The Avenue de l’Opéra, Sunlight, Winter Morning

When Max Liebermann first exhibited this painting, it caused not only a sensation but a scandal. Some critics objected to a Jew daring to depict Jesus, and they were offended by Liebermann’s realistic…

The Christian parable of the prodigal son, from Luke 15:11–12, was a favorite subject of artists from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. A son squanders his inheritance and is reduced to…

Though Benjamin-Eugène Fichel is better known for his historical paintings set in the eighteenth century, in this painting he documents modernity itself. Here a wealthy couple orders a meal in a…

One of Friedrich Friedländer’s best-known paintings, The Death of Tasso, depicts the death of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544–1595). Tasso was famous for his epic poem, La Gerusalemme liberate (…

An illustration for the monthly magazine Harper’s, The Thirty-Second Indiana Regiment (Colonel Willich) Building Pontoons in Kentucky was likely drawn by Henry Mosler during the Civil War. Engravings…

Geskel Salomon’s portraits are striking for the way they convey the personalities of their sitters; we, as viewers, feel strongly that we are looking at real, flesh-and-blood people. Here, Salomon has…