Vincent van Gogh painting sunflowers (1888) by Paul GauguinVan Gogh Museum
Vincent van Gogh by Paul Gauguin
It was here that Van Gogh desperately wanted to start an artistic community, and for a short time the far more successful Gauguin seemed to go along with the idea. In the isolation of Arles their relationship quickly unraveled however, and on seeing this portrait Van Gogh complained that he had been painted as a madman. It was sadly prescient of the unhappy psychological state that would soon lead to Van Gogh mutilating his ear before taking his own life.
Ophelia (Around 1851) by Sir John Everett MillaisTate Britain
Elizabeth Siddal by John Everett Millais
Elizabeth Siddal was perhaps the best known of the Pre-Raphaelite muses, being an artist and poet as well as a supermodel of her day. It took 4 months for John Everett Millais to capture this portrait of Siddal as Ophelia, during which time she had to pose for hours on end in a bathtub of water kept warm by lamps placed underneath. On one occasion the lamps went out, but instead of complaining Siddal stoically lay there and caught a terrible cold that almost killed her. The flowers featured floating around Ophelia in the painting are richly symbolic, with daisies representing innocence, nettles pain and poppies death.
Claude Monet (1875) by Auguste RenoirMusée d’Orsay, Paris
Claude Monet by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The portrait of Monet by Renoir featured here also shows the creative potential of the new style, with short, urgent brushstrokes bringing animation to the face while longer more languid strokes are used on the background. It’s an intimate image that clearly comes from a deep companionship.
An Artist in His Studio (1904) by John Singer SargentMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston
Ambrogio Raffele by John Singer Sargent
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1985) by Michael HalsbandSCAD Museum of Art
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat by Michael Halsband
It was in fact Basquiat who commissioned Halsband for the shoot, approaching him in the bathroom at a party and overruling Warhol’s preference of Robert Mapplethorpe. Dressed in Everlast boxing shorts and gloves, one man bare-chested the other in a black polo neck, these images have come to represent a unique moment in east coast culture, immortalizing the complex relationship of the two sitters.
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