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| Roelant Savery Mountainous Landscape 1606-1607 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pierre Patel Landscape with Bridge ca. 1650 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Pointing to the broad river sparkling in the morning sun, he spoke of a picture painted by Lucas van Valckenborch towards the end of the sixteenth century during what is now called the Little Ice Age, showing the frozen Schelde from the opposite bank, with the city of Antwerp very dark beyond it and a strip of flat countryside stretching towards the sea. A shower of snow is falling from the lowering sky above the tower of the cathedral of Our Lady, and out on the river now before us some four hundred years later, said Austerlitz, the people of Antwerp are amusing themselves on the ice, the common folk in coats of earthy brown colors, persons of greater distinction in black cloaks with white lace ruffs round their necks. In the foreground, close to the right-hand edge of the picture, a lady has just fallen. She wears a canary-yellow dress, and the cavalier bending over her in concern is clad in red breeches, very conspicuous in the pallid light. Looking at the river now, thinking of that painting and its tiny figures, said Austerlitz, I feel as if the moment depicted by Lucas van Valckenborch had never come to an end, as if the canary-yellow lady had only just fallen over or swooned, as if the black velvet hood had only this moment dropped away from her head, as if the little accident, which no doubt goes unnoticed by most viewers, were always happening over and over again, and nothing and no one could ever remedy it."
– from Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell (Random House, 2001)
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| Jean-François Thomas de Thomon The Pantheon, Rome 1790 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-François Thomas de Thomon Architectural Composition, Egyptian Temple 1803 watercolor, gouache Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-François Thomas de Thomon Architectural Fantasy 1801 watercolor, pastel Hermitage, Saint Petrsburg |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Design for a Monument for the Temple of Immortality ca. 1790 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Louis-Jean Desprez Scenery for the opera Frigga 1787 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Adam Menelaws Landscape in the Alexander Park at Tsarskoye Selo after 1828 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Ferdinand-Jean Monchablon Allegory in honor of the Franco-Russian Alliance ca. 1893 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret Watercolorist in the Louvre ca. 1889 oil on panel Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| James McNeil Whistler Silver and Blue, Southampton 1887 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Georges Rouault Spring 1911 watercolor Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pablo Picasso Boy with dog 1905 gouache on cardboard Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Édouard Vuillard Children in a room ca. 1909 gouache Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"In the warm season of the year in particular, said Vera, she had always had to move the geraniums on the sill aside as soon as we came back from our daily walk, so that I could take my favorite place on the window seat and look down on the garden with its lilac trees and the low building opposite where the hunchbacked tailor Moravec had his workshop, and while she, so Vera said, cut bread and boiled the kettle, I used to give her a running commentary on whatever Moravec happened to be doing: mending the worn hem of a jacket, rummaging in his button box, or sewing a quilted lining into an overcoat. But I was particularly anxious, Vera told me, said Austerlitz, not to miss the moment when Moravec put down his needle and thread, his big scissors, and the other tools of his trade, cleared the baize-covered table, spread a double sheet of newspaper on it, and laid out on this sheet blackened with print the supper he must have been looking forward to for some time, a supper which varied according to the season and might be curd cheese with chives, a long radish, a few tomatoes with onions, a smoked herring, or boiled potatoes. He's putting the sleeve dummy in the wardrobe, he's going out into the kitchen, now he's bringing in his beer, now he's sharpening his knife, he's cutting a slice of sausage, taking a long drink from his glass, wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand – it was in this or some similar fashion, always the same yet always slightly different, that I used to describe the tailor's supper to her almost every evening, said Vera, and I often had to be reminded not to forget my own bread-and-butter soldiers."
– from Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell (Random House, 2001)