The Private Life of a Masterpiece

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  • BBC Two
  • Documentary

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Rembrandt van Rijn: The Night Watch
Episode overview
Why should a painting of a group of part-time Amsterdam militiamen, dressed up for an occasion that wasn't serious anyway, have become the most revered painting in Holland? The full story of Rembrandt's masterpiece.
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Auguste Rodin: The Kiss
Episode overview
Rodin's The Kiss is arguably the most sensual sculpture in the art of the past 150 years. Its subject matter is more daring that most people understand: A it portrays a girl seducing a .. show full overview
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Francisco Goya: The Third of May 1808
Episode overview
Arguably the most powerful painting about war ever achieved. It portrays the slaughter of civilians after Napoleonic troops entered Madrid in 1808. The programme reveals the historical .. show full overview
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Auguste Renoir: Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre
Episode overview
This painting was once described as the most beautiful of all the artworks of the 19th century. Certainly it seems the happiest. But beneath renoir's joyful portrayal of working class Parisians at leisure is another, darker story.
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Sandro Botticelli: La Primavera
Episode overview
Botticelli's painting is extraordinarily beautiful; his portrayal of Flora, the central character, reveals a face you might find in London or Bologna or Boston today. But what the .. show full overview
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Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave
Episode overview
Perhaps the most celebrated of all Japanese pictures, the Great Wave's portrayal of a huge wave about to overwhelm three boats was only produced by Hokusai when he was old and broke and .. show full overview
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Edgar Degas: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
Episode overview
The statue of the young girl in a real ballet dress is often seen today just as a pretty image of dancer making one of the classic moves of ballet. But to the people who first saw the .. show full overview
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Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers
Episode overview
Perhaps the most reproduced of all 19th century paintings, The Sunflowers has a story that lies at the crux of the complex relationship between Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. The film .. show full overview
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Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Episode overview
Arguably the first modern painting, this portrayal of five huge prostitutes was so powerful and controversial when it was first revealed that one fellow artist declared that Picasso would be found hanged behind it one day.
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James McNeill Whistler: Whistler's Mother
Episode overview
The stark portrait, mainly in greys and black, that James McNeill Whistler painted of his mother is now a picture that is widely lampooned as a portrait of a prim Victorian lady. She is .. show full overview
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Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People
Episode overview
The great revolutionary masterpiece, painted by a man who soon complained that revolutions got in the way of dinner parties. Shunned by the government of the day, it has endured to .. show full overview

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