wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
A peasant boy leans on a chipped stone block or sill and looks towards something – or someone – that makes him smile. This painting once had a companion picture, A Girl Raising her Veil (now in a private collection), with which it remained until 1806. The two compositions were clearly conceived together: the boy, leaning forward on his elbows, reveals his bare right shoulder while the girl, turning away but glancing back towards him, lifts her veil coyly and exposes her left shoulder. Their exchange is flirtatious, as if imitating more adult behaviour.

This is the type of picture for which Murillo is best known. With poverty becoming an ever-growing problem in seventeenth-century Seville, where the artist spent his entire career, Murillo specialised in painting beggar boys and street children with extraordinary humanity. The boy's expression and his relaxed pose show him to be in high spirits; apart from his ragged clothes there is nothing to suggest the harsh realities of poverty.

Although the boy here is very lifelike, this is not a portrait. It is a genre painting that provides a momentary glimpse of everyday life in Seville. The street children portrayed by Murillo were also the subject of popular picaresque novels; this genre, its name derived from the Spanish word for rogue or rascal (pícaro), focused on the rebellious adventures of a penniless character. The most well-known story was that of the anti-hero Lazarillo de Tormes, a young beggar who was always on the move, surviving on casual work or pickpocketing.

As well as looking at contemporary literary sources, Murillo may have turned to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings for inspiration in painting his scenes of everyday life. Murillo never actually left Spain but he would have seen these paintings (or engravings after them) in the homes of his patrons in Seville, some of whom were merchants who originated from northern Europe. In particular Nicolás Omazur, a wealthy Flemish silk merchant who had settled in Seville in 1669 and became one of Murillo's closest friends and patrons, probably encouraged and personally shared the artist's interest in painting everyday life.

This painting was made by Murillo late in his career, in about 1675--80, and demonstrates the artist's confidence in handling paint. Murillo suggests the form of the boy's earlobes and hands with quick, lively brushstrokes. The sketch-like appearance of the shadows and background contrasts with the thicker layers of paint in the clothing, especially the white shirt draped around the boy's shoulder.

Style: Baroque
Saint Peter fled Rome after Christ's crucifixion, scared that he too would be executed by the Romans; here, he stands in shock as Christ passes him on the road. When the saint asked Christ where he was going -- the question in this painting's title -- he replied that he was headed to Rome to be crucified again. Shamed, Peter turned back to face his own martyrdom, but asked to be crucified upside down so as to avoid comparison with Christ.

The subject is not a very common one, and this painting was almost certainly commissioned by or for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, whose name-saint was Peter.  Certainly it was in his collection by 1603. Aldobrandini was nephew to Pope Clement VIII, and one of the greatest patrons in early sixteenth-century Rome (he also commissioned The Vision of Saint Jerome and the Villa Aldobrandini frescoes). The Cardinal had been deeply impressed by Annibale's work on the Farnese Gallery -- for which see the Farnese Gallery cartoons -- and his personal secretary, Giovanni Battista Agucchi, knew Annibale well and may have been instrumental in the commission of this painting

Annibale had done a preparatory study (now in the Albertina, Vienna) for a version of the subject by his pupil Taconi, painted on the vaulted ceiling of the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome in 1600--01. In the drawing, Christ is fully clothed and Saint Peter kneeling. Annibale radically revised the design in this picture, rotating it to fit an upright panel, which had a dramatic effect on the composition. Christ, now nearly nude, strides vigorously towards us, pointing emphatically into our space. He turns his head to gaze at Saint Peter, who throws up his hands in astonishment.

The vertical lines of the trees and classical buildings on either side press the two figures closer together, intensifying the emotion of the glance they exchange. Annibale made changes during the course of painting, particularly to the figure of Peter. X-rays show that Peter was first depicted in profile, standing, but much closer to Christ. This was obviously felt to be too static and lacking in emotion, so the whole pose (except for the left foot) was changed, so that he now recoils dramatically from his startling vision.

The draperies, in primary colours of red, blue and yellow, glow against the cool greens and greys of the calm, classical landscape, which recedes into the distance. Daylight dawns above Saint Peter's head, underlining his visionary realisation that he must accept his own sacrifice.

In spite of the painting's relatively small dimensions -- it is less than a metre tall and around half a metre wide -- its effect is highly monumental. The sculptural forms are typical of Annibale's late style -- Christ's muscular torso barely shows any signs of his suffering during the Passion -- and clearly reveals the artist's study of Michelangelo, notably his sculpture of the Risen Christ in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, and of Raphael's tapestry cartoons, specifically The Charge of Peter (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

Style: Baroque, Academic
A brisk wind brings a small fleet of fishing pinks to shore, tossed and buffeted by the choppy waves. Here and there a fitful sun breaks through the fast moving clouds. It lights up the long curve of the wide bay and the high dunes, but there’s a sense of mistiness, suggesting a fine spray from the sea or soft sand blowing. Houses snuggle down in the shelter of the dunes, but the two spires of the ancient church strike upwards. Tough murrain grass sprouts through the sand and low, coarse-leaved shrubs blown flat by relentless wind hug the side of the nearby dune.

Already beached, two vessels stand on planks, ready to be lifted and carried out on the next tide. An unneeded anchor rusts in the wet sand beside them. One boat has its sails neatly stowed; on the other, the sail is drying in the wind. A man accompanied by a child chats to one of the fisherman, and beyond them, men and women peg nets out to dry on the long line of poles set into the sand. Dogs swim, play, tease the horses or bound down the sandy hillside.

A solitary man plods across the beach with a heavy fish basket on his back. He heads towards the village past a covered wagon that ploughs to a halt through a puddle left by the tide. It has the arms of Amsterdam on the back and a soberly dressed man, an official perhaps, prepares to be handed down from it by an attendant.  To one side of it, another attendant holds out his hat for coins from a man with a group of more elegantly dressed people chatting together at their ease.

This is Scheveningen, three miles from The Hague. At the time it was a small fishing village, but it was becoming, as the scene suggests, a resort for the wealthy and the bourgeoisie. These are not local lads wading up to their knees to throw sticks for their dog, but well-dressed young men out to play. Picturesque views of the coast and the people who worked there were very popular with collectors and others, but it would be the kind of people standing by the wagon who could afford them, not fishermen.

The picture was painted when Willem van de Velde the Younger was working with his father, Willem the Elder, and his younger brother Adriaen. Adriaen was largely a figure and landscape painter, and the two collaborated quite frequently. The covered wagon appears in several of Adriaen’s paintings, including Figures on the Coast at Scheveningen (Royal Collection). The view in this picture is by Willem the Younger but the wagon and figures are the work of his brother.

Style: Baroque
An angry light breaks through threatening clouds, illuminating a wave that beats up against the side of a galjoot, the small boat keeling over with the wind. An explosion of white spray looks almost as if it is reaching up to swallow the man hauling in the foresail. The blue and white flag at the masthead indicates that the boat is from Texel, a busy island city in North Holland; it may be a pilot going out to assist an incoming ship. Ahead is a huge warship, its pennant flying -- one in a fleet of Dutch naval vessels that disappear into the distance.

The storm scene was painted in the Amsterdam studio of Willem van de Velde the Elder by his son,  Willem the Younger. Such pictures may seem unlikely as decorative items but they were popular, perhaps because they were exciting. In this one there is also a touch of reassurance from the hint of blue in the sky and the sun on the sail of the galjoot.

Style: Baroque
The coat of arms on the wall at the right may stand for Marseilles or Toulon. The scenery may be based on that of Toulon. The picture has been ascribed to Charles-François de Lacroix, an artist who closely imitated Claude-Joseph Vernet.

Style: Rococo, Neoclassical
Two standing women and a seated dog are seen in what may be a park. The picture perfectly summarises the achievements of the new technique that Monticelli had developed by the mid-1870s. He applied his paint thickly, varying the strokes in both size and direction, and he also enriched his colour palette. The specific subject is often difficult to identify in these panels in which colour and content are merged together.

This painting was formerly in the collection of the Dutch artist and collector Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915). A portion of his collection, including this picture, was sold in New York in 1920, and entered the collection of Mr Harry Wearne. The painting was later presented to the Tate in 1939, together with another 11 works by Monticelli. This group of pictures was eventually transferred to the National Gallery in 1956.

Style: Impressionist
Caspar Netscher shows two delightful children, both busy. The woman's pencil guides the little girl as she stumbles through her reading, and the light from the window spills down on her. She's immaculately dressed, a spotless white fichu round her neck, and her ringlets are held in place with blue ribbons that are echoed round her puff sleeve -- the perfect child.

We don't know if it's the child's mother or a maid helping with the reading lesson, but the woman's posture isn't quite as genteel as might be expected in a household with elegantly dressed offspring and a costly Turkish carpet on the table. Perhaps that's all part of the joke. Whoever she is, the woman looks out at us, her hand on her knee as if she has just flopped it there with a sigh. The little girl is more intent on the task than she is.

Behind them a little boy, also flatteringly lit, kneels on the floor. At that time and until the early 1900s, boys wore skirts until they were five or six years old, when the wearing of breeches was celebrated as a rite of passage. Unlike his sister, the boy plays with a tiny dog. On the floor beside him are his discarded toys and a cheap broadsheet with coloured pictures -- no sign of his sister's serious reading matter. A discarded knucklebone, used in a game, lies beside it and, perhaps most important, a top. Overhead on the wall is a copy of Rubens's enormous painting, The Brazen Serpent. It told an Old Testament story of sin and retribution, but it is well hidden in the shadows and therefore unlikely to have any bearing on the scene below.

There may be a moral in the painting, though it was more likely to have been bought for amusement. In a popular emblem book of the time is a picture of a top with a hand over it, wielding a whip. The motto in the book reads: 'The further the rod from the backside, the lazier they grow in the service of God.' It doesn't appear that any whips have been wielded anywhere near the little boy's backside and his happy expression suggests they're unlikely to be so. The picture shows above all a charming scene, beautifully painted by Netscher's expert hand.

Style: Baroque
The sun catches the face of a sheep lying in the shade of a tree. Light filters down through the leaves on to its thick curly fleece, painted in exquisite detail by Karel Dujardin. The sheep bleats; another turns its head away, its long ears drooping. A ram tosses its curling horns -- perhaps there are midges under the tree -- but the donkey and other animals doze on regardless.

Tranquillity seems to settle over the picture, painted in so many shades of green, from the greyish mud in the foreground through the plants around the tree (some of which may have turned a bluish shade due to fading of the pigment) to the misty filigree of the tree itself and the parched yellowing grass of the distant hill.

The scene is one of pure imagination, adapted from sketches Dujardin made when he was in Rome. He went out to the surrounding countryside -- the Roman Campagna -- to gather material. On his return home he had a successful career as a painter of the idyllic Italianate landscapes that were so popular in the Netherlands. Other Dutch artists who had been in Rome did the same, but they peopled their pictures with figures from Roman mythology or, more often, with idealised versions of the Italian peasants they had seen at work -- ploughing rough ground, plodding up a mountainside on laden mules (like Nicolaes Berchem's A Man and a Youth ploughing with Oxen or Jan Both's Peasants with Mules and Oxen on a Track near a River).

Dujardin has added a quirkiness to his figures, giving them real humanity. The herdswoman, her forehead shining in the sun and her arm dropped at her side, has let her distaff and spindle fall on a convenient rock: the tedious business of spinning wool by hand is too much in the heat of the day. The little boy makes the dog sit up and beg but without the usual boisterous din of such a game. Finger to his lips, he has a thought for the sleeping woman. Dujardin has an eye for a quirky pose too: the dog on its haunches, the strange angle of the sheep’s leg and its open mouth -- no doubt accurately observed, but still seeming a little odd.

Although his themes are similar, Dujardin did differ from his Dutch contemporaries painting in the Italianate style. Like theirs, his Italian landscape is hilly, even mountainous, in the distance. There’s a ruined castle on the skyline, though the rest of the scene is earthy and realistic, from the dead tree to the cowpats beneath it. You might also find these in a view by Berchem or Both, but their skies are lit with a soft, golden glow that warms the landscape. Dujardin’s skies are silvery, bright and clear, the clouds light and moving. There’s a feeling that once the brief siesta is over, the spinning will begin again, the boy will be up and away with his dog and the animals will graze in the radiant sun.

Style: Baroque
In the 1620s Willem Duyster was one of a group of Amsterdam artists who pioneered guardroom scenes (koortegaard), which focused on soldiers merry-making while off duty. Such images, along with associated military scenes such as army camp paintings (legercamp), pictures of peasants’ distress when caught up in war (boerenverdriet), and militia company portraits, became very popular in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Duyster’s small painting, however, is unusual in that it shows violent action. A brawl has broken out among soldiers billeted in a barn over the distribution of booty. Stolen fabrics, glass and plate tumble across the table and lie on the ground as the fight flares up. One soldier is stabbed in the chest and others are on the point of firing their muskets. A sword fight has started and the figure on the right, looking out of the picture to draw the viewer into the scene, calmly lights the fuse of his pistol before joining the fray.

The Eighty Years War of 1568--1648, also known as the Dutch Revolt, fought between the northern Netherlands and Spain, meant that wandering bands of soldiers accompanied by their followers were a common sight at the time. They were not always seen as a dangerous presence but often feature in 'merry company' paintings depicting convivial gatherings enlivened by music, drink or the presence of women. Duyster’s picture shows a merry company gone wrong, as the men who were comrades in arms just minutes before turn those same arms on one another.

Duyster makes it clear, though, that this is not a real scene. There is nothing to tie the action to a particular incident and the soldiers are dressed with an elaborate splendour that has no place among the dirt, smoke and blood of the battlefield. Instead, the action resembles a scene from a play with the barn acting as the stage. Duyster was known for his skill in painting fabrics and his soldiers display it to the full: each is dressed in a costume of a different colour with the result that a rainbow of satins and silks ripples from one side of the painting to the other.

Duyster himself was no stranger to violence. In 1625 he became involved in a fight with his fellow guardroom painter Pieter Codde at a country-house party and was struck in the face with a tin pitcher. He knew how danger could flare up from seemingly friendly situations. This painting of artificial ferocity would have given his patrons a pleasurable thrill of fear while still allowing them to enjoy the artist’s skilful display of luxury.

Style: Baroque
Christ kneels in prayer on a grassy hillock dotted with flowers. He gazes up at an angel floating in the air before him, who presents him with a chalice containing the instruments of the Passion (Christ's torture and crucifixion).

To the right, in a walled garden, three apostles sleep, heads resting on their hands; we can see John the Evangelist's fair hair and Peter's grey beard and balding head. Behind them, a group of soldiers, led by Judas, peers furtively through an arched gateway.

This is the Agony in the Garden, as told in the Gospel of Mark (14: 32--43). At Gethsemane, Christ -- knowing that he has been betrayed and will die -- takes Peter, James and John away from the other apostles and asks them to watch while he prays. As he asks God to 'take away this cup from me', the apostles repeatedly fall asleep and fail to see the soldiers who have come to arrest Christ. His distress is plain: crystal tears fall from his eyes, and beads of sweat form on his brow as he contemplates his imminent crucifixion.

This setting, however, is not first-century Palestine -- it's a beautiful morning in northern Italy in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The sun is rising over the hills behind, lighting up the clouds in the clear blue sky and the upper leaves of the orange tree behind Christ. In the background the Last Supper is taking place in the open air on the terrace of a Renaissance house. Nearby, Christ and the three apostles make their way down a winding track to the garden, leaving the others behind. Renaissance artists often showed several episodes of a story in a single painting, as inThe Crucifixion: Central Panel or The Adoration of the Kings.

This small painting once formed part of a polyptych along with Christ carrying the Cross. They are the work of the Milanese painter Ambrogio Bergognone and probably date from 1501, the year inscribed on Christ carrying the Cross. At some point both panels were made into a triptych along with The Virgin and Child with Two Angels, which is perhaps by Ambrogio's brother Bernardino.

Style: High Renaissance
A rutted cart track leads straight into the middle of the picture. A group of figures are caught in a patch of sunlight while a cottage merges into the shadows. A frieze of trees stands out against a sunny glade and a cloudy sky beyond.

Many of Hobbema’s landscapes were composed around these specific elements. The vast majority were almost certainly not real views, but studio paintings designed to evoke the woodlands around Haarlem near his home town of Amsterdam. This painting is an archetypal example of his work. In fact, it seems to have been one of his favourite arrangements: three other versions of the same scene, with slight differences, have survived (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Mauritshuis, The Hague; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.).

This type of specialisation was typical of the time: most artists in seventeenth-century Holland worked in a particular genre. Hobbema had learnt to paint landscapes as an apprentice to Jacob van Ruisdael, who was the leading landscape artist of the time. But while his teacher’s work often captured the energy and drama of the natural world, Hobbema preferred an atmosphere of quiet reflection. There are subtle hints of death and decay -- in the fallen trunk and leafless branches we see on the left -- but the painting generally avoids troubling the viewer with worldly cares.

In fact, here Hobbema even seems to play down the economic role played by woodland at the time -- it was a valuable resource and a source of work and income for the people who lived there. What we see here is known as wood pasture, a landscape which supported livestock grazing as well as the harvesting of timber, which was the most flexible and important construction material of the time. Timber was also vital for firewood, fencing, charcoal and other uses -- for example, the birch trees we see in this painting were used for medicines, cosmetics and perfumes, while alder made scaffold poles and the soles of clogs.

But working life is hardly hinted at in this picture. There is some fencing, but no sign of domestic animals except a man with a dog. Other figures stand chatting or watching idly from the doorway. Instead, this is a picturesque, positive -- even idealised -- evocation of country life. And Hobbema subtly underlined that gentle, harmonious view of the world in the composition itself. The painting is full of curves and meanders; even the strong diagonals of the cottage roofline are softened by the surrounding foliage. There is balance too -- the canopy of the tallest tree is reflected by the shape of the cloud next to it, and the three figures in the foreground form a neat symmetrical group, right on the centre line of the painting.

Style: Baroque