Collection: DVD Fine Arts

Part 4 discusses the work of Malevich, Mondrian and Matisse. Matisse, famous for figure paintings, in his last years produced some of the most vivacious abstract works. Are they wholly different from Matisse’s earlier work and contradictory to it? Norbert Lynton, art critic, believes they are not...

Narrative and historical pictures were more highly prized than other genres up until the 19th century. Certain stories are so universal, such as the Nativity, that the subject is instantly recognisable, however varied the style or detailed the treatment. Norbert Lynton discusses three famous pain...

Alastair Smith talks to Maggie Hamblin, who has a number of paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, including one commissioned by the gallery of the Nobel prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin. Shows Maggie Hamblin embarking on a new commission from the time she first meets her sitter, to the hanging ...

Arrangements of fruit, flowers, implements of various kinds and food have appeared in paintings all through the ages. Often they are only a tiny detail; sometimes they have symbolic significance: cherries for example represent the fruit of Paradise; a pomegranate, the chastity of the Virgin, the ...