All posts by Rosie Lesso

Scottish artist and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh might be best remembered for his Art Nouveau architecture and furniture, but he was also a highly skilled painter who made distinctive, stylised paintings of flowers and landscapes filled with quiet, understated wonder. Cool, crisp shades of metallic green like Laurel Leaf were a recurring feature of his…

Bands of horizon where sky meets and merges with water were a recurring theme in the art of the Symbolist painter James Abbot McNeill Whistler, flooding his canvases with the atmospheric light of a faraway dream. As much as Whistler is known as the painter of the night with his sombre, subtle ‘Nocturnes’ series, he…

Indulgent shades of crimson and plum like Red Lilac were a recurring feature in the work of French intimiste painter Edouard Vuillard, depicting the lavish interiors and elaborately dressed women that set the stage for his life in late 19th and early 20th century Paris. Predominantly a painter of quiet, intimate indoor scenes brimming with…

Muted, elegant shades of grey and brown like UMBRA were transformed in the hands of Joseph Mallord William Turner into leaden skies and turbulent seas, capturing a raw and brutal side of nature capable of destroying anything in its midst. In Turner’s late paintings, we see the sublime awe and drama of sea storms coming…

The warm, soft hue of CAMEL can be seen throughout the art of daring French realist painter Gustave Courbet, a raw, human, and naturalistic hue that allowed him to convey the humble, truthful elements of nature with great clarity and honesty. While Courbet might have attracted the most controversy and attention for his politicised figurative…

With her remarkable sleight of hand, American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt was able to capture the breezy, airy effortlessness of daylight falling across the clothing and skin of her subjects. Cool pastel shades like BLUE QUARTZ were one tool in her armoury that she would return to over and over, for its ability to convey…

Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer made art that was imbued with shades of pale gold like HOLLAND, drenching his intimate, ordinary scenes with glowing, radiant light. In comparison with his peers, Vermeer made a comparatively small body of work, producing only around 45 in his lifetime, and of those, only 36 are known today….

Swedish mid-20th century artist Birgit Skiöld was a pioneer in printmaking, a serial experimenter who skilfully merged traditional printing techniques with playful abstract motifs that hint at the movements and patterns of nature. Much of her work was elemental and ephemeral, made up of wispy, uneven lines and ghostly, barely-there colours, but rich, dark blues…