Masterworks

"A peasant woman mending fishing nets on the flat, windswept coast of Holland. It is not the sort of subject that first springs to mind when we think of the painter Max Liebermann. Nowadays Liebermann is usually remembered for his later paintings - scenes from the leisured lives of the middle and upper classes, for whom the coast of Holland meant only holidays, never work..."

"The gaze of young children can be very disconcerting. And these children, painted by Philipp Otto Runge in the early 19th century certainly make us stop and think. Two of them are looking at us almost as hard as we are looking at them. The three we see here are Maria Hülsenbeck and her two younger brothers, August and Friedrich..."

"Wilhelm Leibl spent four years painting this picture, from 1878 to 1881. Every day, except when it was too cold, or when someone was ill, the same three local country women, in the same costumes, would come to the village church and take up their poses. 'Peasants,' Leibl said, 'are so very good at sitting still' ..."

"Art and artists concentrated on the topic of prostitution in the second half of the 19th century as a social critique against the fast-growing major cities. Nolde in his 'St. Mary of Egypt' however concentrated on Mary's piety - through her kneeling position, and ecstatic expression whilst praying..."