Art Stories

Stories behind the art: extraordinary artworks, the stories they hold, and ways to make them yours.

A skull, an overturned glass, a quill and a smoking oil lamp on a table, painted in browns and greys.

Famous still life paintings: 15 tables worth looking at

Oysters and lemon peel, skulls and candles, watermelon and Cézanne’s apples: fifteen still lifes from the Dutch Golden Age to the impressionists, what they mean, and where they belong at home.

Art & Artists

A girl reads at a pale green table beside a pot of bright red flowers.

Art for a quiet room: 12 paintings for reading nooks and calm corners

Readers by Larsson and Utamaro, Corot’s woman in meditation, Shitao’s misty mountains and Millet’s shepherdess: twelve pictures that slow the room down.

Rooms & Decor

A Japanese couple in a small boat; the man poles while the woman watches him.

Anniversary gifts by year: 11 milestones, each with a masterpiece

Paper, cotton, flowers, wood, crystal, china, silver, pearl, ruby, gold and a lifetime: an artwork for every traditional anniversary, from the first year to the sixtieth.

Art & Artists

Crescents and a circle of colour float on a flat vermilion ground.

Red wall art: 12 paintings with crimson at their heart

Hilma af Klint’s vermilion swans, Yoshitoshi’s rooftop duel, a Medici princess and a Christmas parlour: twelve paintings where red is the star.

Rooms & Decor

A tall bouquet of tulips, roses, irises and other flowers in a blue and white Chinese vase against a dark background.

Famous flower paintings: 18 bouquets from Ruysch to Van Gogh

Four centuries of bouquets, from the Dutch masters who painted every petal to Fantin-Latour, Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh: eighteen flower paintings and how to hang them.

Art & Artists

A chair, a wooden horse on wheels and a doll in a small pram sit in a lamplit corner.

Nursery art: 12 gentle vintage pictures for a child’s room

Larsson’s toys, Renoir’s child in white, Hokusai’s lost kite and Blake’s dancing fairies: twelve gentle classic pictures of childhood for a nursery or child’s room.

Rooms & Decor

Two lovers share one umbrella as they walk through falling snow, in a Japanese woodblock print.

Paper anniversary gifts: 12 masterpieces made on paper

For a first anniversary, give a work that began on paper: Japanese woodblock prints, Dürer’s engravings, Blake’s etched poems and a Carl Larsson watercolour, each as a print to keep.

Art & Artists

A courtly procession winds through a landscape between bands of golden cloud.

Gold wall art: 12 paintings that shine

Gold leaf screens from Japan, Mughal manuscripts, Blake’s Last Supper and Moreau’s Venice: twelve paintings that glow with gold and golden light.

Rooms & Decor

Peasants rest and eat under a pear tree beside a golden wheat field, with a wide valley and a bay stretching into the distance.

Famous landscape paintings: 20 views to live with

From Bruegel’s harvest to Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead: twenty famous landscapes from Dutch skies to American mountains, what makes each one great, and where it looks best at home.

Art & Artists