Opening the exhibition
J. M. W. Turner
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834
Sixteen paintings of fire, storm and wilderness, 1810–1909
Edmund Burke called it the sublime: the delight we take in what could destroy us. For a century painters went looking for it at the edge of the known world: Turner on the bank of the Thames as Parliament burned, Friedrich's wanderers under the moon, Church and Bierstadt carrying their canvases to the Andes, the Sierra and Vesuvius, Böcklin rowing the dead to their island.
The hall ends in the new century, where the sublime changes shape: Homer's cold sea, Ryder's Death riding a racetrack, Rousseau's dream jungle and Bellows's boxers, as violent as any storm. The paintings come from the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which release them to everyone under CC0.
Halls: The Sublime
Artists: Albert Bierstadt, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Arnold Böcklin, Caspar David Friedrich, Eugène Jansson, Frederic Edwin Church, George Bellows, Henri Rousseau, J. M. W. Turner, John Martin, Thomas Cole, Théodore Géricault, Winslow Homer
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The collection brings together works from the Art Institute of Chicago and Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access collections and other openly licensed sources. Artist, title, date, medium, source and rights are printed under every plate. EPRIS Museum claims no rights in these images.
Works in this exhibition are drawn from The Sublime.
