Stories By Alexandra Kiely
19th Century
Robert S. Duncanson: African-American Painter in the Spotlight
February 27, 2021Nearly 150 years after his death, African-American landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson made headlines last month. This happened when his Landscape with Rainbow was featured during the recent United States Presidential Inauguration. It’s nice to see...
Art Travels
Visit Parisian Landmarks in These Ten Gorgeous Paintings
February 26, 2021If you’ve ever been to Paris, you know that there’s nothing like seeing the city in person. However, that’s no reason not to get a taste of it with some help from great artists. So, let’s look...
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The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and Its Anglo-Saxon Treasures
February 15, 2021A new Netflix movie called The Dig (released January 29, 2021) is a fictionalized story about the 1939 discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. It is based on John Preston’s novel of the same name....
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Ice Skating Artwork – A Visual Journey on Ice
January 28, 2021Ice skating is a beloved winter activity and I’ve been an avid participant (all year round) since I was a little girl. As such, I really enjoy looking at ice skating in artworks from centuries past....
Art State of Mind
New Year’s Resolutions Inspired by Artists
January 1, 2021What New Year’s resolutions are you making as the strangest year in recent memory comes to a close? If you’re still unsure what (if anything) you want to resolve to do in 2021, why not try...
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Written in the Stars: Zodiac in Medieval Art
December 14, 2020Medieval Europeans believed that the movements of the sun, moon, stars, and planets directly affected their lives on earth. They practiced what we might today call astrology. Consequently, astronomical phenomena appear frequently in manuscripts and other...
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Reviewing Virtual Mauritshuis, the Gigapixel Experience
December 9, 2020Upon launching its new Virtual Mauritshuis initiative on November 26, 2020, the Mauritshuis became the world’s first museum to offer a gigapixel virtual experience. Sixteen permanent exhibition galleries and all the artworks within them now appear...
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Healing Violante Ferroni’s Paintings at San Giovanni di Dio Hospital
December 5, 2020In the mid-18th century, Florentine artist Violante Ferroni painted two large religious scenes for the atrium of San Giovanni di Dio hospital. Almost three centuries later, Advancing Women Artists (AWA), a Florence-based champion of historical women...
Art Travels
Landscape Painters, National Parks, and the American West in Art
November 12, 2020The U.S. National Parks are natural and man-made monuments legally set aside for protection and public enjoyment. Yellowstone became the first National Park in 1872, while the park system as a whole began in 1916. Through...
19th Century
The American Artist Who Loved Everything British: Edwin Austin Abbey’s Shakespeare Paintings
November 5, 2020Painter and illustrator Austin Abbey was born in America, but he loved all things British, particularly the works of William Shakespeare. He illustrated many plays of the great English writer. Abbey’s Shakespeare paintings are gorgeous and...
