Rosalyn Schwartz on Caspar David Friedrich

I first discovered the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich in the mid-1980’s when I was an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis…

Zaria Forman on William Bradford

In July 1869, American painter William Bradford, alongside photographers John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson, embarked on the first expedition to the Arctic devoted principally to art.

Ellen Altfest on Francois Boucher

I’ve always disliked the Rococo, and pretty much any artist who paints pink cheeks (Rubens, Renoir, Hals, etc.). For me, it’s not the pleasure, desire, or playfulness of the Rococo and other similar confections, but it is the one-note, overly-sweet eagerness to please that irritates.

Richard Estes on Bernardo Bellotto

There is a small painting by Bellotto at the Chicago Art Institute – a view of a street in the small town of Pirna, Germany a short distance from Dresden – that I used to see every day when I was a student there and which always fascinated me.

Amy Weiskopf on Carlo Carra

If Pompeian still life frescos and Cubist still life paintings had a baby, Carlo Carra’s Natura Morta con la Squadra would be that child.

Adam Cvijanovic on Thomas Cole

He was not a particularly remarkable painter. There is no dazzling brushstroke or consummate gesture. They are paintings that get the job done and punch the clock.

Julie Langsam on Frederic Edwin Church

I first saw Frederic Church’s “Twilight in the Wilderness” in 1996 on my first trip to Cleveland; I was wandering aimlessly through the galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art when this painting stopped me dead in my tracks.

Tim Doud on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,  At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-1895, Oil on canvas, 48 x 55 inches I came to my artistic interests in a very particular fashion. I was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts a port town near Cape Cod. My parents married young - both had working...

Lauren Gidwitz on Édouard Vuillard

Edouard Vuillard, Album, 1895, Oil on Canvas, 26 3/4 x 80 1/2 inches Every time I visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York I spend at least thirty minutes with Album, by Vuillard. It continues to fascinate me. The painting reads like a wave hitting the shore,...

Barry Nemett on Honore Daumier

My son’s breath warmed my neck as I lost myself in the wrinkle of his wrist. Blackness. Quiet. Then the skeleton.

Gaby Collins-Fernandez on Frederick Edwin Church

“Our Banner in the Sky” is a painting made almost entirely of belief, which is why I liked it at first sight, in reproduction no less, advertising the Met’s 2013 Civil War and American Art exhibition in a newsletter.