On the Way between Old and New Cairo, Citadel Mosque of Mohammed Ali, and Tombs of the Mamelukes by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Tiffany is better known for his stained glass and decorative works, but was a skilled painter in the orientalist vein.

In the Brooklyn Museum. Click “Download” under the image and choose a size.

See my post on Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Still Life with Roses and Fruit, Henri Fantin-Latour.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use Fullscreen link and Zoom or download arrow.

Though I also admire Fantin-Latour’s mature work, I just love the painterly quality of this early still life — a wonderful study in brushwork and edges.

To my thinking, there is a direct line from this to the later painterly still life paintings of American Impressionists like William Merritt Chase and Abbott Handerson Thayer.

A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple, Hubert Robert.

On Google Art Project, click in lower right of image for zoom controls.

Original is in the Getty Museum. On the museum’s site they suggest Robert may have taken inspiration for the monumental scale of the temple from the prints of his contemporary Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl, Robert Campin.

Commissioned by a contemporary 15th century Franciscan to portray himself praying in the company of Saint John, this is, like Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, another marvel of detail and glazing.

It was in paintings like this that the early Flemish masters had a field day with the amazing capabilities of the relatively new medium of oil painting.

Also, like Van Eyck’s image, Campin is playing with our point of view, by showing other figures standing in our (and the painter’s) place in the reflection in the convex mirror.

The original is in the Prado, Madrid. Click the magnifier to go to the zoomable image. If you right-click (Windows) or Control-Click (Mac) on the zoomable image, you can choose to view the entire image.

Rainy Day, Boston, Childe Hassam.

“American Impressionism” (i.e. painterly realism) in the hands of one of its foremost proponents.

On Google Art Project. Click in lower right of image for zoom controls.

Original is in the Toledo Museum of Art.

John F. Carlson (unkonwn title). Photo by Justin Wisniewski, from his blog.

See my post on John Fabian Carlson.

Allegory of Winter, Jacques de La Joue the Younger.

I love the invented atmosphere and the seemingly casual application of paint, particularly in the Rococo flourishes.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use “Fullscreen” link under the image.

The Bridge at Narni, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

One of my favorite landscapes by Corot (or by anyone for that matter) — a shining example of why Corot and his compatriots in the Forest of Fontainebleau, along with Boudin, Courbet, Constable, Jongkind and a few others, were considered the precursors of French Impressionism, and by extension, most of the subsequent practitioners of painterly realism.

This was a plein air study for this painting, in the National Gallery of Canada (image above, bottom).

The study is in the Louvre; unfortunately not reproduced very large on their site. There is a larger version on Wikipaintings; but the color seems a bit off. I trust the Louvre’s reproduction better.

The top image is from the Louvre’s site; my close up crops are from an attempt to color correct the large version to look more like the Louvre’s reproduction (not quite true).