Discover Top Posts Tagged with #conversation piece

Scene from Goethe's Faust

Artist: Hendrik Frans Schaefels (Belgian, 1827–1904)

Date: 1863

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: Private Collection

La Conversation

Artist: Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906)

Date: 1870-1871

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

A victorian conversation piece from 1890s.

sarahorsfall

#interior design #design #furniture #photography #interiors #art #1890s #victorian #architecture #conversation piece

The Slave Market

Artist: Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)

Date: 1866

Medium: Oil painting

Collection: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, United States

Description

A naked woman at center and man at far right are shown in a public courtyard, as prospective slave owners inspect their bodies. Meticulous details like the figures’ clothing, as well as the style of the surrounding architecture, evoke locales such as Egypt and Turkey, where Gérôme spent several months traveling and sketching. Constructed both from imagination and observation, this dehumanizing scene portrays Islamic society as strange, violent, and depraved. Such paintings appealed to France’s assumptions of its own moral superiority as it expanded its colonial empire across North Africa.