Five Art History Tutors Share their Favourite Works of Art

Julie Barlow on John Everett Millais’s Mariana from the collection of the Tate Britain

"This has long been a favourite painting of mine (I can't pin it down to just one, as my aesthetic taste is very broad). Why do I love it? The painstaking attention to detail that was such a part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother’s approach at this moment. It seems to encapsulate all the feelings of Romantic love - the yearning, the waiting, the disappointment that might (does) lie ahead, the laying oneself open to the potential pain as well as the pleasure that love brings (a Keatsian theme, his poems were republished in 1848 and a biography written). 

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were barely out of art college, three young men desperate to fall in love and caught up in the dreaminess of the medieval world. Lord Tennyson's poem Mariana, which this painting is based on, encapsulates all these feelings. Beyond the subject matter, it is the vivid blue of Mariana's fabulous medieval dress against the glowing orange of the stool from which she rises which stuns me every time I see it."

Emma Rose Barber on Pontormo’s Visitation (1528-9) in the Church of San Michele and San Francesco in Carmignano, Italy 

"This is one of the most haunting pictures I know. It depicts two women, gently embracing. They stare intently at each another and they are mirror imaged by two other woman who face outwards towards the viewer. But these are no ordinary women. They are Mary and Elizabeth – the mothers of Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, who are greeting one another to delight in their shared news. For, they are both going to be mothers. 

The background setting is still, unpeopled, very modern looking and it is hard to believe this is a religious painting. But it is. And lurking somewhere in the background, are two men. No prizes for guessing who they are. What is also special about the work is that it is located in a church way off the tourist track in a village equally well off the beaten track. Do go. For there is a wonderful restaurant there as well!"

Henry Martin on Jacob Riis’s “Five Cent a Spot” Unauthorized Lodgings in a Bayard Street Tenement, 1888 from the collection of the Preus Museum, Norway

"A Danish immigrant to the U.S., Jacob Riis experienced personal destitution in New York before his success as a writer and photographer. This work, published in How the Other Half Lives (1888), was made possible by the recent invention of flash photography; and Riis’s book, combining text and half-tone reproductions, was the first of its kind in documentary practice: an early example of photojournalism and the photo essay. How many men are cramped into the frame of this unfit tenement? How many more are unseen? 

Though Riis photographed New York’s impoverished immigrant communities to help increase awareness and spur reform, this image highlights key tensions within the photographic medium; on participant consent; the intended audience; and aesthetics versus reality. It stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw it and remains striking today. It is a reminder of the gross gulf of agency, opportunity and security that millions experience due to forced migration, climate uncertainty and systemic inequality. The tin bowls, boots, stove and sacks of clothes—and the dignity of the men, tired and vulnerable—exude a frayed, precarious humanity."

Liz Eyres on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Return of the Hunters or Hunters in the Snow, 1565 from the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"I first saw a reproduction of this painting in a friend’s house in Norwich as I child and it was love at first sight. This first encounter was not long after the Big Freeze of 1963 when thick snow lay on the ground for two months, so I identified with the trudging men crunching through the crisp, fresh snow with icy feet at the end of the day. 
There is something remarkable about the way our eye is effortlessly led down the hill by the row of trees to the intriguing view beyond, and the way Bruegel uses contrasting colours to link disparate parts of the image. He also shows how snow can change the effects of natural light, with the scene illuminated from below rather than from above, resulting in an almost surreal absence of shadows.

The painting examines the hardships of life in winter in northern Europe at this time, although it must be said that the mountain peaks are not typical of Flemish landscape and are from Bruegel’s imagination. But contrasting with the disappointed hunters who have returned exhausted and almost empty handed, other locals have come outside to make the most of the freezing conditions and have fun. It is these sorts of tiny details, including the iced-up waterwheel and the old woman carrying a huge bundle of firewood across the bridge, that make the painting so rewarding. It still sends tingles down my spine each time I teach it in my course on Northern Renaissance art."

Ben Pollitt on Joshua Reynold’s Portrait of Mai, c. 1775 from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery 

"This painting is the classic image of Britain’s earliest encounters with French Polynesia, known at the time as the Society Islands. The subject, Mai, or Omai, was the first Polynesian visitor to Britain, where he become a celebrity. The painting is more than an outstanding example of a grand-manner portrait. It is more, too, than an exemplary illustration of self-fashioning in the first age of celebrity. What makes it my favourite work of art is how brilliantly it records a meeting between two very different cultures and, for all its classical grandeur, offers up wonderful details that help us to think critically and creatively about the art-making practices of both."