzanne Valadon, the French post-impressionist painter depicted Adam & Eve in 1901. Her approach to love had a certain (deserved) personal cynicism yet this work explores the subtle psychological forces between a couple in an unprecedented way.
Despite present day official homophobia, Russia has given us some of the most moving gay painters, including Konstantin Somov. Here’s his love infused image of a young man from 1936
Frida Kahlo presents us with The Love Embrace of the Universe (1949). Here she’s seen holding her lover Diego Rivera. However I think she’s far more herself when on her own. Maybe that’s true love, to love yourself?
Frans Hals captured the bloom of first love in his marriage portrait of Isaac Massa & Beatrix van der Laan (1622). Hals was one of the first major artists who included smiling in his work.
Here’s another special offer. I think these two go together so it would be a shame to break them up; Young Man (2020) & Look Within (2020). I’ll offer two for one at just €149/£135/$177 for the pair, including free shipping worldwide (save €149). Message me to buy.
