145,000 paintings now online for the first time!
Your Paintings has reached a fantastic new total of 145,000 paintings, many of them seldom seen before.
Let’s welcome: two national museums ̶ the National Portrait Gallery and National Museum Wales; rich and diverse collections from Britain’s oldest public museum, The Ashmolean; and half of the City of Westminster’s collections, including the Royal Academy of Arts.
All of the oil paintings in public ownership across Cumbria, Lancashire, Glasgow, the Isle of Man and Plymouth and Torbay are now on display.
Plus, the paintings from another 46 National Trust properties have also been added.
Naturally, within such a group many gems can be found. There are masterpieces of Impressionism including Renoir’s La Parisienne which featured in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The sitter was Henriette Henriot, who performed at the Theatre de L’Odeon in Paris.
From the Italian Renaissance is Piero di Cosimo’s The Forest Fire. It was inspired by passages from the Bible. The masterly rendition of the fire and distant landscape placed di Cosimo at the forefront of contemporary landscape painting.
The Forest Fire (Piero di Cosimo, Collection: The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology)
The first portrait to be acquired by the National Portrait Gallery was of William Shakespeare, and was attributed to John Taylor. This is the only portrait of Shakespeare that has any claim to have been painted from life, and so perhaps bears the greatest likeness to the Bard.
William Shakespeare (John Taylor, Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London)
Further north, meanwhile, a local story lies behind John Virtue’s Accrington from the Coppice, where he worked as a postman, and painted during his free time.
Have you unearthed a painting you haven’t seen for years, or discovered a new favourite perhaps? Please tell us about your findings by following us on Twitter @Your_Paintings !
Katie Carder is the Press and Marketing Officer at the PCF
