Tissot's July: how to look at a summer portrait from 1878
A white dress, yellow ribbons and the sea behind a striped awning: a close reading of James Tissot's Seaside (July: Specimen of a Portrait).
Art Stories
Stories behind the art: extraordinary artworks, the stories they hold, and ways to make them yours.
10 Historic Crest Designs to Inspire a Personal Coat of Arms
Explore ten historical heraldic designs, from swans and rose trees to dragons, with source plates and a path to your own emblem.
What makes an art print worth keeping? Giclée, paper and colour
Giclée, paper and colour, explained through paintings worth looking at closely. A practical guide to choosing an archival fine art print.
Reading a coat of arms: lions, stars and trees
Learn to look at a heraldic design before choosing symbols for your own: the shield, its charges, the crest and the story around them.
Is there a coat of arms for my surname?
Why a coat of arms belongs to a person rather than a surname, what the mugs and plaques get wrong, and how to have a design of your own instead.
Art for grey walls: 12 paintings that lift a grey room
Mucha’s Zodiac, Sharaku’s actor on a yellow ground, Carl Larsson’s Old Anna and Blake’s dancing fairies: twelve paintings with yellow, blush and teal that wake up grey.
Carl Larsson and Scandinavian art: 14 prints for a Nordic home
Carl Larsson’s Sundborn watercolours, the Skagen painters, Hammershøi’s quiet rooms and the folk tales of Swedish art: fourteen pictures from the north.
Horizontal wall art: 12 wide paintings for above the sofa
Van Goyen’s Haarlem sky, a Venice canal, Courbet’s green valley and Kano Yasunobu’s horses: twelve wide masterworks for the long walls above sofas, beds and sideboards.
Wedding gifts for couples: 12 artworks to start a home
The first real art on a couple’s walls: Monet’s river, Homer’s coast, Hokusai’s Fuji, a Renoir for the kitchen and a portrait of their first house. Twelve wedding gifts that will outlast the toaster.