Venus and Amor

Venus Consoling Amor (1751) by the French Rococo painter François Boucher (1703-1770). Boucher is famous for his decorative allegories but usually his enormous influence on late 19th century art is vastly ignored.

Diabolic Cleopatra

Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1887) by the French academic painter Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889).

Cleopatra is depicted as a beautiful but also a cold and cruel monarch. Without any emotions she’s watching the terrible death of the prisoners. The temples in the back are showing the strong influence of the famous prints of David Roberts.

The Spirit of Wine

Wine of Tokai

The beautiful and seductive spirit of wine shows here the Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896).

Seductive Eve

The Woman, the Man and the Serpent (1911) by the English painter John Byam Shaw (1872-1919). Despite many are assigning Shaw to the Pre-Raphaelites, I would like to call him a symbolist because he was much better than those epigones of the Pre-Raphaelites.

The Bath

Nice bathing scene by the Victorian artist John Reinhard Weguelin (1849-1927). Weguelin did similar neo-classical subjects like Edward Poynter and Lawrence Alma-Tadema in watercolour.

Red Gown

A pin-up of 1952 by the British illustrator David Wright (1912-1967). Wright was probably the only Non-American pin up artist who was really successful in the United States. And he deserved it as far as I can see.