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| Gianlorenzo Bernini Portrait of Nicolas Poussin ca. 1628-29 oil on canvas, mounted on panel York City Art Gallery |
"Paintings are taciturn. Their meaning is on the surface – merely and fully apparent. These are limitations to painting as an art, doubtless, but also glories. Painters understand this. 'Moy qui fais profession des choses muettes,' Poussin described himself on one occasion ('I who make a profession of mute things'). Or again, to Chantelou: 'Il vaudra mieux que je m'estudie aux choses plus aparentes que les paroles' ('It is better for me to occupy myself with things more apparent than words'). 'Mes tacites images,' he called his canvases. There is a modesty to these statements, but unmistakably a touch of pride. The world resists our efforts to name it. Painting from its very beginnings – from the rush and overlap and transparency of the beasts on the walls of the caves – is about that resistance."
– T.J. Clark, from Poussin and the Unbeliever in Heaven and Earth: Painting and the Life to Come (Thames & Hudson, 2018)
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| Anthony van Dyck Portrait of Jan Brueghel the Elder ca. 1630-33 etching Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Frans Hals Portrait of Jean de la Chambre ca. 1638 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Arnold Boonen Portrait of Jan van Huysum ca. 1710-29 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| John Hamilton Mortimer The Artist with sculptor Joseph Wilton and a Student ca. 1760-65 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Nathaniel Dance-Holland Portrait of Giovanni Battista Cipriani ca. 1768 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| George Romney Portrait of Thomas Barrow ca. 1775-80 oil on canvas Guildhall Art Gallery, London |
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| Ramsay Richard Reinagle Portrait of John Constable ca. 1799 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| John Opie Portrait of Thomas Girtin ca. 1800 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| John Opie Portrait of Henry Fuseli ca. 1794 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| George Henry Harlow Portrait of Henry Fuseli 1817 oil on panel Yale Center for British Art |
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| George Henry Harlow Portrait of Benjamin Robert Haydon 1816 oil on panel Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (West Midlands) |
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| Edward Villiers Rippingille Portrait of Edward Bird at his Easel 1817 oil on panel Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| John Jackson Portrait of Antonio Canova 1819-20 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |