Melancholy
1874 · Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia
A woman slumped back on a sofa, and Degas reads the whole state of mind off the slope of her shoulders.
★ 4.2
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Melancholy
1892 · National Gallery (Oslo), Oslo
A man broods on the shore while a couple boards a boat far off, and the curving coastline carries the whole mood by itself.
★ 5.7
Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1629)
1629 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt was barely in his twenties and using his own face as a laboratory for light. Dozens more would follow over forty years.
★ 6.1
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
1593 · Galleria Borghese, Rome
Fruit already spotting toward rot, painted with the same attention as the boy holding it. An early statement of what Caravaggio intended.
★ 6.6
Boy Leading a Horse
1906 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
The Rose Period cooling off into something graver and more archaic, the boy and horse built like figures off a Greek relief.
★ 6.7
Boy with a Pipe
1905 · Private collection
A boy from the street in a crown of roses, painted the year Picasso's blue gloom warmed into rose.
★ 6.9
Pierrot, Formerly Known as Gilles
1719 · Louvre, Paris
A clown in white satin stands alone at full length with his arms hanging useless, given the scale of a grand portrait.
★ 7.6