wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
In the late 1890s a number of dance troupes from Eastern Europe were in Paris, where they performed at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and at other less famous venues, including the Brasserie des Martyrs in Montmartre, near Degas's home. The reputation of these performances was also enhanced by short black-and-white films made by the Lumière brothers, which Degas may have seen. It is almost certain that these visiting dancers, and those drawn by Degas, were Ukrainian, rather than Russian.

Degas may have been working on this large pastel in 1899, when he showed three pastels of dancers to Julie Manet, the daughter of Berthe Morisot, who visited his studio on 1 July. The drawing is on tracing paper, which allowed Degas to combine dancers in different arrangements and also to reverse them from sheet to sheet. The central dancer (whose face we see) is the reversed figure from an earlier charcoal and pastel drawing, also on tracing paper, at the Berwick Museum and Art Gallery.

You can see where Degas added a strip of paper to the bottom of the sheet while working on the drawing so he could include the lower leg of the dancer closest to us. This addition raised her from the ground and also allowed him to show the hem of her dress. Degas focused on the overall design of the picture and not on the individual identity of the dancers -- we only see one, broadly sketched, face. He uses bold outlines and shapes to convey dynamic movement.

The surface of the paper is heavily worked, as Degas applied the pastel thickly with repeated strokes to create highly layered areas made up of many rich hues. In her diary entry about her visit to Degas’s studio, Julie Manet records how he described these pastels as ‘orgies of colour'. The pitted surface -- a distinctive feature of his late pastel technique -- was caused by previous layers of wetted pastel forming small clumps of pigment under the fixative. As Degas applied more pastel, the surface became increasingly textured. Repeated use of fixative risked dulling the pastel, so he did not fix the final touches of pure colour, which you can see in the hair ribbons and in the red, yellow and blue flowers of the garlands. This further increased the picture’s fragility.

Wearing traditional folk costumes and stomping on the ground with their boots, these peasant dancers are very different from the classical ballerinas Degas had spent almost four decades drawing and painting. He also shows that the dance is performed outdoors, in a rural setting, not on stage. Classical ballet, which had its origins in the royal court, was based upon disciplined, graceful upward movement, but the emphatic gestures and movements of these earth-bound dancers recall more archaic rituals. The dozen or so pastels of Ukrainian dancers that Degas made show how even late in life he could take on new subjects and develop bold techniques.

Style: Impressionist, Realist
This painting combines an accurate view of Rome, on the left, with an imaginary ruin, on the right. The distant view is of the sixteenth-century church of Santa Trinità de' Monti, recognisable by its two clock towers. This is where Claude would be buried. Beside this is the convent of the Sacro Cuore. These buildings are now at the top of the Spanish Steps, which were built during the eighteenth century. Further to the right is the Palazzo Zuccari and on the horizon in the centre is the Quirinal Palace, the Pope's summer residence. The viewpoint may be from the top of Claude's house in Rome.

On the right is an entrance to a temple and a statue of Apollo, god of music, holding a lyre. The young man in the foreground may be giving alms in the form of coins to the peasant woman as a religious act of virtue. Or he could be paying for sex with the two young girls behind her, one of whom kneels with her hands crossed while the other reaches out to embrace a male companion. If this is a scene of prostitution, placing it in the shadow of a ruined pagan temple may have been intended as a deliberate symbolic contrast with the church bathed in sunlight on the opposite side of the picture. These kinds of figures do not appear in other works by Claude, and some commentators in the past have suggested that they may have been painted by another artist. However, the painted-out changes, or pentimenti, made to the position of the figures and background details suggest this was the work of one artist -- most likely Claude.

Signed and dated 1632, this is one of Claude's early works. The buildings are depicted in a sketchy style and without an understanding of how to combine intricate detail and perspective. The contrast between light and shade in the composition lacks subtlety: the background is shown in blazing sunlight whereas the foreground is almost in darkness. During this period, Claude was developing his own style and was influenced by other artists, such as Willem van Nieulandt II (1584--1635) who combines the real and imaginary in his landscapes; Agostino Tassi (1578--1644), known for his warm colouring, and Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1594--1667) for his light effects.

Style: Baroque, Academic
This painting is based on a pencil drawing in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Dated 28 November 1823, it was made on the last day of Constable's six-week stay at the home of Sir George Beaumont (1753--1827) and his family at Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. Beaumont played a crucial part in the creation of the National Gallery and made the first bequest of paintings in 1825.

Beaumont was a friend and great admirer of the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1812, 20 years after Reynolds's death, Beaumont erected a stone 'urn' dedicated to his memory in the grounds of Coleorton Hall. He planned to redesign the gardens to include other memorials dedicated to his friends and the people he revered. The poet William Wordsworth spent about a month at Coleorton in the summer of 1810 composing inscriptions for the memorials.

The memorial to Reynolds was to be situated at the end of an avenue of lime trees, recently planted near the Hall.  As Constable shows in his painting, busts of the great artists of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo and Raphael, were placed near the start of the lime avenue, each mounted on a tall tapering block of stone. In reality, they were not as close to Reynolds's memorial as Constable paints them.

Constable was staying with the Beaumonts to make copies of their landscape paintings by the seventeenth-century French painter, Claude. He spent some of his time sketching outdoors. In a letter to his friend, the Reverend John Fisher, Constable wrote: 'In the dark recesses of these gardens, and at the end of one of the walks, I saw an urn  [...] of Sir Joshua Reynolds -- & under it some beautifull verses, by Wordsworth.' He made a pencil and grey wash drawing of it in his sketchbook.

Ten years later, Constable began to turn the pencil drawing made on the spot at Coleorton into the oil painting, which he was to entitle Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He appears to have worked on the painting in early 1833. Three years later, Constable returned to the canvas, aiming to finish it in time for the Royal Academy exhibition of 1836.

Constable was unsure how best to represent the inscription on the memorial; a painter and fellow member of the Royal Academy, C.R. Leslie (1794--1859), advised him to make only the words 'REYNOLDS' legible and just to suggest the other lines. Constable's introduction of a stag in the picture gives a sense of the wildness of the setting, but a false sense of the memorial's size. In reality the stag would have been taller than the monument, but in the picture it is half the size.

The picture received a mixed reception at the Royal Academy exhibition. The Morning Chronicle's review was one of the most positive: 'The peculiar manner in which Mr Constable's pictures are painted makes them appear singular at first, but by choosing a proper distance for observing them, by degrees the effect seems to grow on us until we are astonished that we did not like them better before.'

This was the last painting that Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy. It did not find a buyer.

Style: Realist, Romantic, Georgian
Don Quixote, the hero of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, preoccupied Daumier throughout his career, particularly in his later years. Published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615, the novel quickly became a popular choice for French artists and illustrators. Daumier first submitted a painting of Don Quixote to the Paris Salon of 1850--51 and some 30 paintings and around 40 drawings relating to Cervantes’s novel survive.

Yet despite his fascination with the novel, Daumier rarely depicted its many incidental characters. Instead, he focused almost exclusively on Don Quixote himself and his loyal squire and companion, Sancho Panza. This painting probably depicts the moment when Don Quixote charges at a cloud of dust caused by flocks of sheep, after mistaking it for two armies. Daumier does not show the sheep as, in keeping with the novel, the significance of the dust cloud depends upon who is looking at it.

This picture -- an oil sketch on panel -- is of particular interest for the insights it provides into Daumier’s painting methods. Daumier worked primarily as a lithographer, producing caricatures and illustrations for satirical newspapers and journals, and his training as a graphic artist is evident here, where he effectively draws in paint. Daumier sketches a rough drawing and applies oil paint in thin, loosely brushed translucent washes. Broad areas of white primer and colour block out contrasting areas of light and shadow. Dark contours and silhouette provide definition and outline.

Daumier creates generalised impressions rather than providing detailed representations: the distinct personalities of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are suggested by body shape and movement rather than by facial expression or clothes and objects. He gives Don Quixote and Sancho Panza specific characteristics: Don Quixote’s tall, lean and angular physique is the opposite of Sancho Panza's short stocky figure. These attributes are echoed in their respective mounts. Don Quixote’s large white horse, Rocinante, is skinny and energetic, while Sancho Panza’s brown mule is squat and lethargic. Situated within the barren landscape of La Mancha in central Spain, the immobile Sancho Panza (typically drinking from a flagon) contrasts with Don Quixote, who gallops headlong towards the distant hills. As in several of the Don Quixote pictures, Daumier uses a diagonal axis, running right to left from the donkey’s neck and along Don Quixote’s lance and raised left arm, to create an effect of dynamic movement and spatial depth.

The contrasting personalities of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are full of comic possibilities, as Cervantes juxtaposes the tragi-comic qualities of Don Quixote's outmoded chivalry with the pragmatism of his companion. But the ageing Daumier, who had spent his professional career lampooning corruption and self-interest, may also have had a more personal identification with Don Quixote, seeing in him a fellow idealist battling to uphold his values.

Style: Realist, Romantic
Originally from Aix-en-Provence, François-Marius Granet studied with both Jean-Antoine Constantin and Jacques-Louis David. In 1802 he travelled to Rome with Comte Auguste de Forbin (1777 -1841) (later curator of the Louvre) for a brief visit; he returned soon after for a stay of 21 years, only returning to France in 1824. While in Rome he was taught by Simon Denis. Granet was particularly drawn to the textures, colours and forms of the city's architecture, and indeed earned money selling drawings of ancient monuments.

Here he has depicted a tightly packed cluster of houses, roofs and arches. Using dilute paint with a degree of transparency, he has created a homogenous surface of warm browns and greys, punctuated with darker windows and doors. The expressive brushstrokes in the thin paint lend a sense of wear and decay to the buildings. By contrast, the luminous sky is painted smoothly.

Style: Neoclassical
Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld was a member of the early generation of neo-classical landscapists. He was taught by Claude-Joseph Vernet, who had introduced oil sketching to the influential artist and teacher Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Bidauld was in Italy from 1785 to 1790, where he produced studies which are characteristically detailed and highly finished. This view, probably completed in the studio, is no exception.

Tivoli, lying to the north-east of Rome and famous for its waterfalls, was a favourite destination for painters. In Bidauld's study the whole of the left side is in deep shadow, the soft brushstrokes in dark greens, conveying a sense of damp mossy vegetation. On the right, in full sun, the foliage is meticulously delineated and the fall of sunlight on the leaves at the right and at the top is captured in minute touches of paint. The thunderous descent of the water is conveyed with fluid strokes of white.

Style: Neoclassical
A solitary tall pine tree rises from a steep mountain slope overlooking a deep valley. Many of its branches have been broken away or are damaged, leaving only the uppermost ones with foliage. A river flows in the valley below, its journey broken by waterfalls as it descends from the mountains. Small huts and fir trees can be seen on the grassy slopes of the valley bottom, which is flanked on either side by rocky cliffs. There is no mid-ground or middle distance; instead, we experience an abrupt shift in scale as our eyes switch from the tree, which is relatively close to us, to the distant valley and mountains. Although very small, the picture creates an effect of immense space.

The view is of Handeck, a hamlet in the Haslital valley in the Bernese Alps. The river below is the Aare, which flows north-west through the valley, forming the Handeck Falls, for which the area is well known. In this painting, we are looking south to south-west towards the Aare glaciers in the far distance with the Handeck Falls visible in the narrow pass just below them. The dark mountain on the left is most likely the Gerstenhörner, which lies to the east of the Grimsel Pass.

The Swiss artist Alexandre Calame was a frequent visitor to the Bernese Alps. His first visit was in the summer of 1835 and he returned often until the 1860s. The untamed, rugged beauty of Handeck especially appealed to him, and he painted numerous views of it, all facing south, including a number of pictures focusing on the waterfall itself. In this painting, however, it is the tree which dominates the scene with the Falls as a backdrop. Calame produced many studies of trees and often made single trees the principal feature in his Swiss scenes from the 1850s, paying meticulous attention to the distinctiveness of each type of foliage. Calame painted this tree’s needles with great precision using dark green, which he then overlayed with a lighter green for the branches closest to us.

Calame was interested in more than just accuracy, as trees also have a symbolic meaning for him -- a belief he shared with German artist  Caspar David Friedrich  and which is of central importance in Friedrich's  Winter Landscape. Although damaged by the forces of nature -- such as the darkening storm that appears to be gathering overhead -- this pine tree might be seen as a symbol of strength, and such human qualities as endurance in the face of adversity. For Calame, these anthropomorphic qualities also had religious overtones, as he viewed his work as 'homage ... to the Author of all beauty and truth'. He commented that '[The fir tree] before being uprooted rules over vast solitudes alone with God'.

In Calame’s allegorical vision of landscape -- whether it be the idealised landscape of The Lake of Thun or dramatic vistas such as this -- God's presence is everywhere. The solitary tree is a token of that presence, but perhaps also stands in for the lone traveller -- and us -- contemplating God's work.

Style: Barbizon
These three angels are painted in fresco, the technique of painting directly onto wet plaster. The haloes are gilded and the plaster has been indented using a decoratively shaped tool to create patterns in the gold. The artist has given the impression of a large crowd of angels by showing a number of overlapping haloes behind the heads of these three. The trio gaze in different directions, their heads all cast at slightly different angles; the painter has convincingly made it seem as if we are looking up towards the central angel by showing us the underside of his chin.

We don't know which church or monastery these angels once adorned, and from such a small fragment it is impossible to identify the subject of the scene of which they were part. We also aren't yet sure who produced the fresco, but suggestions have included Sassetta and Sano di Pietro, painters who both worked in the Tuscan city of Siena.

An undated letter stuck to the reverse of the fresco claims that it was acquired in Florence at the 'Convento delle Poverine, Via della Scala', which is confusing as the convent is in fact on the Via Tripoli in the city.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Ballet held an endless fascination for Degas, whose studies of dancers occupied him for more than fifty years. Over half of his oeuvre was dedicated to the subject which he explored in a variety of media, from oils and pastels to sculptures and drawings.Degas enjoyed capturing moments behind the scenes, often depicting dancers in rehearsal or at rest rather than on stage. Ballet Dancers is a typically informal portrayal of four ballerinas in the wings, relaxing during a moment’s repose. The work highlights the physical demands of the profession, offering us a snapshot into the reality of the dancers’ everyday life as opposed to the artifice of the performance.Dressed in vibrant orange and turquoise tutus, the dancers are placed along a diagonal line within an asymmetrical composition cropped at the lower right, reflecting the influence of Japanese prints. In the foreground, the first ballerina squats down, maybe to tend to a sore muscle or to adjust a ribbon. The dancer behind her, visibly exhausted, rests her head in one hand. Behind them, a third dancer stands naturally in fourth position but her weight is relaxed onto one hip. She holds a brightly coloured fan. A fourth ballerina leans against a wall, perhaps observing the action on stage. The long, dark hair of a fifth dancer is just visible in the background, in the centre of the composition.Ballet Dancers employs the complex pastel technique favoured by the artist from the 1880s in which he layered, blended and smudged the tones to create the effect of vivid colours. Although this seems to be a rapidly improvised pastel without preparatory drawing, such works were often the result of carefully designed composition. In Degas’s words, 'One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement’. Each of the figures in this composition is, therefore, derived from earlier preparatory studies of individual dancers which were then used by Degas as source material for a variety of finished pieces, combining the figures creatively together, as is the case here.Each dancer can also be recognised in a number of other works by the artist. For example, the figure leaning against the wall can be compared to Dancer of 1888 (The Burrell Collection, Glasgow), and the young woman standing next to her appears again in Dancer with a Fan of about 1890–5 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The pose of this second dancer with her hand resting on one hip may have derived in part from one of Degas’s sculptural works, Dancer at Rest, her Hands on her Hips, Right Leg Forward, which the artist found invaluable in his study of the female form.Signed at the bottom left corner, Ballet Dancers was initially acquired by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who spent his life supporting, collecting and promoting the work of the Impressionists.

Style: Impressionist, Realist
This view almost certainly dates from Charles Rémond's 1822–5 period in Italy. A landscape unfolds under a clear bright sky; a valley runs between overlapping hills, pale blue hills form a backdrop. Despite the luminous sky the colours are muted, the passage from foreground to misty distance carefully orchestrated.

The long flowing brushwork is barely visible in places, with passages of more expressive, yet still controlled work in the foreground. The bushes and grasses are rendered minutely, with small, individual strokes for every leaf or blade of grass. It has been suggested that the tightly constructed composition, coupled with the canvas support, could indicate a studio work rather than a pure plein-air (painted outdoors) study.

Style: Neoclassical
The Baths of Caracalla, Rome's second largest public baths, was a popular site for oil-sketching. Here the foreground is broadly worked, the grass flatly painted in a bright lemon green. By contrast the architecture is more sharply and intricately painted, with details in the dark red brickwork picked out, as in the archway at lower left. The ruined column is starkly defined against the sun-drenched sky, making for a highly dramatic view.

The glossy surface to the architecture combined with the high-keyed tonality has led to this sketch being attributed to Théodore Caruelle d'Aligny, a historical landscapist who made his debut at the Salon in 1822 with Daphnis and Chloe (now lost). From 1824 to 1827 he lived and worked in Italy, where he became friends with Jean-Baptiste- Camille Corot, who was in Italy between 1825 and 1828.

Style: Neoclassical
In 1788, one of George Augustus Wallis's many patrons, Lord Warwick, financed a trip to Italy. Around that year he arrived in Naples, where he stayed for a number of years, before moving to Rome in 1795. He was nicknamed 'le Poussin anglais' by his fellow English artists, and his future son-in-law, the neo-classical painter Gottlieb Schick (1776 -1812) described him as 'probably the foremost landscape painter in Rome'.

It is only since the late 1990s that the sketches made by Wallis in the Roman Campagna have come to light. This particular example is an essay in atmosphere. The countryside to the south of Rome is sombre and grey, a contrast to the sun-drenched landscape usually depicted in such studies. At the top, pale blue sky is glimpsed behind a bank of rolling grey clouds and an area of pink at the right hints at a sunset. But the chief subject is the driving rain, rendered in diagonal strokes of grey and increasing in intensity towards the left.

Style: Neoclassical, Georgian