Painted at the height of his so-called most misogynistic period in 1937
Painted at the height of his so-called most misogynistic period in 1937. The model was Dora Maar, who had been his companion since 1936 and whose distorted beauty was the subject of many works in the late Thirties and early Forties.Nicolas Poussin The Nurture of Jupiter (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London) The second of two paintings by Poussin on the list. His series representing the Seven Sacraments from the National Galleries of Scotland narrowly missed being the third. Overall he tied with Seurat for eighth place in the Top 100.Raphael Pope Julius II (National Gallery). Part of the Angerstein Collection that formed the cornerstone of the National Gallery. In the 19th century this extraordinary and highly influential portrait was thought to be a fake. Its rightful attribution was restored in the 1970s.Ercole de’ Roberti Pieta (Walker Art Gallery).
The centre of Roberti’s altarpiece for the Church of Sant Giovanni in Monte, Bologna. This is one of the most pictorially inventive and moving examples of 15th-century painting in the countryMark Rothko Black on Maroon (Tate, London). One of nine deeply contemplative canvases originally painted for a New York restaurant, but withheld by Rothko at the last minute. He gave them to the Tate in 1969 on the understanding that they were always hung in their own enclosed spacePeter Paul Rubens An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (National Gallery). This depiction of Rubens’s country house, painted in 1636, had a significant influence on later traditions of English landscape paintingPieter Jansz Saenredam The Interior of the Buurkerk at Utrecht (National Gallery). Saenredam worked closely with architects, basing his finished paintings on meticulous perspective drawings.
This view of Utrecht’s main church was drawn in 1636 and finally painted in 1644John Singer Sargent Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (Tate, London). A masterly combination of a pre-Raphaelite subject and Impressionist handling painted in 1885-86 by the Anglo-American painter, better known for his swaggering portraits of fashionable EdwardiansGeorges Seurat Bathers at Asnieres (National Gallery). This was Seurat’s first large-scale composition and one of the first French paintings to treat an ordinary scene in the monumental style usually reserved for history. It was rejected from the Paris Salon in 1884 and bought by the NG 40 years laterWalter Richard Sickert Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford (Tate, London).
