wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The small quayside of El Arenal is now in the centre of Bilbao, a city in the Basque region of northern Spain, but was once used as a promenade and for unloading cargo from ships. The view is today dominated by buildings but Paret's picturesque scene takes in the elegant walkway along the river Nervión and the panorama of mountains beyond. The steep slopes of Mount Archanda (now known by its Basque name, Artxanda), the trees aligned along the waterfront and the sweeping curve of the river draw our eye towards the small town -- Bilbao, as it then was -- nestled in the valley. The building that appears at the point the river disappears is the convent of Saint Augustine, since demolished to make way for the present town hall.

Wealthy citizens and dock workers alike go about their daily activities. To the right, fashionably dressed ladies enjoy a leisurely walk accompanied by a young boy and his nursemaid; two small dogs jump playfully nearby. Behind this affluent group a number of labourers shift goods, while in the foreground other workers take a well-earned rest. A woman in a blue skirt stands out among them: she chats flirtatiously, holding up a dainty glass while balancing a piece of luggage on her head.

The artist's refined painting technique can be appreciated in the careful brushstrokes, delicate colouring and subtle variations in light and shade that contribute to this painting's luminous, hazy atmosphere. The picture reflects the prevailing influence of the French Rococo across Europe in the late eighteenth century; Paret was considered its leading advocate in Spain.

In 1775, Paret was banished from Madrid for his involvement in a scandal concerning his patron, Don Luis de Borbón, brother of King Charles III of Spain. First going to Puerto Rico, he then settled in Bilbao, and it was during his exile there that he painted a series of views depicting ports in northern Spain for the Prince of Asturias, King Charles III's son and the future Charles IV. They were possibly commissioned with the aim of bringing Paret's exile to an end. Six other views from the series are known to survive. These show the ports of Bermeo (Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao), Portugalete (Museo Cerralbo, Madrid), two views of Fuenterrabía (Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen), San Sebastián and Pasajes (both Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid). The earliest work is that of Bermeo, which is painted on copper and is dated 1783. The series was completed in 1786 and once decorated the rooms of the so-called Casita del Príncipe ('House of the Prince') in the Escorial in Madrid, but was dispersed during the French invasion in the early nineteenth century.

Paret may have drawn inspiration from Claude-Joseph Vernet's series of French port scenes commissioned by King Louis XV in 1752, which he may have known through engravings.

Style: Neoclassical
Under a spreading tree in the left foreground a man and a woman stand among piles of logs, branches and tree trunks. The man is sawing, while the woman reaches up into the tree itself, a gesture frequently depicted by Corot, and also seen in his The Leaning Tree Trunk. A stream  (the Auxois) winds its way from behind the foreground boulder through the gully on the left-hand side to the hill beyond. A young girl in the background is sitting looking down into the water. The sunlight is coming from the right background.  The seated girl and the logs under the tree are all strongly highlighted in shades of cream. The hill, directly against this light, appears misty and green, with the houses and trees dissolving in the radiance. The misty atmosphere is also heightened by Corot’s use of ‘coloured greys’, in this case a grey with a hint of lavender blue, and made up of black, white, blue and vermilion pigments.

The scene is set in Lormes, the principal town in the area of the Morvan, western Burgundy, where many of its inhabitants earned their living by tree felling. The mill quarter of the town is depicted, and the tall building glimpsed on the left is one of two imposing houses which still stand today. Corot’s father’s family came from this region, and it was one which Corot himself frequently visited. During three stays in 1841, 1842 and 1844 he painted around 15 pictures, many distinguished by the originality of their composition, with such features as high horizons and exceptional light effects, as can be seen here.

Corot drew some elements of the composition before beginning to paint. In places a brown underpaint is visible, such as to the left of the tree, but in general the paint is smoothly and evenly applied. As was his customary habit, Corot painted the sky after the landscape itself, bringing it around the central tree and the houses on the right and left. He subsequently added further branches to the tree in a distinct dark brown paint with silver for the foliage.

Style: Barbizon
This oil sketch has long been associated with a finished painting known as the Allegory of Louis XIV, King of France (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). The two share many key elements to do with their figures and mythology, though the St Petersburg painting is much more polished in its execution.

Minerva, goddess of wisdom and warfare, is depicted in both paintings. In this sketch, she is seated at the left on the back of a lion, whose snarl is tamed by the pacifying gesture of her hand. She wears a helmet topped with her symbol of a golden owl and points with a commanding gesture to a shield held up by putti. Next to Minerva is an aged, bearded man -- he is a personification of Time, identifiable by the scythe and hourglass lying beside him. He bends forward under the weight of a book on his back, in which the winged figure of Fame (or History) is about to write.

The key difference between the two paintings lies in the shield to which Minerva points. In the St Petersburg picture, the shield has been filled with an inscription and a portrait likeness. Today it shows the portrait of Empress Catherine the Great, but it was originally painted in honour of the French king Louis XIV, who was presented with the finished picture by Cardinal Gualtieri, the pope's representative in France. Louis' likeness was covered by Catherine's when the painting was taken from Paris to Russia in the eighteenth century. In the National Gallery's painting, the shield bears neither a portrait nor an inscription.

Both paintings are allegories, and the person whose likeness appeared in the shield would be associated with the qualities of the figures in the painting: filled with Minerva's wisdom, they would merit a place in the history books. An allegory like this was highly adaptable, and several variations on the Hermitage composition exist (not all of them are by Solimena himself).

The sketch was once thought to be an oil study for the St Petersburg painting, but it is more likely that it acted as a ricordo -- a record of Solimena's composition that he kept in his studio, which could be shown to prospective patrons who could fill in the shield as they saw fit.

Style: Baroque, Academic
The sun has just set behind the hill in the distance, and in the remaining light of day a man stands in a boat on the river. He is the only figure in the scene, although some details, such as the boats pulled up on to the riverbank and the ship visible in the distance, suggest that there had been bustle and activity earlier in the day. The location of this tranquil scene has not been identified, although it has previously been referred to as a view of the Seine.

The artist, Johan Barthold Jongkind, has used a reduced colour palette of brown, blue and grey tones, which he highlighted with warm yellow and red tones in the clouds. He was interested in the play between light and colour, which he has skilfully harmonised with the few colours he used. He has created a luminosity in this picture that blends the sky into the water, emphasised by its reflection on the surface. Jongkind was economical in his painting technique: in just a few brushstrokes he was able to create a sense of the mood, season and time of day. Areas of the composition have been covered with thick layers of paint (impasto), which is especially noticeable in the reflection of the sun in the river. There is further impasto in the sky, closest to where the sun has just set, emphasising the intensity of the light. In contrast, other areas have been thinly painted, especially the landscape in the background.

Few details are defined by the artist, including the features of the man on the river and the boats on the bank. This spontaneous,​ naturalistic style illustrates why Jongkind is considered one of the precursors to the Impressionist movement and why his work influenced the young Impressionists. The likes of Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley became familiar with Jongkind and his work when he moved to Paris from his native Holland and remained there for the majority of his working life. Jongkind’s integration into the early development of the Impressionistic style meant a step away from the influences of his early training. An example of this is the tranquillity of this scene, which contrasts with the stormy, dramatic seascapes depicted by Eugène Isabey, Jongkind's first teacher, and shows how significantly Jongkind parted from his original influences.

Style: Impressionist
In a gloomy barn a winnower holds a wide, shallow basket with both hands against his thighs, tilted slightly downwards. Out of its far side rises a cloud of golden chaff. He wears open-backed clogs stuffed with straw, pieces of blue cloth tied over his knees and a red handkerchief tied over his hair. The basket is a special winnowing fan, with no lip at the front, so that with skilful shaking the chaff could be worked to the front and tipped over the edge, leaving the grain behind. Winnowers were considered expert labourers.

Millet may have started this painting, one of his first to treat the theme of peasant life, as early as the end of 1846. He exhibited it at the Salon of 1848, the year of the revolution that led to the downfall of King Louis-Philippe and the establishment of the Second Republic. One of the factors leading up the revolution was rural distress, including bad harvests, and many commentators discern a political angle in the painting, or at least sympathy on the part of the artist towards agricultural workers. It has been suggested, for example, that the lone figure has hired himself out to earn money to help support his family.

On the whole the critics reacted favourably to the painting’s exhibition at the Salon, although Théophile Gautier was critical of Millet’s handling; ‘He trowels onto his dishcloth canvas, using no oil or turps, great masonries of colour, paint so dry no varnish could quench its thirst. Nothing could be more rugged, ferocious, bristling and crude’. One of the reasons for the thick application of paint is undoubtedly the fact that Millet was painting on top of another picture. At this stage of his career, with success still in the future, he would often reuse his canvases, painting on top of existing compositions and even cutting canvases up. This happened with his Saint Jerome tempted, which was rejected from the Salon of 1846. He cut the canvas into two pieces, using the larger section for his Oedipus Cut Down from the Tree (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), which he exhibited at the Salon of 1847.

Underneath The Winnower is a painting of a sequence of limbs, including one, or possibly two naked legs, and a larger forearm, bare wrist and clenched left hand. It has not been possible to identify these, or link them with certainty to existing works by Millet. It is most likely that they relate in some way to académies, painted studies of naked figures carried out by art students as part of their training. The Winnower was bought by the newly appointed Minister of the Interior in the provisional Republican government, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin. It was later in the collection of the American artist Robert Loftin Newman. For many years it was presumed destroyed, and only reappeared near New York in the 1970s.

Style: Barbizon
In 1842 Ingres completed a three-quarter-length portrait of the Duc d’Orléans (1810--1842), the heir to the French throne. The Duke had personally asked Ingres to paint the portrait as he admired Ingres's work and had commissioned him in 1834 to paint Antiochus and Stratonice (Musée Condé, Chantilly) and in 1839 had bought Oedipus and the Sphinx (Louvre, Paris), a later version of which is also in the National Gallery. The portrait met with immediate success when exhibited. It shows the elegant Duke in a regal pose with his bicorne hat placed in the crook of his right arm. He wears his lieutenant general's uniform, complete with sword and military decorations, including his Legion of Honour. The setting is, however, a civilian one: he stands in his salon at the Palais des Tuileries, whose furnishings are filled with royal symbolism. The painting is still owned by the Orléans family.

Just three months after the portrait was finished, the Duke was killed in a carriage accident. As a hugely popular celebrity, his untimely death led to widespread public grief. Ingres himself wrote to a friend stating, 'I cry continuously and remain inconsolable'; he even made preliminary sketches for an allegory of the death of the prince. King Louis Philippe, instructed Ingres to make a copy of the portrait for the memorial chapel to be built in the Duke’s honour. The painting is now at Versailles. A second copy (also at Versailles)  was requested by the Minister of the Interior. Produced under Ingres’s supervision, it was intended  to be the model for future copies. This version replaced the original palace interior with a landscape setting. In addition to engravings, around 20 painted versions of the portrait have been identified. These range from full portraits to busts only and were priced accordingly. According to Ingres's account book, he only painted five copies himself. In order to meet demand, copies were also made by students from his studio or by other artists.

Despite suggestions that this painting of the Duke's head -- with its distinctive oval shape and high neck -- and shoulders may be a preparatory study for the 1842 portrait, it is almost certainly a later copy. The lack of detailed finish and the unusually pale, even ghostly, complexion are unlike the original portrait. Nor is it an exact copy: the Duke is wrapped in a cloak, which covers the gold epaulettes and military decorations on display in the original. However, adding the cloak does give greater focus to the face and also creates a more dashing, even romantic, image of the dead prince. Although it is unclear to what extent Ingres himself worked on it, his signature and the fact the portrait is a variation of the original, rather than just a copy, would suggest he had some involvement with it.

Within six years of the Duke's death, his father King Louis Philippe fell from power following the collapse of the July Monarchy and the proclamation in February 1848 of the Second Republic.

Style: Neoclassical
The two little girls in this unfinished portrait are Mary and Margaret, Gainsborough's daughters by his wife Margaret Burr, and their only children to survive infancy. Both were born while Gainsborough was living and working in Sudbury in Suffolk, his own birthplace. Mary was baptised on 3 February 1750 and Margaret on 22 August 1751 -- they were probably only 18 months apart in age.

Mary and Margaret are running hand-in-hand through a dark landscape in pursuit of a cabbage white butterfly, which has landed momentarily on a tall thistle. Margaret reaches out her hand for the butterfly, while Mary clutches her looped-up muslin apron like a net. The children's attempt to catch the elusive butterfly may be intended to suggest the fleeting nature of childhood. The wood in Gainsborough's picture is dark and sombre.

The Painter's Daughters chasing a Butterfly is likely to have been painted in about 1756 while the family was living in Ipswich. Mary seems to be about six years old, and Margaret about four or five. The garden of the house Gainsborough rented adjoined that of a much larger house, occupied by his friend Revd Robert Hingeston, who was Master of Ipswich School. On 20 October 1759, before leaving Ipswich for Bath, Gainsborough put an advertisement in the local newspaper listing all of his household goods, some pictures and landscape drawings for sale. Unless this painting of his daughters was a gift from Gainsborough, it is likely that Hingeston bought the picture of the two little girls he must often have seen playing in their garden at this sale.

Before this portrait, Gainsborough had probably never tried painting two full-length and almost life-sized figures. His earlier figures portrayed in the open air such as Mr and Mrs Andrews are quite small in scale and somewhat doll like. His daughters by contrast are shown much larger and in bold, entirely natural attitudes. Painting his own children allowed Gainsborough the freedom to experiment with handling paint, which gives this portrait its remarkable spontaneity and freshness. The pinkish-brown ground is left clearly showing through Margaret's dress, her apron and her outstretched foot, while thick streaks of white suggest the movement of the fabric in the sunlight. The girls' faces are highly finished, but elsewhere Gainsborough's brushwork is loose and expressive.

Gainsborough is known to have painted six double portraits of his daughters, as well as separate portraits of each of them, between about 1756 and 1770. When Gainsborough painted the girls together he always showed them fondly holding hands, or protecting one another with an arm or half-embrace, as in The Painter's Daughters with a Cat.

Gainsborough’s fifth double portrait of his daughters as students of drawing (Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts) reveals his hope they could be trained to draw well enough to earn money, but no work by either daughter is now known. After a brief unhappy marriage in 1780, Mary returned to her parents’ house. In later life she and Margaret, who never married, would live together. By this point Mary was suffering from severe mental illness.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical, Georgian
The Christ Child looks up at the Virgin Mary, raising the index finger of his right hand as though he is preaching -- even though he is still just an infant. The gesture refers to his divine authority and his future teaching ministry.

Both of the holy figures have fleshy but well defined features, characteristic of Florentine painting in this period (look at, for example, The Virgin and Child with Two Angels by Verrocchio and Lorenzo di Credi). Drawing was important in Florentine art in the Renaissance, and it was key to achieving accuracy in the depiction of the facial features even when the head -- like that of Christ's here -- is shown upturned, for example. Analysis of this picture using infrared light reveals Ghirlandaio's underdrawing in carbon black, showing how he worked out the design of the Virgin's headdress and mantle.

The folds of the Virgin's red dress are broad and stiff, as though it is carved from stone, and the solidity of Christ's chubby body reinforces the three-dimensionality of the holy figures, continuing a tradition which was important in Florentine painting, intended to give the sense of the figures' real presence before us. The bold colours of the striped textile upon which Christ stands draw our attention to the foreground, while the delicately painted background with its hazy outlines appears as though it is far off in the distance. The picture, made for private worship at home, provided not only a focus for prayer but also a fictive window into a beautiful landscape.

Renaissance panel paintings were made up of individual lengths of wood which were joined together.  Here, the artist has used a wide central panel flanked by two narrower ones, ensuring that any movement between the joins would not disrupt the paint of the Virgin's face.  The top of the painting was originally rounded, but it was cut down and transformed into a rectangular image before it joined the National Gallery's collection. The current arched top was added to recreate the effect of the original design -- the join remains visible to reveal this intervention. The Virgin's cloak has a greenish-blue tone because the pigment, azurite, has changed over time; it would have originally appeared more blue. The sky is painted with the expensive pigment called ultramarine, made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli.

Once thought to have been produced by Ghirlandaio's workshop, after cleaning it became apparent that the methods used and the quality of the painting were so similar to pictures by Ghirlandaio dating from the 1480s that it must be a work of his own hands.

Style: Early Renaissance
This painting once formed the outer face of one of the shutters of a multi-panelled altarpiece made by Cranach in 1506, shortly after he was appointed court painter to the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich the Wise, and would have been visible when the shutters were closed. It has since been separated from the front of the shutter and detached from the altarpiece's central panel.

Saint Genevieve became a nun at fifteen. She is the patron saint of Paris because it is believed her prayers diverted Attila the Hun away from the city and towards Orléans, where he was defeated. Later, when Paris was besieged by Childeric I, she acted as an intermediary between residents and besiegers, helping to collect food and convincing Childeric to release his prisoners. Here, she holds the candle that miraculously relit after being blown out by the devil while she was praying one night. The pendant around her neck displays the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and omega, to symbolise Christ. On her gold bodice are the letters 'GSE'.

Saint Apollonia lived in Alexandria, around AD 200. She was one of a group of virgin martyrs who were brutally tortured for their Christian faith. During her torture, Apollonia’s teeth were pulled out with pliers before she was burned to death. The pliers she holds clasp a bloody tooth, and an image of the pliers is also depicted upon the pendant on her necklace.

The altarpiece was very likely made for the chapel of the electors at Wittenberg castle. The martyrdom of Saint Catherine is depicted on its central panel, with Electors Friedrich the Wise and, possibly, Johann the Steadfast included as witnesses. A group of three female saints are shown on each of the inner faces of the shutters.

Style: High Renaissance