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| Peter Paul Rubens Three Musical Angels ca. 1615-20 oil on panel Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Rembrandt The Phoenix, or, The Statue Overthrown 1658 etching, engraving and drypoint Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Greek Culture in South Italy Winged Victory 3rd-2nd century BC terracotta Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Jacques de Gheyn II Fly ca. 1600 watercolor on paper Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Cherubino Alberti Winged Genius with Palm Branch 1608 engraving Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Anonymous German Artist after Bartholomeus Spranger Holy Family with Angels 17th century drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Hans Burgkmair the Younger Angel sealing the Pit (series, Scenes from the Apocalypse) ca. 1550 drawing Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert Angels at the Empty Tomb of Christ before 1655 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Giorgio Vasari Winged Victory with Prisoners ca. 1540 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Battista Franco (il Semolei) Birds and Insects before 1561 etching and engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Girolamo Mocetto Winged Allegorical Figure with Arrow ca. 1495 drawing on vellum Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
-Pressmark-of-Theodor-Rihel-(Strasbourg)-1568-woodcut-and-letterpress-(winged-allegorical-figure)-Museum-f%C3%BCr-Angewandte-Kunst-Vienna.jpg) |
| Anonymous Printmaker Pressmark of Theodor Rihel of Strasbourg 1568 woodcut and letterpress (winged allegorical figure) Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours Mercury in Flight, after an Antique Fresco ca. 1780-92 drawing Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Anonymous Artist Half-Length Figure of Angel 17th century drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| Anonymous Artist Winged Genius with Poet 17th century drawing (design for lunette decoration) Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Anonymous Artist after Aegidius Sadeler Fortuna sailing atop Winged Sphere ca. 1590 watercolor on paper Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
There is an interesting pamphlet by a minor painter called Henry Richter, published in 1817 – the year Constable exhibited Wivenhoe Park – which well illustrates the spirit of creative research that animated the young painters of the nineteenth century. It is called Daylight: A Recent Discovery in the Art of Painting. In this amusing dialogue the painter challenges the Dutch seventeenth-century masters, or rather their ghosts assembled at an exhibition, with the question: "Was there no clear sky in your day, and did not the broad blue light of the atmosphere shine then, as it does now? I find it is this which gives the chief splendour of sunshine by contrasting the golden with the azure lights."
Like Constable, Richter scrutinized the traditional formula handed down in the science of painting and found that if you tested pictures painted in that way they did not look like scenes in daylight. He therefore advocated the addition of more blue in contrast to yellow in order to achieve that equivalence to daylight which had hitherto eluded art.
Richter's criticism was right, but he does not appear to have succeeded in producing a satisfactory alternative. Perhaps he was not inventive enough to put his hypothesis to the test of a successful painting, perhaps he lacked the stamina for trying again and again, and so he disappeared into the oblivion of a tame and uninspired Victorian illustrator while Constable went on experimenting till he found those brighter and cooler harmonies which, indeed, took painting nearer to plein air.
But the evidence of history suggests that all such discoveries involve the systematic comparison of past achievements and present motifs, in other words, the tentative projection of works of art onto nature, experiments as to how far nature can in fact be seen in such terms.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)
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