Tempestad de nieve, de Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851

Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth exhibited 1842

Oil on canvassupport: 914 x 1219 mm

frame: 1233 x 1535 x 145 mm painting

Bequeathed by the artist 1856

Turner painted many pictures exploring the effects of an elemental vortex. Here, there is a steam-boat at the heart of the vortex. In this context the vessel can be interpreted as a symbol of mankind’s futile efforts to combat the forces of nature.

It is famously said that Turner conceived this image while lashed to the mast of a ship during an actual storm at sea. This seems to be nothing more than fiction, but the story has endured as a way of demonstrating Turner’s full-blooded engagement with the world around him.

Fuente: http://www.tate.org.uk

El despertar de la inocencia, de H. Hunt

William Holman Hunt 1827-1910

The Awakening Conscience 1853

The Awakening Conscience was conceived as the modern-life counterpart to Hunt’s celebrated image of Christian salvation called The Light of the World (1851–3, now at Keble College, Oxford). In this picture Hunt set out ‘to show how the still small voice [of conscience] speaks to a human soul in the turmoil of life’. A kept woman, realising the error of her ways, rises suddenly from the lap of her lover, inspired by the light pouring through the window from the garden. Many of the details, such as the bird trying to escape the cat, suggest both the snares of prostitution and the possibility of redemption.

Fuente: http://www.tate.org.uk

Anunciación, de Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882

Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation) 1849-50

Rossetti’s goal in this radical interpretation of a traditional subject was to mix contemporary realism with religious feeling. Usually the Virgin is shown in studious contemplation, but here she rises awkwardly from her bed as though disturbed while asleep. Rossetti used white as the dominant colour in this canvas in order to reinforce the idea of feminine purity. His sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, posed as the Virgin; his brother posed for the Angel. Contemporary critics howled with outrage at the picture, denouncing it as ‘an example of the perversion of talent which has recently been making
so much headway’.

Fuente: http://www.tate.org.uk

Beata Beatrix, de Rossetti

Beata Beatrix circa 1864-70
Oil on canvas
support: 864 x 660 mm
frame: 1212 x 1015 x 104 mm painting

Presented by Georgiana, Baroness Mount-Temple in memory of her husband, Francis, Baron Mount-Temple 1889
N01279

Rossetti’s inspiration for this painting was the Vita Nuova (New Life), the Italian poet Dante’s account of his idealised love for Beatrice, and of her premature death. The death of Beatrice is symbolised by a sudden spiritual transfiguration. A bird, a messenger of death, drops a white poppy between her open hands. The shadow of the sundial rests on the figure nine, the number Dante connects mystically with Beatrice and her death. In the background the shadowy figure of Dante gazes towards the figure of Love. Rossetti saw this work as a memorial to his wife, Elizabeth Siddall, who had died in 1862.

Fuente: http://www.tate.org.uk/

Ofelia, de Millais

Introduction

Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate Gift in 1894 and remains one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate's collection. Shakespeare was a frequent source of inspiration for Victorian painters. Millais's image of the tragic death of Ophelia, as she falls into the stream and drowns, is one of the best-known illustrations from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were the founding members of a group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelites formed in 1848. They rejected the art of the Renaissance in favour of art before Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo (15-16 centuries). The Pre-Raphaelites focused on serious and significant subjects and were best known for painting subjects from modern life and literature often using historical costumes. They painted directly from nature itself, as truthfully as possible and with incredible attention to detail. They were inspired by the advice of John Ruskin, the English critic and art theorist in Modern Painters (1843-60). He encouraged artists to 'go to Nature in all singleness of heart.rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.' The Pre-Raphaelites developed techniques to exploit the luminosity of pure colour and define forms in their quest for achieving 'truth to nature'. They strongly believed that respectable divine art could only be achieved if the artist focused on the truth and what was real in the natural world.

Fuente: http://www.tate.org.uk