Art Blog

Behind the Painting

8 articles

View all articles
Picasso's Blue Room: The Hidden Portrait Beneath the Paint
Picasso's Blue Room: The Hidden Portrait Beneath the Paint
In the early summer of 1901, a nineteen-year-old Pablo Picasso stood inside a cramped studio at 130 Boulevard de Clichy in Paris and mixed heavy dabs of Prussian and cobalt... Read more...
The Bayeux Tapestry Is Coming to London (and It Isn't Really a Tapestry)
The Bayeux Tapestry Is Coming to London (and It Isn't Really a Tapestry)
In the early hours of Friday, July 10, 2026, a 68-metre strip of embroidered linen rode a train under the English Channel, packed in a climate-controlled crate sitting on shock-absorbing... Read more...
Who Stole the Mona Lisa? The True Story of the 1911 Heist
Who Stole the Mona Lisa? The True Story of the 1911 Heist
On the morning of Monday, August 21, 1911, the Louvre was nearly empty. Monday was the museum's weekly closing day, so the guards were relaxed and the galleries were quiet.... Read more...
Did Gainsborough Really Paint The Blue Boy to Spite His Rival?
Did Gainsborough Really Paint The Blue Boy to Spite His Rival?
Short answer: no. The most repeated story about Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, that he built an entire portrait out of blue satin just to embarrass his rival Sir Joshua... Read more...
The Lost Cimabue Masterpiece That Hung Above a French Kitchen Hotplate
The Lost Cimabue Masterpiece That Hung Above a French Kitchen Hotplate
We like to imagine art history happens inside climate-controlled vaults under the watch of museum guards. But old paintings spend their lives in surprisingly ordinary places. Take a small poplar... Read more...
The 150-Year Art Mystery: Why Someone Painted a Whale Out of Hendrick van Anthonissen's Seascape
The 150-Year Art Mystery: Why Someone Painted a Whale Out of Hendrick van Anthonissen's Seascape
In 2014, a student conservator at Cambridge University took a scalpel to a 17th-century Dutch seascape and uncovered a bus-sized sperm whale that someone had deliberately painted out of existence.... Read more...
The painting that hides a skull in plain sight
The painting that hides a skull in plain sight
Room 4 of London's National Gallery holds a portrait that stops people mid-step. Two men in expensive clothes stand beside a table loaded with globes, sundials, and a lute. The... Read more...
The Hudson River School Painted an Empire's Rise and Fall
The Hudson River School Painted an Empire's Rise and Fall
In 1836, an English immigrant named Thomas Cole finished five paintings that show one civilization being born, growing rich, and burning to the ground. He called the series The Course... Read more...