Paintings

Thomas Cole. Thomas Cole painted this bend of the Connecticut River in 1836 while interrupting work on his large Course of Empire series.

Kiyohara Yukinobu. Two quails stand beneath heavy millet heads. Kiyohara Yukinobu painted this scroll in the later seventeenth century.

Qian Xuan. Wang Xizhi watches geese from a waterside pavilion. The celebrated fourth-century calligrapher became the subject of Qian Xuan’s painting around 1295.

Govardhan. Akbar died in 1605; Govardhan painted this portrait around 1630. It represents a ruler remembered under his descendants.

Lorenzo Lotto. Cupid urinates through a wreath held by Venus. Lorenzo Lotto painted the scene in the 1520s, probably to celebrate a marriage.

Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh painted himself in a straw hat in Paris in the summer of 1887. Living with his brother Theo, he encountered Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painting.

Nicolas Poussin. John sits writing among ruins, nearly absorbed by a large landscape. Christian tradition associates Patmos with his Revelation and its visions of the end of time.

Thomas Cole. An enormous goblet stands among mountains. Sailboats move across the water in its bowl, while trees and buildings occupy its rim.

Soga Shōhaku. Fantastic lions climb and fall among cliffs. Soga Shōhaku painted this scroll in 1779, two years before his death.

Zhao Mengfu. Two pines stand beside water, with low hills beyond. Zhao Mengfu painted the landscape around 1310.

Kamal Muhammad and Chand Muhammad. Nine Adil Shahi sultans appear together in an assembly made for the young Sikandar. The painting dates shortly before Bijapur fell in 1686.

Andrea Mantegna. Shepherds approach the infant in worn working clothes after the angelic announcement still visible in the distance.

Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh painted this landscape outdoors during his stay at Saint-Rémy.

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas. A woman examines a hat among others displayed on stands.

John Singleton Copley. The nine-year-old heir appears at his family’s Hudson Valley home with a trained squirrel.

Maruyama Ōkyo. The herons’ white bodies are unpainted paper, defined by soft washes around them. Ōkyo advocated drawing living subjects from different viewpoints.

Zhao Mengfu, Zhao Yong and Zhao Lin. Zhao Mengfu made the original section for the official Feiqing after withdrawing from service in 1296.

Attributed to Bhawani Das or a follower. This study is connected with Indian painters working for the Impey family in Calcutta.

Piero di Cosimo. People and mythological creatures hunt within an imagined early history of humanity. The museum connects the subject with Lucretius’s account of civilisation.

Frans Hals. The revellers include Hans Wurst and Pekelharing, characters from Shrovetide theatre. Painters' guilds were among those staging such performances.

Gustave Moreau. Hercules pauses before the Lernaean Hydra among its victims. Gustave Moreau exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon of 1876.

John Singleton Copley. This small study follows Copley’s first completed version and prepared further repetitions. The subject is the shark attack on Brook Watson in Havana harbour in 1749.

Unidentified Japanese painters. A narrow white road leads between fire and water towards the Buddha Amida.

Wu Zhen. The hermit fisherman could represent a scholar outside government employment in late Yuan culture. Wu Zhen joins ink painting with verse.

Attributed to Bishandas. Nur Jahan holds a portrait of her husband, Emperor Jahangir.

Simone Martini. Saint Andrew was one of five figures in a portable altarpiece. Its original rectangular frame survives. The government of Siena may have commissioned the altar.

Joachim Patinir. One continuous landscape extends across three panels containing Christ’s baptism, Jerome’s penitence and Anthony’s temptation.

Henri Matisse. Henriette Darricarrère rests her head on folded arms beside an aquarium. Matisse painted her in Nice in the early 1920s.

Asher Brown Durand. Durand chooses a vertical woodland view suited to close attention to trees, ground and changing light.

Unidentified Japanese painters. Jizo descends on a cloud to help those who call upon him. This thirteenth-century Japanese scroll shows the bodhisattva as a shaven-headed monk.

Ni Zan. Ni Zan painted this for the scholar-artist Yu Kan in 1363, during displacement and in the year his wife died. Sparse forms and an inscription may register isolation.

Attributed to Painting by Govardhan. A young prince sits between a musician and a grey-haired ascetic at a cave entrance.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Tiepolo presented this ceiling proposal to Würzburg’s prince-bishop on 20 April 1752.

Rembrandt van Rijn. A Sicilian patron commissioned Aristotle touching a bust of Homer. The philosopher wears a medallion of Alexander the Great on a gold chain.

Henri Matisse. A geranium rises above jugs, vegetables and two small figures.

Thomas Eakins. Eakins’s father watches friends playing chess in a Philadelphia room. A Latin inscription honours him.