wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
Despite the title, the boy is not drawing but studying a sketchbook -- there's no sign of drawing implements. In front of him is a cast of the Christ Child from Michelangelo's statue of the Virgin and Child (Church of Our Lady, Bruges) and another book of sketches, but the drawing we see on the open page clearly does not represent the face of the cast. The artist reverses our normal expectations by suggesting that the cast is studying the young artist immersed in his book, rather than the other way around.

This picture is probably an early copy of a painting in the Louvre, Paris, attributed to Wallerant Vaillant (though the work has also been attributed to Jan Lievens). Vaillant, a portraitist who was born in Lille but died in Amsterdam, depicted young artists sketching casts several times.

Style: Baroque, Neoclassical
This little girl, who has not been identified, has been posed by the artist, and the kitten by the girl. A cat is sometimes included in portraits of children as a symbol of the wildness of nature intruding upon the innocence of childhood.

It is likely that this pastel is a portrait, although an idealised one, rather than a genre scene. Perronneau portrayed identified women and children holding pet animals during the later 1740s. Two closely related examples are his Portrait of Marie-Anne Huquier holding a Kitten (Musée du Louvre, Paris) of 1747 and his supposed portrait Mme Pinceloup de la Grange holding a Cat (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) of 1748.

Although it bears the artist's signature and the date 1745, some have questioned whether A Girl with a Kitten is indeed by Perronneau. The pigments in the pastels, the canvas and the paper are all consistent with a work produced in the eighteenth century. However, given that Perronneau had in 1734 won the first prize for drawing after the model at the Académie, it is difficult to explain the poor draughtsmanship of this work at this stage of his career. The face is drawn with the stump of the pastel and not with its point, as was usual for the artist; the picture lacks the usual white highlights found on the face in Perronneau’s other pastel portraits; there is no bone structure to the head or the chest and the anatomy is poorly drawn. The picture’s most obvious weakness is its blandness -- the sitter lacks the sense of real presence in a typical pastel portrait by Perronneau.

The signature on the portrait is dubious when compared to Perronneau’s signature on his other works, and the date would make this his earliest-known dated pastel. Indeed, but for the ‘signature’, this picture might never have been attributed to Perronneau, so untypical is it overall of his style. There are, however, some skilled passages consistent with his technique, and the signature is of the same date as the rest of the image. The various changes in the underdrawing all seem to be by the same artist, and there is no evidence of any reworking of the pastel by a later artist.

Despite the uncertainties about who made it, A Girl with a Kitten remains one of the most popular pastels in the National Gallery's collection.

Style: Baroque, Rococo
Emanuel de Witte is best known for his clear-lined, light-filled paintings of church interiors -- for example, The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, during a Sermon. But he had begun his career as a figure painter and after more than 20 years of painting churches he  -- on occasion -- painted portraits. This is one of them.

There are two reasons to assume that this is a portrait. Firstly, the woman on the left is presented in a very prominent way -- she fills much of that side of the painting and is turned towards us as she makes a confident, even imperious, gesture to the fishmonger. The impish little girl peering out at us from behind her skirts also has the air of a closely observed individual, rather than a generic character.

More importantly, there's documentary evidence --  records of a complicated legal dispute over four pictures -- which strongly suggests that this is a portrait of one of de Witte’s patrons, Adriana van Heusden, and her daughter. In 1658 de Witte moved into the Amsterdam house of a lawyer called Joris de Wijs, who was Adriana’s husband. In return for a salary, accommodation and board, de Witte agreed to give de Wijs all the paintings he made during the five years he lived in the house. One of these is recorded as a portrait of Adriana and her daughter at a fish market.

The records show that when de Witte moved out in 1663 he took this picture and three others with him, apparently in contravention of the agreement. After de Wijs had died, Adriana's new husband, Johannes van Heden, sued for their return; de Witte had already sold them to pay off debts, and did not immediately comply with the court order to return them. After further sales, intrigue and deception, the pictures were finally returned to Adriana and her husband. This picture must be the one mentioned in this dispute -- out of several fish market scenes painted by de Witte it's the only one to include a little girl. We can also date it between 1661, when the new Haarlemmersluis fish market opened in Amsterdam, and 1663, when de Witte left de Wijs's house.

The portrait is an informal one. Adriana hasn’t dressed up in her finest clothes, as you might expect for a woman of her wealth and social status when having her portrait painted; she's dressed as she might have been on a trip to the fish market. True, she wears a costly fur-trimmed jacket, but the skirt with an apron over it and the simple white headscarf are typical of what we see worn by woman in other paintings of such scenes.

The painting is also interesting in the way it uses striking perspectives -- a technique which de Witte had developed in his architectural pictures. The diagonals and upright lines created by the struts and supports of the fishmonger’s stall frame the two women with dramatic effect, and give the picture a strong sense of depth. This effect is enhanced by the wet slippery fish, complete with gills, roe and entrails, which dominate the foreground.

Style: Baroque
The upper paint layer of the draperies of this female saint has faded. The brown-ish yellow lines we can see are called sinopia -- these show the initial design or drawing of the fresco. Small traces of green-blue paint  -- some only visible through a microscope -- are probably a pigment known as azurite, revealing that her robes were originally blue. The Virgin Mary is usually shown wearing a blue mantle and the way in which she recoils, drawing her hand to her breast, and the fearful expression in her eyes, recalls images of the Virgin at the Annunciation, when she receives the frightening and unexpected news that she will bear the Son of God. Alternatively, she might be one of Jesus's female followers, mourning at The Crucifixion -- one of the scenes that survives in the chapter house of the convent church of San Francesco, Siena, where this fresco fragment came from.

Pietro Lorenzetti, with his brother Ambrogio, decorated several important religious and public buildings in Siena with frescoes. Apart from  A Group of Four Clares and A Crowned female Figure (Saint Elizabeth of Hungary?), other frescoes in the chapter house were The resurrected Christ and The Crucifixion, both painted by Pietro. His brother Ambrogio painted a further two: Pope Boniface receiving Louis of Toulouse as a Novice and The Martyrdom of the Franciscans. The cycle of images may also have included The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis -- the moment the saint, in prayer, received the wounds of Christ, caused by the nails of the Crucifixion.

The figure is framed by a stepped and curved outline, probably part of a barbed quatrefoil shape. Only part of it is visible, suggesting that the saint, like A Crowned female Figure (Saint Elizabeth of Hungary?), was part of a border consisting of figures placed within decorative shapes, surrounding a larger scene. The halo is raised slightly above the surface of the plaster and it has been carved with deep incisions, probably to make it visible from a height so it must have come from the upper part of the border. The quality of the painting is not quite as high as his fresco showing A Group of Four Clares but border figures like this were probably delegated to workshop assistants.

The fragment was purchased by the archaeologist, diplomat, MP and National Gallery trustee, Sir Austen Henry Layard. As a member of the Arundel Society, created to document and preserve Italian frescoes, he was interested in fresco as a medium. Layard claimed that he bought these fragments ‘from a man who had cut them out of the wall’ but he mistakenly thought they had come from the church of S. Agostino in Siena.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria, was the daughter of King Philip II of Spain. She is shown seated on a high-backed chair with what appears to be a red-carpeted staircase behind her. She is sumptuously dressed in black and gold, with a spectacularly large ruff round her neck as well as spiky lace cuffs. She looks out at us with a hint of a smile in her eyes and around her mouth, almost as if asking what we think of the fan spread out between her hands. On her lap is a white satin handkerchief, a very modern accessory in her day and, like the fan, very expensive.

In 1599, Isabella married her cousin Albert, Archduke of Austria. With him, she was made joint Sovereign of the Seventeen Provinces of the Spanish Netherlands by her father. She played no active part in politics while her husband was alive, but together they became collectors and patrons of the arts; in 1609, Rubens was made court painter. When Albert died in 1621, Isabella was confirmed as sovereign in her own right and took over the reins of government. She tried untiringly to bring an end to the fighting that broke out after the failure of a 12-year truce between Spain and the United Provinces. During the war, the Northern Provinces gained independence from Spanish rule, eventually becoming the Dutch Republic. In effect, this made Isabella ruler of the Southern Provinces (Flanders), still part of the Spanish empire.

The portrait is a pendant to one which shows Albert. Isabella seems smaller and further away than her husband does in his portrait, perhaps to stress her subordinate status as a wife (despite their joint sovereignty), but perhaps to allow room for her puffed hair and the tall headdress made of silk flowers and mounted on silver wire.

Rubens became a trusted adviser of Isabella and supported her throughout her sovereignty. When she died in 1633, she was described by her chaplain as ‘the wisest and most accomplished princess, making her a gentle sovereign one could obey without dislike’.

Style: Baroque
In the painting, the arduous journey of a laden wagon from farm to market is a town dweller's dream of life in the country. Jan Siberechts lived in the city of Antwerp and earned his living producing such scenes for an urban clientele. Drawing on his experience in the countryside around the city, he idealised what he had seen, portraying 'the peasant' as a noble, hard-working figure, showing little sign of the effects of labour in a country where the weather and other conditions could be harsh.

To achieve this, Siberechts repeated his engaging characters from picture to picture, chose bright, clear colours  and often enclosed his scenes with dense foliage, giving little or no sense of distance and blocking out the world. The strong, healthy animals move slowly and patiently -- going nowhere. The people in their neat and unbelievably clean clothing engage us, but not each other: the girl up to her knees in the river glances up at the wagon but no one acknowledges her. Many of Siberechts's paintings portray girls wading or plonked down on a rock, soaking their feet in a stream and lifting their skirts to show sturdy legs, unmindful of damp petticoats. He has shown this girl with her back to us so we can see the detail of her cap, divided at the bottom to allow her hair, parted into two plaits, to poke through and wind round the little black frill behind her head.

The old woman in the strange, conical straw hat smiles, perched among her fresh, crisp wares -- baskets of clean celery and turnips, enormous cabbages and a big brass jug of milk. But the line of her eyes, under their white eyebrows, is directed not at the girl close to her, who might be seen as speaking to her, but at someone or something out of the picture; the only contact with the outside world, it would seem. The boy riding the horse daydreams in his best red jacket, his flaxen hair unruffled by any effort. The reins idle in one hand, in the other is a flimsy twig, intended as a whip but put to little use. The horse's hooves splash in the stream, jogging along but in no hurry. Wild columbine or 'morning glory' tangle up through the branches behind them and overhead two magpies fly among the branches.

This is indeed an idyll, but what seems to have given Siberechts, and incidentally us, the most pleasure are the details and textures he has included: the folds in the old woman's collar tickled by the feathery leaves below; the sunlight on the girl's legs and the folds in her white petticoat; the glint on the cow's tough horn next to its fluffy tuft of hair. These are all part of the idyllic illusion but were, for the people living in the fast-changing cities of seventeenth-century Flanders, nostalgic and reassuring.

Style: Baroque
A portrait of unknown people -- like this one -- always prompts questions, but the picture itself lets us learn about a sitter, even if we don't know their identity. At this time in European art, very little was included in a portrait without a purpose. They sometimes flattered, but also gave information about the sitter -- their status, their likes and dislikes, their allegiances, their mood perhaps -- and often celebrated events like military victories, promotions, anniversaries or marriages.

In Caspar Netscher's painting, the hand resting gently on the little girl's shoulder suggests that the woman is most likely her mother. There is a faint likeness: the little girl still has the rounded cheeks of childhood, but the eyes and mouth of the two are similar. They wear the soft, relaxed fashions of the 1670s and 80s -- rich fabrics swathed around the body, with a little delicate white linen and lace to flatter pearly skin. The mother’s neckline is a little lower than the child’s, but is modest compared to portraits of more ostentatious women. They do wear pearls, however, which would have been natural. In the case of the mother’s necklace they’re perfectly round and beautifully matched, and therefore very costly.

Netscher was famous for his brilliant representation of rich fabrics, particularly the satin of both gowns here. These are perhaps dulled a little with age and dirt, and have lost their original sheen, but are still sumptuous. The pair are dressed in high fashion but it is restrained in design and colour, intended to show a refined taste, borne out by the dignified posture of the mother and the unusually plain hairstyle of the girl. Netscher worked in The Hague, the aristocratic centre of government of the Netherlands, so this would suggest the sitters are from an aristocratic family.

Although the painting has darkened it’s possible to make out an orange tree in the background. Mother and child both hold an orange and there are more on the mother’s lap. The ruling family of the Netherlands was the House of Orange and perhaps the sitters were their supporters.

Style: Baroque
Paintings depicting the interior of large stables were first made popular by Philips Wouwerman in Haarlem in the 1650s. They tend to depict day-to-day activity in large rural stables -- a gentleman horseman, surrounded by his servants. Van Calraet was working 30 to 40 years later in Dordrecht and drew on the work of both Wouwerman and Aelbert Cuyp, another animal specialist.

This picture has similarities with Wouwerman's The Interior of a Stable: the predominantly dark background full of figures and activity, hens pecking in the right foreground, an opening to the outside world, a white horse and a mounted horseman in the centre. However, van Calraet created a stronger contrast between light and dark, highlighting the white horse in a more dramatic way. And while the painting by Wouwerman shows a gentleman tipping a groom, van Calraet's shows a vignette of a mother with three young children, apparently receiving alms from the stable-master.

Style: Baroque
Smoke seems to mingle with the clouds in this dramatic scene of Gypsies round a fire against a background of distant mountains and closer hills. Strong women carry babies slung round them in shawls, and here and there a man's turban is visible. An old man tends the fire.

A woman with a baby on her back tells the fortune of a passing horseman -- he stands with his hand in hers. His horse stares out at us, its eyes large and soft compared with its owner's, who stares intently at the woman to hear his fate. Beside them a second rider sits with a rifle at the ready in case of trouble.

This is not a real scene -- these are Gypsies as imagined by the artist. Wouwerman's fictional and romanticised scenes of the rough, tough life of soldiers in battle, Gypsies and brigands -- like Cavalry making a Sortie from a Fort on a Hill -- were highly popular in his own time, and were eagerly collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Style: Baroque
Henri-Joseph Harpignies saw himself as a painter of real life. From the outset, he dissociated himself from his older contemporaries -- from the smooth, meticulous style of neo-classical artists such as Ingres and from the flamboyance of the Romantics like Delacroix. Yet in this tiny picture, made very early in his career, the silhouetted trees against a luminous sky, the reflections in the glowing water and the solitary figures walking away from us, have a certain romantic appeal.

The water is still, but the straight edge made by the flat stones and pebbles that jut into the stream suggests a waterfall down into a deeper valley. At first simply dark and almost monochrome, a close look reveals myriad greens and browns among the trees on the bank, their bushy tops breaking the skyline of the hill behind them. The white robe of one figure lights up the picture, while the misty blue robe and blonde hair of the other are hardly discernible in the shadows. The two together bring a touch of mystery to the image. Disproportionately small in scale, they also serve to accentuate the height and majesty of the tree that towers above them.

We don’t know where the scene is set. It may be imaginary, based on sketches Harpignies made when exploring the countryside he loved. He became an expert on trees, depicting them accurately and in detail, although the darkness of the painting makes the ones here difficult to identify. He painted many evening and moonlit scenes, perhaps always revealing his romantic side.

Although he was interested in depicting the real world, Harpignies never became a realist in the style of the Barbizon group of painters, with their gritty, often painful scenes of manual labour. His landscapes were more allied with the harmonious scenes of nature by his friend and fellow artist Corot. They were both inspired by the work of Claude and Poussin, the seventeenth-century classical artists of Rome.

Style: Realist
This small picture is painted on a copper plate. This was particularly popular as a support with the German artist Adam Elsheimer, whose love of dynamic draperies and bright colours clearly had an impact on the painter of this work.

The infant Christ is lowered gently to rest against a regal orb by Saint Christopher. According to legend, Christopher was a giant who wanted to become a Christian but found himself unable to pray or fast. A hermit (possibly the figure to the left here) told him to use his height to help travellers cross a deep river; a group of them wait on the opposite bank. One day he carried a small but improbably heavy child across the river. It was Christ, who told Christopher that by carrying him he had also been carrying the 'weight of the world'. He then told him to go and be baptised 'Christopher', meaning 'bearer of Christ'.

Style: Baroque
Aert van der Neer was a specialist in painting landscapes with distinctive lighting effects -- often under moonlight, or at the beginning or end of the day. The title given to this painting (probably in the eighteenth or nineteenth century) suggests that it's set in the evening, though the cold blues and yellows of the sky could equally well suggest dawn.

What really matters is how the artist has explored the way that the low light affects how we see the landscape. The brightest point is on the horizon, right in the centre of the painting. It backlights the whole scene, silhouetting the battleship anchored in the mouth of the estuary and casting the wood into deep shadow. It creates a long streak of silvery water across the middle ground and picks out a few delicate white highlights on the couple and the cattle in the foreground. All this enhances a sense of depth and distance, which is emphasised by the dark clouds sweeping across the brightening, or darkening, sky.

Style: Baroque
In this picture we see Esther, the Jewish heroine of the Old Testament, presenting herself to Ahasuerus, King of Persia, in an attempt to save the Jewish population of Persia, who he had condemned to death. In doing so, she was risking her life: approaching the King without his permission was punishable by death. The king's armed guards look ready to react on his command.

Ahasuerus points his golden sceptre towards Esther, a sign that she can speak, but she faints as he does so; her attendants rush to support her. Their interaction is described in the Book of Esther (5: 1--2), but the incident of Esther fainting only appears in apocryphal additions to the book (15: 7). Ahasuerus ultimately accepted Esther's plea, saving the Jewish community.

The figure at the lower right may be the king's advisor Haman, who had encouraged him to carry out the massacre. His spiteful and devious nature resulted in his ignominious end: he was executed. The blue of Haman's robe is echoed in Esther's dress, and their complementary poses, on either side of Ahasuerus, may allude to their competition for his favour.

Despite the complexity of the scene, the main figures stand out from the details in the background because of the deeper colours of their clothing and their more detailed finish. Ricci has emphasised the continued relevance of this story and of Esther's courage by combining imagery from different time periods: the biblical characters are given a backdrop of classical architecture, and Esther and Ahasuerus are dressed in eighteenth-century clothing. The foreground activity is framed by an elaborate red canopy and curtain, with a grand loggia (open-sided gallery or room) and an archway beyond, which create an illusion of depth. Painted around 1730/4, this picture shows that the sixteenth-century artist Veronese still had a huge influence on Venetian painting. Many of the same tropes, such as the pale backdrop and classical arches, are visible even in a small sketch like this -- compare it with Veronese's much larger Family of Darius before Alexander, which was produced around 160 years earlier.

The loose handling of the paint and the small scale suggest that this was a modello for a larger work, although no such finished painting is known. It was probably painted towards the end of Ricci's career and shortly before his death in 1734.

Style: Baroque, Rococo