100 best paintings poll nomination thread

Nominate here

A painting shall be defined as a work in paint on a flat surface, including canvases, panels, walls, and ceilings. Works of multiple panels (triptychs, etc) shall count as a single work. Paintings on canvas or panel with collage elements are permitted as long as the primary medium is paint.

Other ambiguities will be decided by fiat or overlooked.

Nominations close when I feel like it.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Cross

Robert Williams, Carne de Amore

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SvvkRSm0vso/WqVLkoZRrDI/AAAAAAAAGkk/zzweMsiHoykUT7N-_O4L2ohyuHcQoqPGACEwYBhgL/s1600/williams%252C%2Brobert%2Bchick%2Bon%2Benchilada.jpeg

itt: paintings that are plot-points in movies and TV that are terrible paintings (or excellent ones if there are any)

Joseph Ducreux, Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Ducreux1.jpg

^^^ Love that one.

Sargent - El Jaleo

this guy rocks:

The Study of Vermeer, 1964 #botero #naïveart https://t.co/kO1OuaA9Dr pic.twitter.com/OHcYWvnsNS

— Fernando Botero (@ArtistBotero) December 2, 2022

Dalí's Cerberus pic.twitter.com/XQ1BAk8ubB

— Andrei (@TheUntranslated) December 4, 2022

time to crack open my Sister Wendy books

Velazquez - Portrait of Juan de Pareja

Anselm Kiefer, Zim Zum

https://media.nga.gov/iiif/f57996d5-eee1-4986-a985-9b9a25164a36__640/full/!588,600/0/default.jpg

Remedios Varo - Creation of the Birds
https://uploads6.wikiart.org/images/remedios-varo/creation-of-the-birds.jpg!Large.jpg

Leonora Carrington - The Giantess
https://uploads7.wikiart.org/images/leonora-carrington/the-giantess-1950.jpg!Large.jpg

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind
https://uploads7.wikiart.org/00233/images/jean-leon-gerome/jean-l-on-gerome-1896-la-v-rit-sortant-du-puits.jpg!Large.jpg

Also, like obv, Garden of Earthly Delights.

Raises the question, why is she in the well

Probably I’ll leave nominations open for a year or so, see if we can get up to 2000 noms

down a well is the only place you can be without shaming mankind

I think there are actually other paintings of her in the well, unless I just dreamt that. Hang on, got to do some googling.

Ah yeah, wiki has a bit of the backstory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Coming_Out_of_Her_Well

One of the other paintings is called the nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors, so I guess that's why she's down there.

damn those actors

The general societal view of actors as malign trash really needs to make a comeback.

It has been assumed that both paintings (like a similar, later work by Édouard Debat-Ponsan) were comments on the Dreyfus affair,[5] but art historian Bernard Tillier argues that Gérôme's images of Truth and the well were part of his ongoing diatribe against Impressionism.[6][7]

lol, I like that second reading. Truth coming out of her well to scream at impressionist hipsters.

gerome screaming at mike yarwood

gerome and unperson screaming at mike yarwood

There is this artists self-portrait which I thought was by Rembrandt, but doesn’t seem to be in Wikipedia’s compendium of Rembrandt self portraits. It depicts a tiny artist with a huge looming empty canvas before him. A great depiction, that no matter how good you may be at your job, the normal response to the undertaking of any large task is “oh shit how or where do I even start this, what am I even doing, God I suck.”

it looks like it is a Rembrandt, but not really a self-portrait: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-early-rembrandt-perfectly-captures-anxiety-facing-blank-canvas

will throw some noms in the well:

hodler - femme joyeuse
pisanello - the vision of saint eustace
van gogh - l'arlesienne
goya - the dog

El Greco - The Burial of the Count of Orghaz

https://pictures.abebooks.com/inventory/md/md22381697720.jpg

Demuth - I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold

I would like to nominate the entire Lascaux cave complex as a single painting since it can be considered as one enormous wall mural. Here is a small sample:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaux,_Megaloceros.jpg

Füssli / Fuseli - Silence:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_-_Silence_-_WGA08336.jpg

A few personal faves. I love lots of Charles Burchfield, but I'll stick with these two for now:

Gateway to September

http://www.huntermuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Burchfield_1976.3.6-1-e1586109046996.jpg

Ghost Plants (Corn and Sunflowers)

https://burchfieldpenney.org/cache/images/45b8b3a8af3c92452bc773e06477f928.jpg

John Everett Millais "Autumn Leaves"

https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w1200h1200/collection/GMIII/MCAG/GMIII_MCAG_1892_4-001.jpg

Archibald John Motley Jr., "Night Life"

https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/ec19d5f1-ae0f-5186-d421-4a53dca5fb90/full/843,/0/default.jpg

jacques lous david - death of marat

goya - saturn devouring his son

ilya repin - ivan the terrible and his son ivan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_and_His_Son_Ivan

obvious choices i guess but obvious for a reason

caspar david friedrich - sea of ice

grunwald - isenheim altarpiece

jasper johns - flag 1954-1955

mark rothko - brown, blue, brown on blue

philip guston - the studio

I'd never seen the one ArchCarrier posted before, I really love that.

Guys post pictures please unless I recognise the name I’m not bothering to look these up

Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/The_City_Rises_by_Umberto_Boccioni_1910.jpg

pisanello - the vision of saint eustace

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Pisanello_018.jpg

Going to add some I found when I was trawling through the years -

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/george-frederic-watts-e28093-after-the-deluge.jpg

George Frederic Watts – After the Deluge (1891)

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/anders-zorn-a-portrait-of-the-daughters-of-ramc3b3n-subercaseaux.jpg

Anders Zorn – A Portrait of the Daughters of Ramón Subercaseaux (1892)

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/stanisc582aw-wyspiac584ski-planty-o-swicie.jpg

Stanisław Wyspiański – Planty o swicie (1894)

wilhelm trubner - caesar at the rubicon

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Wilhelm_Trübner_-_Caesar_am_Rubicon_-_8522_-_Österreichische_Galerie_Belvedere.jpg

lmao what a good boy

I mean, not that good. Not now there's a sausage

ross bleckner - cage

https://www.artnet.com/artists/ross-bleckner/cage-pxo7CUwZt7AEbaE5m2jnA2

I sometimes think "The Young Napoleon Bonaparte Studying At The Military Academy" is the hardest painting of all time pic.twitter.com/A0aGuGSNG6

— Jash Dholani (@oldbooksguy) December 4, 2022

jacques lous david - death of marat

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat

goya - saturn devouring his son

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son

caspar david friedrich - sea of ice

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_of_Ice

jasper johns - flag 1954-1955

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_(painting)

mark rothko - brown, blue, brown on blue (apparently name changed since i saw in person)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._61_(Rust_and_Blue)

philip guston - the studio

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/philip-guston-the-studio

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/lovis-corinth-e28093-self-portrait-with-skeleton.jpg

Lovis Corinth – Self-portrait with Skeleton (1896)

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/vilhelm-hammershc3b8i-e28093-sunbeams.jpg

Vilhelm Hammershøi – Sunbeams (1900)

https://i0.wp.com/centuriesofsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/zinaida-serebriakova-%E2%80%93-at-the-dressing-table-self-portrait.jpg

Zinaida Serebriakova – At the Dressing-Table: Self-portrait (1909)

ooh I do like a hammershøi.

Emmanuel De Witte - Interior with a Woman Playing a Virginal

https://twitter.com/restot50/status/1194012504495722502

that De Witte is absolutely gorgeous - not familiar with him and so I googled to explore, noticed multiple other versions of that painting with vastly different color palettes... one of the pitfalls of looking at art on the computer screen...

yeah, the widely varying images of the same painting are frustrating, especially when there's only a couple that are a decent resolution and the saturation of the colors is so different.

i don't know de witte either, but i love how far back you can see into those interior rooms

twitter has helpfully age-restricted the De Witte so i can't see the filth

just found out that the Met took down The Silver Tureen by Chardin. it's probably temporary, but i'm gutted. that's one of my go-to artworks at the Met, and probably the painting i've spent the most time looking at anywhere. it's always been there. i wanna post a bunch of Chardin's still lifes here. i can't pick one. those paintings were formative for me.

now, i love paint. i always loved paint. when i was 12 years old i borrowed a deKooning book from the library. i was really excited about it. one of my favorite plates in it was just a picture of his messy paint pots, with different colors swirling around inside. i like paint as much as i like paintings. i love the pigments, i love the viscoelasticity of it. it doesn't take a painter, or a painting, to make paint extremely appealing. it's a beautiful material. there's some quote, i don't remember who said it, but it's on a placard at the Met: Chardin seems to paint with the textures he depicts, he seems to paint with silver and feathers and fur and flesh and porcelain and ripe fruit.

so, i was a teenage kid sitting in a Barnes and Noble reading about Jackson Pollock. an older lady walks up to me and asks if i've seen a then-current exhibit of his drawings. i had, and told her what i thought of it. whatever i said must have impressed her, because she practically dragged me by the arm to where her husband was sitting 20 feet away and repeated it to him. turns out the guy was a student of Hans Hoffmann and gives weekly classes in his basement. i was welcome to attend free of charge. i was just some dumb kid, but these kind people made me feel like i understood art and generously invited me to their house.

that encounter instilled in me that art is what you suppose it is. it isn't something that only trained people can see, or that only sensitive people can see. because at that age, i was very out of touch with my emotions. i thought i didn't have feelings. i was pretty sure that whatever i liked about an artwork, i wasn't capable of being moved by it the way everyone else was. that turned out to be wrong.

anyway, i only went to a few of the classes, but stayed in contact with the couple until he passed away and she moved permanently to Cape Cod. two years later, there was a huge loan exhibition of Chardins at the Met, and they pushed me to check it out.

now, i could not have been less interested in looking at still lifes by some French guy from the 18th century. i was getting into Basquiat and Sigmar Polke, 1980's New York postmodern pop. And that stuff has an electricity to it that i appreciate, but what i took away from the Chardin show is, a great painting doesn't reveal itself to you all at once like that. It makes you slow the fuck down. other than that, i don't know squat about painting. but i'm pretty confident in knowing that one thing. there's pop art, and there's fucking Rembrandt. and that show was the turning point, because if there's anyone who'll make you slow down it's Chardin.

https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/435887/1507013/main-image

The Silver Tureen
Jean Siméon Chardin
French
ca. 1728–30
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"party!", you say? we'd rather be home with some soup. remember that old Weezer shirt that said "if it's too loud, turn it down"? Weezer shirt otm.

https://www.wga.hu/art/c/chardin/1/01ray.jpg
The Ray (1728, Musée du Louvre, Paris)

hell yeah, awesome post and images

i can't imagine chardin slowing down those cats long enough to paint them so vividly! i guess i can imagine the carcasses staying still though :)

exactly, he's contrasting the tension of the cat's body with the stiffness of the carcasses. that's what the placard says, i've seen it a million times.

i intend to post a bunch more Chardins but it's slower than i thought. i feel bad about this, since calzino managed to pick just one Cezanne way upthread, and absolutely nailed it. yeah, that one.

i get that this is 100 paintings, not painters. but fuckin' Chardin, y'know?

he has another one that does something similar, with a dog looking up longingly at a banquet table.

i always think of my dad's wake. i walked some of the mourners downstairs and out the door, and when i came back upstairs 2 minutes later, my black lab was standing on the buffet table. he'd eaten everything.

Those Chardin's are great. He's one of those anonymous (to me), but technically great French painters from that period that I can't keep straight, but recognized that first one instantly.

Great posts Deflatormouse ty

Keep the nominations coming folks, I’m closing them in 1 to 70 years

It's a shame about the ray.

Great thread, btw. First time I've seen it.

That De Witte painting is in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts -- its page on the painting is probably best as far as color/resolution.

De Witte also has a series of paintings of Dutch church interiors worth seeing.

That De Witte painting is incredible. It feels almost infinitely deep. Weirdly made me think of Renoir (the film maker).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Flaming_June%2C_by_Frederic_Lord_Leighton_%281830-1896%29.jpg

Nominating one of my wife's favorites, Flaming June by Frederic Leighton

https://dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net/2022/04/202217-Michael-Art-NO-COLOUR-CORRECTION-1038x778.jpg

Red Sunset on the Dnieper, Arkhip Kuindzhi

Nicolaes Maes - The Eavesdropper (1657)

https://uploads6.wikiart.org/images/nicolaes-maes/the-eavesdropper-1657.jpg!Large.jpg

Berthold Woltze - Der lästige Kavalier (known in English as "The Irritating Gentleman"), 1874

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Berthold_Woltze_-_Der_l%C3%A4stige_Kavalier.jpg

Oh that one is the best painting actually

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_The_Banjo_Lesson.jpg/427px-Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_The_Banjo_Lesson.jpg
Henry Tanner - The Banjo Lesson

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Hippolyte_Flandrin_-_Young_Man_by_the_Sea_-_WGA07905.jpg/1104px-Hippolyte_Flandrin_-_Young_Man_by_the_Sea_-_WGA07905.jpg?20110613085313
Hyppolite Flandrin - Young Man by the Sea

https://media.myswitzerland.com/image/fetch/c_lfill,g_auto,w_3200,h_1800/f_auto,q_80,fl_keep_iptc/https://www.myswitzerland.com/-/media/st/gadmin/images/attractions/museum/sa_kmbern_der-tag_hodler_235251.jpg

Killed for five months, rises from its ashes

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_Beata_Beatrix%2C_1864-1870.jpg
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Beata Beatrix (1870)

https://media.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T13/T13589_10.jpg

Leonor Fini Little Hermit Sphinx

victor brauner, suicide at dawn (1930)
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5888ae4a1e5b6c469bd7775b/1634273504588-5SA621RZ6B3KY68WSYMV/Screen+Shot+2021-10-15+at+12.50.19+AM.png

https://i.imgur.com/hfOYOvI.jpeg

hyman bloom, the bride

https://i.ibb.co/fdjc1mR8/DP154016.jpg
龔賢 Gong Xian - 山水圖 冊 from ‘Landscapes and Trees' (album of twelve leaves)
ink on paper, 1679

beautiful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magdalen_Reading#/media/File:The_Magdalen_Reading_-_Rogier_van_der_Weyden.jpg

Rogier van der Weyden, The Magdalen Reading

https://i.imgur.com/WRMl7el.jpeg

The Magdalen Putting Off Replacing Her Brita Filter

Lol

https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w800h800/collection/NG/NG/NG_NG_NG3214-001.jpg

Artist simply listed as 'a follower of Rembrandt' - A Man seated reading at a Table in a Lofty Room

magical thread

a couple dead links from my earlier post

georgia o’keeffe - black hollyhock, blue larkspur
https://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/assets/img/paintings/black-hollyhock-blue-larkspur.jpg

basquiat - skull
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/11/Untitled-Head-Jean-Michel_Basquiat-1981.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/1W8cZKI.jpg

jack b yeats, for the road

https://i.imgur.com/owL2Kd0.png

kupka, mme kupka among verticals (1910)

dig that

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%90%D7%9C_%D7%A1%D7%92%D7%9F-%D7%9B%D7%94%D7%9F%2C_%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%9F%2C_1983.jpg

leviathan, michael sgan-cohen

Saw this in the flesh last week and dammit, the photo does not capture it *at all*. It has a backlit luminosity that defies belief - like it appears to hover in front of itself somehow - and the values are almost flat across the entire piece irl, with only very small areas of tonal contrast. Its broken surface reveals textural layers and depths up close, it is loaded with literal substance. Believe me the real thing is a contender for the best 100 paintings. Get the hell into George Morrison: https://www.metroframe.com/blog/2013/06/modern-spirit-the-art-of-george-morrison/

https://i.ibb.co/0j0Fd6c1/restricted.jpg
Title
Untitled (Blue Painting)
Artist
George Morrison
Date
1958
Medium
Oil on canvas

cool, i will check him out!

got really focused on this earlier today:

https://i.postimg.cc/0NMv6DSy/Giuseppe-Pietro-Bagetti-The-Walnut-Tree-in-Benevento-(the-Witches-Sabbath)-(1816).jpg
Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti, The Walnut Tree in Benevento (the Witches' Sabbath), 1826

if you zoom really close in it’s amazing how well the circles of people are depicted with so few strokes and colors. and those in the distance have perfect blurry/smooshed edges

i wanna be part of that scene!! he handles figures with the economy of a watercolor painter, i agree

oh, it is a watercolor!

years back i posted a pedro friedeberg upthread which now doesn't show (did it ever?) poss due to my weak formatting skills.
let me try again:
https://tunicastudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OBRA_06-300dpi-1024x1018.jpg

Oh that's fantastic! Great thread idea, can't wait to go through all the posts itt.

My nominations, two sentimental favs:
Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958-1966
Lyonel Feininger, The Green Bridge II, 1916

Edward Hopper - Rooms By The Sea (1951)

https://i.postimg.cc/MHWttfS8/image.png

dangerous step right there

Images for my nominations way upthread:

Velazquez - Portrait of Juan de Pareja:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Retrato_de_Juan_Pareja%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez.jpg/1280px-Retrato_de_Juan_Pareja%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez.jpg

Sargent - El Jaleo

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/EL_JALEO-SINGER.jpg/2560px-EL_JALEO-SINGER.jpg

Demuth - I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/NY_Met_demuth_figure_5_gold.JPG

El Greco - The Burial of Count Orgaz

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/El_Greco_-_The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz.JPG/1280px-El_Greco_-_The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz.JPG