wrmthorne/National_Gallery_style_classification huggingface dataset:
The high viewpoint in this painting opens up the prospect of the vast distance, heightening its very real feeling of terror -- yet the viewpoint also places us at a safe distance from the scene, without it losing its hold. The chaos of the overturned coach, the rearing horse and the bodies flailing about in the snow is matched only by the fear of the empty, impassive expanse of forest from which no help will come. The oxen hitched up to help the two horses make no progress in spite of the whip of their rider, and one of the horses rolls helpless in the snow, watched from the coach by an anxious passenger.

The trees of the forest are stark and frozen; the few abandoned chalets lay half buried, made ghostly by the frosty light. Overhead the clouds darken and thicken; more snow and yet more snow is on its way. The deep ravine that has caused the disaster is bounded in the foreground by huge, sharp rocks that glisten under a coating of fresh, crisp snow.

The painting was originally entitled Naufrage dans le Neige, or Shipwreck in the Snow. It is said to have been based on a real accident that Courbet witnessed during a hunting expedition in the Livier Forest in the Haut Jura, an area in the east of France. The forest is not far from Ornans, where the artist was born and to which he often returned. Courbet's own life was stormy and sometimes catastrophic, since his stubborn insistence on the painting of reality, however disturbing, was greeted by public and critics with divided enthusiasm. At times he was very successful, but he always caused outrage in some quarters, with paintings such as Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine and Burial at Ornans (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). But his land and seascapes and his scenes in the snow were always popular because of their colour and atmosphere, their immediacy and truth to life.

Courbet's use of the palette knife in preference to, but not entirely replacing, brushes wasn’t just a question of his wish to create heavy, descriptive impasto. It was a way of showing his disdain for the smooth surfaces of the work of contemporary academic artists, such as the neo-classical painter Ingres in his Oedipus and the Sphinx. The Diligence in the Snow reveals Courbet painting at his most vivid and energetic. White paint for the rocks and snow is heaped on, smoothed or scraped back with a palette knife; the forest is depicted with a dry brush drawn through a layer of black paint on white. He painted several snow scenes and became an acknowledged master of the genre, capturing the light and brilliance of a landscape under snow. They all give a palpable feeling of icy cold, although not, perhaps, the feeling of human powerlessness against the strength and implacability of nature that this one carries.

Style: Barbizon
Saint Francis of Assisi died on 4 October 1226, surrounded by his friars at the chapel of the Portiuncula, outside Assisi. Rather than in a tiny chapel, here the saint lies on a bier in front of the altar of a large pink and blue church. At his feet a bishop reads the funeral service from a book held up by a young acolyte. On the left stands a young deacon holding a staff with a cross and a banner. One friar turns away and covers his face in grief; others hold long candles, with one lighting his from his neighbour's flame. A small boy peers around the friar to see the saint's body.

This is the last in a series of eight scenes of the life of Saint Francis, which were depicted on the back of a very large, complex altarpiece painted by Sassetta for the Franciscan church in the Tuscan town of Borgo San Sepolcro. The paintings on the back of the altarpiece were arranged in pairs; this one would have been in the bottom row on the right-hand side, next to the Mystic Marriage (Musée Condé, Chantilly).

A lady kneels in the foreground, pressing the dead man's hand to her face. This is Iacopa dei Settesoli, a Roman matron and close friend of Saint Francis. When he felt death approaching, Francis asked for a letter to be written to her, asking -- among other things -- for her to bring his favourite cakes, but she miraculously arrived before the missive was sent and was present at his deathbed. She later bore witness to the stigmata (the wounds Christ received at the Crucifixion, which Francis also miraculously experienced). Behind the body, the doubting knight Jeronimo leans over and opens the slit in Francis's habit to reveal the wound in his side.

Here as elsewhere Sassetta has departed from the scripta, the written instructions given to him by the friars, which had simply asked for the saint's death. He also painted the verification of the stigmata, a change perhaps prompted by a desire to portray Francis as a second Christ by emphasising the stigmata. By the fifteenth century, however, the two were commonly conflated into a single scene.

Details of this painting suggest it was originally planned to include a standard element of Saint Francis's death: the vision of the friar who saw the saint's soul carried up to heaven. Unused incised lines for the architecture suggest that the vault was originally intended to be lower down, and indeed the friar on the left is gazing upwards, as if looking at something above him which is not there.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
Saint Francis of Assisi, eager to defend his faith through martyrdom, went to Syria to preach to its Muslim population around 1219, at the time of the Fifth Crusade (one of a series of invasions of Muslim countries by Christian armies attempting to recapture the Holy Land). He and his companion, Brother Illuminatio, were captured and taken before al Malik al Kamil, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, who was defending Damietta from the Christian forces. According to the Legenda Maior, Francis's official biography, he attempted to convert the Sultan to Christianity by offering to go through fire for this faith. The Sultan politely declined his offer and sent him back to the Christian army.

The Sultan, in a white turban and with fair hair, sits on a raised throne under a green and pink arcade. In the centre, Francis makes the sign of the Cross and prepares to step into the curling flames. Brother Illuminatio looks on, along with various members of the Sultan's court, some in turbans (perhaps the imams who had refused the saint's challenge). Through an arched doorway at the back of the building we can see a barren wilderness with rocky hills, one topped with towers.

This painting comes from the San Sepolcro Altarpiece, a large and complex polyptych painted by Sassetta for the Franciscans of Borgo San Sepolcro. The back showed Saint Francis in Glory (Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano) surrounded by eight episodes from his life, seven of which are in our collection. This panel was in the top row, on the right-hand side, next to The Wolf of Gubbio. The landscape in this panel continued from that painting: the two stories were together treated as examples of Francis's preaching and peacemaking by the influential Franciscan writer Bartolomeo da Pisa, whose writings inform various aspects of the altarpiece's iconography.

Although Francis did not actually walk through the flames, the scripta, the written instructions which the friars gave the artist, told Sassetta to show 'when he [Francis] appeared before the Sultan and entered the fire'. As elsewhere in the San Sepolcro Altarpiece, the artist has used large amounts of gold and silver, some of which is badly worn: the picture would originally have been brighter and shinier. The swirling flames were originally painted in vermillion pigment over gold; the exposed gilding was stippled with a metal punch to give a sense of the movement of a flickering fire. The Sultan's tunic was originally white over gold -- the pattern was scratched into the white pigment to reveal the gold beneath (a technique known as sgraffito) -- while the costume of the figure with a sword on the right was silver with a red lake glaze. His sword and belt are blue over silver, which has darkened, as has the robe of the standing figure with the pink turban.

Style: Gothic, Early Renaissance
This painting of Saint Sebastian was the central panel of an altarpiece commissioned by the foreign students of Pavia University for their chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, one of the most important churches in Pavia. Founded in 1361, the university attracted many students from across the Alps, especially France.

On 29 September 1505, the students commissioned the Pavian woodcarver Giovanni Formenti to make a 'magnificent wooden altarpiece'. On 15 June 1506, they signed a contract with Bernardino Zaganelli for the painted elements of the altarpiece. Although Bernardino came from near Ferrara, he had established himself in Pavia and the altarpiece followed the local style. The dominant influence on Bernardino’s Saint Sebastian was the work of Perugino, especially his altarpiece in the nearby Certosa (monastery complex).

According to legend, Saint Sebastian was a captain of the Praetorian Guard, shot with arrows when it was discovered that he was Christian. He survived but was later stoned to death. He became a saint particularly invoked against the plague. He was especially revered in Pavia as the plague that afflicted the city around AD 680 apparently ceased after Bishop Damianus obtained a relic of the saint from Rome and erected an altar dedicated to him in S. Pietro ad Vincula, Pavia. This miracle was retold in the Golden Legend, and was a familiar example of the saint’s protective powers for Renaissance worshippers.

Saint Sebastian stands pierced with arrows and tied to a column made of the pinkish Verona marble local to Pavia. He lifts his tearful eyes to heaven as his executioners, many of them mounted, proceed through the rocky landscape to a fortress. A river winds towards the towers, spires and stepped gables of a pale stone city. The distant blue mountains almost match the colour of the sky high above. Bernardino has signed the painting with an illusionistic trick: his name is written on a cartellino, a piece of paper ‘attached’ to the base of the column with a blob of red wax which shows through the paper.

The altarpiece was a polyptych with several panels. The panels either side of Saint Sebastian represented Saint Nicholas of Bari and Saint Catherine (both now in a private collection) and the three panels of the upper tier, now untraced, depicted the dead Christ with the angel of the Annunciation on one side and the Virgin Mary on the other.

A tablet in the chapel of Saint Sebastian recorded that it was dedicated to Almighty God and Saint Sebastian by foreign students in October 1506 and that the altarpiece was by Bernardino. On 19 January 1520 the students entered into a contract with the friars of the Carmine whereby they made an annual donation of 50 imperial lire, a calf, some wine and a sack of bread in return for masses to be celebrated every Sunday at their altar. The students do not seem to have honoured this agreement for long, as by 1594 the Carmelite friars ceased to allow the burial of the students in the chapel and were unwilling to celebrate masses there.

Style: High Renaissance
A bunch of flowers in a ceramic vase is displayed on a table. The flowery tablecloth is decorated with prominent blue stripes which suggest a recession into depth and compensate for the rather flat background.

Like most of Monticelli’s work, this picture is painted on a wood panel, part of which has been left visible and acts as a mid-tone. Thick impastoed paint, typical of his late style, has been used to delineate the flowers and to model their forms as well as describe their colour. The brushstrokes sometimes move in opposite directions, and blobs of pure colour suggest the petals. This painting is related to other Monticelli still lifes in the Gallery's collection: Still Life: Oysters, Fish and Still Life: Fruits. These pictures feature the same tablecloth and were probably painted about the same time.

Monticelli was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and his long-term friendship with Cezanne is well known and documented. However, it is his influence on Van Gogh which is perhaps most notable. The Dutch painter saw Monticelli’s work for the first time in Paris in 1886. On that occasion he purchased one of his flower pieces, a painting (now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) which is very similar to this one. Soon afterwards he went to Provence, where Monticelli had worked, and in 1890 Vincent and his brother Theo were involved in publishing the first-ever book on Monticelli. These experiences proved very important for the evolution of Van Gogh's unique style and technique.

Although Monticelli's work tends to be overlooked by scholars today, it seems to have paved the way for the technical and stylistic development of some of the most important Post-Impressionist artists.

This painting previously formed part of a collection belonging to Mr Harry Wearne. It was presented to the Tate in 1939, ten years after Wearne’s death, together with 11 other works by Monticelli. This group of pictures was eventually transferred to the National Gallery in 1956.

Style: Impressionist
The scene shown here is taken from the sixteenth-century epic poem Orlando Furioso, by Ludovico Ariosto. Published in full in 1532, the poem is an epic tale of chivalric romance set against the struggle between Charlemagne's Christian warriors and the Saracen army invading Europe. Its central story tells of the unrequited love of a Christian knight, Orlando, for a pagan princess, Angelica.

Ingres has depicted an episode from Canto X when a heroic knight, Ruggiero (translated as Roger or Rogero in English), discovers Angelica, who has been abducted by barbarians. Stripped and chained to a rock on the Isle of Tears, she has been left as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Riding a hippogriff -- a legendary half-horse, half-griffin beast that can both gallop and fly -- Ruggiero saves Angelica by plunging his lance into the monster’s open jaws.

Ingres had previously painted this scene in a larger painting (now in the Louvre, Paris) that he submitted to the Paris Salonof 1819. In this later version, he recreates the fantasy landscape of jagged rocks and foaming sea illuminated by moonlight and by a small beacon at the top of the picture. However, here he gives greater focus to the principal action by reducing the width of the picture, removing much of the seascape backdrop on either side, and by placing the monster between Ruggiero and Angelica. Although the canvas is small, Ingres paints specific areas -- such as the gold armour, silk cloak and griffin’s feathers -- in meticulous detail. This, combined with an emphasis on pattern and outline, recalls the style and flat design of icon paintings (religious works made for the Eastern Orthodox Church). The echo is reinforced by the fact that Ruggiero is a Christian knight.

Bathed in moonlight, Angelica’s pale skin stands out against the dark sea and rocks. Ingres creates an almost tactile contrast between her exposed and vulnerable body and the various hard surfaces -- the armour and rocks -- and the sharp objects -- the lance, griffin’s beak and talons, and monster’s teeth -- that surround her. Angelica’s sinuous outline is modelled on a classical Venus. However, Ingres exaggerates the length of her limp arms and the backward tilt of her neck and swollen throat for greater expressive effect.

The story of Ruggiero and Angelica had parallels with other classical and Christian stories, such as Perseus and Andromeda (Ingres’s initial idea for the painting) and Saint George and the dragon. However, the picture’s narrative of a chivalric knight also had contemporary political resonance. The original painting had been commissioned for Louis XVIII to hang in the Throne Room at Versailles. It served there as a reminder of the authority of the French monarchy and of Christian values in response to a resurgent Muslim Ottoman Empire. But Ingres’s decision to paint additional versions of the original picture, including this one, suggests that the image of a heroic knight rescuing a defenceless woman also had personal significance for him.

Style: Neoclassical
The Friedrichsgracht was a canal that ran though the centre of Berlin. While it still survives in present-day Berlin, much of the area has been rebuilt since the Second World War. This striking composition, dominated by the geometrical precision of the zinc roof in the foreground, is typical of Gaertner's work. His style is naturalistic and precise, scenes resemble snapshots of everyday life in the city but also reflect a preoccupation with atmosphere and light that has led to him being called 'the Prussian Canaletto'.

The building in the foreground was the property of a prominent art collector in Berlin, Pierre Louis Ravené, who may have commissioned Gaertner to paint this view. He moved his business to these premises in 1833, and it is possible that the picture was painted shortly afterwards. Although the style is similar to Gaertner's work of the 1830s, Ravené was mainly active as a collector after 1845, so the picture could have been painted later. The relatively small scale of the work and the lack of signature suggest that it may be a study for a larger painting but no other picture of this view by Gaertner has survived.

Gaertner began his career with an apprenticeship at the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin and later took drawing classes at the Academy of Arts. In 1821, he started work in the studio of Carl Wilhelm Gropius, the court theatre painter, where he became increasingly attracted to architectural painting. After a trip to Paris, he developed his skills in the manipulation of light and atmosphere, and was inspired to devote himself almost entirely to painting architectural views.

On his return to Berlin, he started painting views of the buildings of the city, such as this one, and also produced a series of scenes depicting the castles in Bellevue, Charlottenburg and Glienicke, mainly for royal customers. In 1833, he was admitted to the Academy and designated a 'Perspective Painter'. The following year, he began his most famous work: a six-panel panorama of Berlin that was purchased by the King of Prussia -- a second version was bought by the King's daughter, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, leading to a trip to Russia.

However, when King Friedrich Wilhelm III died in 1840, his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who preferred Italian-style paintings, bought very little from Gaertner. As the century progressed he was also under direct competition from the new medium of photography. It is believed that he made use of a camera obscura to sketch the layouts of his paintings. Infra-red photography has revealed an extremely precise pencil underdrawing for this particular painting with the entire composition mapped out in great detail. Gaertner also possessed a collection of photographs, but there is no evidence that he used these as models.

Style: Realist, Romantic
Flower paintings were popular in late nineteenth-century French art, and when Gauguin began to paint floral studies in the 1870s, while he was still an amateur artist, there were several possible sources of inspiration. His earliest still lifes of bunches of flowers in vases recall the compositions of Fantin-Latour and Cezanne. Later on he came into intimate contact with what are now the most famous nineteenth-century flower paintings of all: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The Dutchman painted four pictures of sunflowers to decorate Gauguin's bedroom in the house they shared in Arles for a few months in 1888. One of these, Sunflowers, is in the National Gallery’s collection. Van Gogh's still lifes evidently made a long-lasting impression of Gauguin, as he painted four of his own still lifes of sunflowers over a decade later, when he was in Tahiti. The seeds may have been sent to him by his friend George-Daniel de Monfried, since Gauguin had written to de Monfried in 1896 asking him to send flower bulbs and seeds suitable for a hot climate: ‘I would like to embellish my little plantation, and as you know, I adore flowers.’

The flowers in this picture are exotic blooms that would have flourished in the Polynesian climate. Red bougainvillea and hibiscus, white and yellow frangipani, white tiare and large blue leaves burst out of a dark clay pot. They look as though they are slightly past their best, wilting in the vase, and some blossoms have fallen onto the table top. What seems to have interested Gauguin is the overall pattern of decorative shapes and colours – the delicate interweaving of reds, creams and blues that glow against the golden background -- rather than the horticultural detail.

In 1899, when the dealer Ambroise Vollard asked Gauguin to send him some flower paintings for sale, the artist replied that he had ‘done only a few’ because ‘I do not copy nature – today even less than formerly. With me, everything  happens in my exuberant imagination. And when I’m tired of painting figures (which I prefer) I start a still life which I finish without a model.…Besides, this is not really a land of flowers’. It is possible that this is what happened with this painting, which was perhaps begun with a study of an actual floral arrangement but ended up as an almost hallucinogenic extravaganza with the same dream-like quality as the Tahitian figure paintings. Odilon Redon greatly admired Gauguin’s work, and the floral arrangement in his Ophelia Among the Flowers of 1905--8 echoes this painting in its glowing colour and otherworldly quality.

Degas bought Gauguin's painting from de Monfried in 1898. Degas had helped Gauguin organise an exhibition in Paris of his Tahitian paintings four years earlier, and eventually acquired eleven of his paintings for his personal collection.

Style: Nabi, Symbolist