Though never officially a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this colleague of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris was, by inclination and practice, sympathetic to the realist ambitions of the movement. Born in Calais, Madox Brown studied in Belgium and was influenced by the German...

The so-called Zulu War came at the moment of greatest British imperial presence in South Africa. Though understood differently today, in 1879 - the year of the event depicted in de Neuville's famous canvas - the violent exchange was seen in terms of Britain's rightful defence of its own colonial...

Jacques Blanchard was one of the most important painters active in Paris in the first half of the seventeenth century. His principal rivals were Simon Vouet and Philippe de Champaigne. Born in Paris in 1600, Blanchard served an apprenticeship with his uncle, a little known painter called Nicolas...