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| Balthasar van den Bossche Visit to Sculptor's Studio 1704 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Pieter Angelis Sculptor's Studio 1716 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Hieronymus van der Mij Portrait of unknown man ca. 1715-30 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Hindric Sebastian Sommar Letter Rack - Trompe l'oeil ca. 1748 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
"Depicting feigned letter racks, cabinet doors, or framed pictures, these paintings are now considered examples of trompe l'oeil, even though the term did not come into use until around 1800. Academic theorists in the eighteenth century and later opined that, in attempting to deceive the viewers with heightened verisimilitude, the trompe l'oeil failed to express ideas and truths, which ought to be the highest goal of art. More recently, scholars such as Baudrillard, Marin, and Charpentrart have argued that trompe l'oeil paintings raise profound questions about perception and representation. Baudrillard highlights the radical nature of such pictorial creations by referring to them as "anti-painting." What Baudrillard implicitly defines as "painting" seem to correspond to the istoria described by Leon Battista Albert in De Pictura. Against the narrative scenes staged in perspectival spaces, trompe l'oeil images – according to Baudrillard – offer painted surrogates of things in the "unreal reversion to the whole representative space elaborated by the Renaissance." In other words, the quality of trompe l'oeil paintings that disturbed academic authors, i.e. the collapses of the distinction between image and referent, is what intrigues modern commentators. . . . In psychoanalytic terms, linear perspective is an instrument of pleasure and power in that it purports to be constructed around the viewer's vantage point, allowing him or her a mastering gaze over the representation. The trompe l'oeil, by inverting that scheme, threatens this relationship between viewer and picture."
– Angela Ho, from an article on Gerrit Dou's Enchanting Trompe-l'Oeil, published in the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (Winter 2015)
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| Georg Engelhard Schröder Juno, or, Allegory of the Element of Air before 1750 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Lorens Pasch the Younger Dancing Children ca. 1765-70 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Elias Martin Villa of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) at Twickenham 1773 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
"Alexander Pope came to live in Twickenham in the spring of 1719. He took a lease of some riverside land owned by Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park. There were several cottages on the land, in the middle of a small working community. . . . He brought with him his elderly mother, his childhood nurse, Mary Beach, and a hound named Bounce, the first of many so named. Demolishing one of the cottages and lodging in another, possibly newly built by Vernon, he built his villa. He may have been assisted by James Gibbs, but the design was not of a high standard: the amateur hand of Pope himself, celebrating his association with Burlington and the Palladian movement, is surely apparent. At the time he obtained a licence to construct a tunnel beneath the road, Cross Deep, to give access to about five acres of land which he leased and enclosed to form a garden. . . . The land between the villa and the river became what he described as his 'grass plot,' flanked with planting which included a weeping willow. Later, this tree acquired considerable fame. The cellars of his villa were at ground level facing the river and in the centre portion he established his first grotto. Seven years of translating Homer's Iliad brought him both money and a delight in classical mythology. The latter, naturally enough, found expression in the creation of the grotto. Complete by 1725, he wrote to his friend Edward Blount that, having found a spring of water it lacked nothing but nymphs. These he never did find."
– from curator's notes at the Twickenham Museum
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| Pehr Hilleström At the Embroidery Frame ca. 1770 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Pehr Hilleström Two Maid-servants at a Brook ca. 1780-90 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Johan Gottlob Brusell Vaulted Staircase 1778 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Johan Gottlob Brusell Temple Staircase ca. 1780 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Nicolai Abildgaard The Spirit of Culmin appears to his Mother (episode from Ossian) ca. 1780 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
"Abildgaard's appreciation of the Ossianic poems was almost certainly a result of his association with the British artists in Rome, and he appears to be one of the first artists outside Great Britain to have illustrated the work of the Celtic bard (the veracity of which was eventually disputed). His interest extended to the acquisition of several annotated editions of James Macpherson's poems of Ossian, in which Abildgaard had marked scenes suitable for artistic treatment. Time and again, Abildgaard returned to this circle of themes, choosing to depict somber, tragic scenes from the heroic poems. . ."
– Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850, edited by Christopher John Murray (Routledge, 2013)
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| Johan Tietrich Schoultz Battle of Fredrikshamn, 1790 (attack by the Swedish fleet on the Russian fleet) 1792 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Pierre-Jacques Volaire Bathing Men before 1799 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |