Philip Hermogenes Calderon | Broken Vows, 1856

Artist: Philip Hermogenes Calderon (British painter, 1833-1898)

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Dimensions Support: 914 × 679 Mm

Frame: 1205 × 980 × 104 Mm

Collection: Tate

Acquisition: Purchased 1947

The title of this painting suggests that the woman has recently discovered that her lover, whose initials are carved in the fence, has been unfaithful.

Further details, including the discarded necklace and dying flowers, indicate her unhappy situation. The ivy-covered wall may symbolise her previous belief that their love was everlasting.

Disappointed love was a popular theme in Victorian painting, and viewers were expected to unravel the situation from the symbols and expressions of the characters. | © Tate Britain

British Art History and Sitemap

The Art of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of visual art in or associated with the United Kingdom since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 and encompass English art, Scottish art, Welsh art and Irish art, and forms part of Western art history.

During the 18th century Britain began to reclaim the leading place England had played in European art during the Middle Ages, being especially strong in portraiture and landscape art.

Surrealist Artists | History and Sitemap

Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious.

Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896-1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.

Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897-1982), Paul Éluard (1895-1952) and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Michael Alfano | Figurative and surrealistic sculptures

American Art History and Sitemap

Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists.

Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place.

Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White (1540-1593) the earliest example.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting.

Andrew Wyeth | Christina's World, 1948

Nabis Art | History and Sitemap

Ambitious decorative painting enjoyed a resurgence in Europe from the late 1880s through the early twentieth century.

In Paris, Pierre Bonnard🎨, Maurice Denis🎨 and Édouard Vuillard🎨 were among the most influential artists to embrace decoration as painting’s primary function.

Their works celebrate pattern and ornament, challenge the boundaries that divide fine arts from crafts, and, in many cases, complement the interiors for which they were commissioned.

Disaffected with the rigidly representational painting methods taught at the Académie Julian, Bonnard and Denis joined with other like-minded students in the fall of 1888 to form a brotherhood called the “Nabis”, a Hebrew word meaning “prophets”.

The group was spearheaded by Paul Sérusier🎨, who had visited Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven over the summer and was now spreading an aesthetic message based on his interpretation of Gauguin🎨’s Symbolism.

Paul Sérusier - The Bois d'Amour à Pont-Aven / The Talisman (Le Talisman), 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris