Love in art

A glance, a dance, a letter or a kiss. Discover paintings of love and courtship, and the stories of couples that artists have carried onto canvas.

A young man in a feathered hat playing a small stringed instrument for a smiling girl who sits knitting beside him, in a dim farmhouse room; painted by Hugo Engl.

Flirtation in art: ten courtship paintings from parlours and taverns

A serenade by the stove, a needle being threaded, a whisper over a beer. Ten paintings of courtship in everyday life, from Bavaria to Venice.

Art & Artists Love in art

Bronzino's portrait of Guidobaldo della Rovere in black and gold armour, his hand resting on the head of a large pale hound.

Famous dog paintings: 14 masterworks every dog lover should know

From a Renaissance prince's hound to Landseer's mourning collie, these are the dogs great painters could not leave out, and what their pictures say about the people who loved them.

Portraits Love in art

A young husband in a red tunic pressing his bride's hand to his lips as she leans against him with eyes closed, under a stone arch; painted by Frederic Leighton.

Romantic wall art for couples: ten masterworks for a wedding or anniversary

A wedding portrait by Gainsborough, Leighton's newlyweds, a proposal with a rose. Ten love paintings to give, or to hang where you will see them every day.

Art & Artists Love in art

A man in black evening dress dancing with a woman in a long white satin gown, her back to us, among green palms; painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Renoir's couples and the Impressionists in love: nine paintings

A dance in the city, a theatre box, a letter read together in the garden. How Renoir, Sargent, Boldini and Zorn painted modern love.

Art & Artists Impressionism Love in art

A man in a dark coat and a woman in a red dress seen from behind, sitting hand in hand at the prow of a sailing boat, a distant city of spires ahead across pale water; painted by Caspar David Friedrich.

Love by the sea: eight paintings of couples on the shore

A honeymoon voyage, a proposal by the harbour, a walk on Skagen beach. Eight paintings of lovers and the sea, from Friedrich to the Belle Époque.

Art & Artists Love in art

A young woman in white resting her head on the shoulder of a man in a pale suit on a vine-covered terrace under a full moon, a small table beside them; painted by Karl Schweninger the Younger.

Lovers by moonlight: seven romantic paintings of the night

A balcony under a full moon, a beach in the blue hour, a magic carpet across a red sky. Seven paintings of love after dark.

Art & Artists Love in art

Daphnis, half-draped in a red cloak, seated on a mossy rock holding up a wreath while Chloe sleeps against his knee, under a great tree with a golden sea beyond; painted by François Gérard.

Pastoral love: nine paintings of lovers in fields, woods and hay

Under a red parasol by the wheat, in a haystack, on a bench in a birch wood. Nine paintings of country love, from Daphnis and Chloe to the Black Forest.

Art & Artists Love in art

A young woman in a pink dress on a swing in a lush garden, her slipper flying off, while a young man reclines in the bushes below looking up and an older man pulls the ropes; painted by Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Rococo romance: ten paintings of swings, gardens and gallant couples

Fragonard's swing, Boucher's shepherds, and the painters of the 1880s to 1920s who dreamed of powdered wigs and silk. Love in the eighteenth-century manner.

Art & Artists Love in art

A young couple walking arm in arm through a wooded landscape, the woman in a silvery gown and wide hat with a white Pomeranian dog at her side, the man in a black suit; painted by Thomas Gainsborough.

Real couples in art: six portraits of husbands and wives

A honeymoon walk, a painter and his wife on a Danish beach, a picnic by a red canoe. Six real marriages in paint, and what happened next.

Art & Artists Love in art