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 woman in a black jacket and long white skirt standing by an iron garden railing with her head bowed, while a young man in a top hat leans over the railing to say goodbye; painted by James Tissot.

Paintings of farewell: eight lovers parting, from Verona to the railway

A soldier at the door, a knight's shadow on a wall, two hands through a garden railing. Eight farewells in art, and the stories behind them.

Art & Artists Love in art

A lover in a dark blue robe kissing a lady in a long cream gown patterned with small flowers, in a rose garden, with a red-winged angel playing an instrument above; watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Famous kisses in art: ten paintings of the first, the stolen and the last

A kiss through a window, across a supper table, at a train door and in a rose garden. Ten painted kisses, from Rossetti to Zorn.

Art & Artists Love in art

A queen in an ivory gown with long red-gold hair touching a sword to the shoulder of a kneeling knight in a red surcoat and mail, courtiers watching in a stone hall; painted by Edmund Blair Leighton.

Knights and ladies: ten paintings of medieval romance

Armour and veils, quests and farewells, enchantresses in the forest. The Victorians' dream of chivalric love, from Tristan to La Belle Dame sans Merci.

Art & Artists Love in art

Paolo embracing and kissing Francesca, who sits in a pale satin gown, in a dim room with a lectern and green curtain, while a man with a drawn sword approaches from the shadows; painted by Pierre Claude François Delorme.

Paolo and Francesca in four paintings: Dante's doomed lovers

One kiss over a book, one sword, one eternity in the wind. How four painters from 1820 to 1905 told the most famous love story in Dante's Inferno.

Art & Artists Love in art

Ruth in a pale headscarf and green dress holding sheaves of barley while Boaz, in a red robe, bends his head to hers in a golden field; painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Ten famous love stories in art, and the paintings that tell them

Paolo and Francesca, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise. The great love stories of literature and legend, each told in a single painting.

Art & Artists Love in art

Carl Kahler's My Wife's Lovers: dozens of long-haired cats, most of them white Persians, lounging and playing across a grand drawing room.

Famous cat paintings: 15 masterworks for cat lovers

Cats took longer than dogs to win over painters. When they did, they stole the show: kittens on writing desks, a cat in a girl's arms, and forty-two Persians in one famous room.

Art & Artists Love in art

A man in a dark coat stands on a rocky peak with his back to us, looking over a sea of fog and mountains.

Gifts for art lovers: 15 museum masterpieces to give

Friedrich’s wanderer, Van Gogh’s irises, Seurat’s Grande Jatte, Hilma af Klint’s Ten Largest: fifteen masterpieces from the world’s great museums, each as a print that would make an art lover’s day.

Art & Artists Love in art

In a walled garden a woman plays a small organ while an angelic figure works the bellows and a knight listens.

Valentine’s gifts for art lovers: 14 romantic masterpieces

Burne-Jones’s Love Song, Paolo and Francesca in Böcklin’s darkness, a love letter by Harunobu and Cupid by Barocci: fourteen romantic works to give on Valentine’s Day, from tender to tragic.

Art & Artists Love in art