Cleopatra's Banquet

Cleopatra's Banquet (c.1675) by the Dutch Golden Age painter Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711). Cleopatra is here dissolving her earring in vinegar and will drink it to prove to the Roman Mark Antony that she can spent ten million sestertia for one supper.

Despite the architecture is pure fantasy it shows that Lairesse already tried to provide his painting with a historical setting.

Tragical End of a Hero

Miranda in prison (1896) by the Venezuelan painter Arturo Michelena (1863-1898). Miranda, who was a student of the famous French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens, depicts here one of the founders of Latin American Liberty.

Sebastián Francisco de Miranda was a Venezuelan revolutionary and is considered as a forerunner of Simón Bolívar. After is revolution had failed he died in a Spanish prison.

Victorian Kitsch

A Sick Child Brought into the Temple of Aesculapius (1877) by the British painter John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

Waterhouse specialized in sugary scenes likes this. Sometimes he choose medieval sceneries, on other occasions classical Greek or Roman ones. But he always provided what the Victorian clients expected.

A Heroic Episode

The Combat of the Thirty by the French (1857) painter Octave Penguilly L'Haridon (1811-1870)

Penguilly L'Haridon shows here an episode of the Hundred Years War which happened on 26 March 1351 in Brittany. Thirty English knights (many of them were foreign mercenaries) fought there in a kind of formal joust against 30 knights from the French-Breton side.

It’s a quite well done painting with a lot of good historical details. Like many history paintings in the 19th century it’s glorifying regional history and was therefore achieved by the musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper.

Religious Fanatic

The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (1889) by the Spanish painter Emilio Sala y Francés (1850-1910)

Several months after the fall of Granada an Edict of Expulsion was issued against the Jews of Spain by the so called Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. It ordered all Jews of whatever age to leave the kingdom by the last day of July. The Jews offered then an immense ransom of 600,000 crowns for the revocation of the edict. When the monarchs were ready to accept, Torquemada, the grand inquisitor, dashed into the royal presence and, throwing a crucifix down before the king and queen, asked whether, like Judas, they would betray their Lord for money.
The Jews were expulsed from Spain with fatal consequences for the whole country.

Sala y Francés is depicting here the moment when the fanatic Torquemada is accusing the Jews. It’s one of the highlights of Spanish history painting illustrating one of the darkest moments of her history.

Sugary Past

The First Thanksgiving (c1912) by the American painter Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930).

Ferris shows here a scenery very popular in American culture and iconography. In autumn of 1621 the surviving Pilgrims celebrated their successful harvest and invited the Indians who helped them before with food.

The scene is heavily romanticized. The Indians there didn’t wore feathers in their hair, but they look more "Indian" with that. And as savages that are sitting on the floor, which they wouldn’t have done. So it’s despite all the nice colorful details nothing authentic.

An Early Scientist

The Alchemist Sedziwoj and King Sigismund III (1867) by the Polish painter Jan Matejko (1838-1893).

Matejko depicted here the famous alchemist not as a charlatan but as a kind of early engineer and scientist, which he was. Because Sedziwoj constructed mines and foundries and did a lot of chemical experimentation.

Semiramis

Semiramis constructing Babylon (1861) by the French painter Edgar Degas (1834-1917).

This may be a little surprising because the impressionist artist despised history painting as a typical form of academic art. And Degas ist considered as one of the founders of impressionism.
But at the beginning of his career he wanted to be a history painter like the best artists of this time.

A pensative Hero

El Gran Capitán visits the battlefield of Ceriñola (1835) by the Spanish history painter Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (1815–1894).

Madrazo shows here the famous Spanish military leader after his great victory of Ceriñola in 1503. He is looking at the dead body of Louis d'Armagnac the leader of the French forces. So it’s also a reflection about luck, death and destiny.
Formally the painting is orientated at Velazquez.

Little Luther

Luther singing as a boy before lady Cotty in eisenach in 1499 (1872) by the Belgian history painter Ferdinand Pauwels (1830-1904).

The later Reformer is here aleready a devoted Christian and probably singing like an angel. It’s idyllic and kind of protestant religious kitsch.
Pauwels did a series of his popular Luther paintings.

Classical Love Story

Horace and Lydia (1924) by the British painter John Collier (1850-1934).

Collier one of the most prominent British painters of his generation shows here a fictional .dialogue between the great Roman poet Horace and Lydia.
Despite it’s a well done painting, one shouldn’t forget that it was done in 1924! Meaning it was much more than out of fashion. Collier kept stubborn to his 19th century style ignoring all what happened around him.

Heroic History

The Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester 910 AD (1879-93) by the English painter Ford Maddox Brown (1821-1893).

This is a fresco in the Manchester Town Hall. These “illustrations” of great events of the own history were very popular in the 19th century. As frescos in public buildings they gave the illusion of a long important history. Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian-era Neo-gothic building which only pretends to be medieval underlines this circumstance.

It’s interesting that Maddox Brown doesn’t pretend to be realistic, he presented a kind of naïve comic strip. Nice is the archer who seems to be taken from an Italian renaissance painting.