Advent Calendar: Day 24

The Nativity Piero Della Francesca 1470-5 The National Gallery

This nativity scene has to be one of my favourites, the variety of expression in the faces of the angels, the human gesture of Joseph whose leg is slung over his knee and the simplicity of the small baby reaching up to his mother.

Happy Christmas

Advent Calendar: Day 23

Christmas Time - The Blodgett Family 1864 Johnson Eastman Metropolitan Museum of Art

Family Christmases comes in all shapes and sizes and I hope you enjoy yours whatever it looks like.

Advent Calendar: Day 22

Pine Trees covered in snow Maruyama Ōkyo c.1780 Pair of sixfold screens

New Acquisition at the National Gallery

If I didn't already have lots of wonderful advent images in store for the next three days I would have tried to find space for this work that the National Gallery have just acquired for the Nation.

Road in the Village of Baldersbronde (A Winter Day) Laurits Andersen Ring 1912

It is by the Danish artist Laurits Andersen Ring and it's acquisition will make it the first Danish work to enter a National collection in the UK.

You can see it in Room E at the National Gallery alongside works by Boudin, Leighton, Bonnington, Millet and Corot.

The painting makes me chilly just looking at the thick covering of snow and the purplish grey clouds hanging over the landscape with the promise of future flurries of snow.

Advent Calendar: Day 21

Isaac Levitan March 1985 State Tretiakov Gallery

One of my favourite things about doing this blog is discovering new artists that I had not come across before and Isaac Levitan is a great example of this.

His 'mood landscapes' infuse the Russian landscape with a deep sense of emotion, I find his paintings really act on me casting a spell of tranquility. Something that I felt we could all do with in the final couple of shopping days before Christmas so here a couple more.

Over Eternal Peace 1894

Birch Forest 1885-89

Advent Calendar: Day 20

Beryl Dean Jubilee Cope 1977

This exquisite cope owned by St Paul's Cathedral depicts 73 of the city of London's churches 3 royal peculiars (churches that sit outside of the jurisdiction of it's diocese and instead is under the rule of the monarchy) and of course St Paul's Cathedral itself.

Here is an image of the cope in all of its glory.

Advent Calendar: Day 19

Robert Mapplethorpe Christmas Tree