Romantic Works of Art for Valentine's Day in London

Take a Valentine-themed tour through London's museums

Fall head-over-heels in love with London’s most heartmelting art by following Ossian Ward and Eddy Frankel’s guide to Valentine-worthy works and pulse-quickening paintings.

 

The Swing – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767 – Wallace Collection

 The premise for this racily romantic rococo confection began like a particularly bad, blue joke: the lady on the swing with the frilly bloomers being pushed from behind by the bishop in the bushes. The painter eventually omitted the religious slight but positioned the Georgian gentleman who commissioned the picture in an even more compromising position, staring up at the stockinged legs of his young mistress.

Venus and Mars - Sandro Botticelli – 1485 National Gallery

 Those Carry On folk had nothing on the early renaissance master of innuendo, Boticcelli. This saucy scene shows what happens when the gods of love and war make love not war, knackering the man from Mars to the post-coital point where even a blast from his horn or a poke from his own phallic spear can’t rouse the normally belligerent bloke.

Disappointed Love – Francis Danby, 1821 – Victoria & Albert Museum

 A surefire downer by Irish painter Danby, this melancholic maiden is surrounded by a discarded bonnet, shawl and a miniature portrait of her lover, while a torn-up letter floats away on the pond. Given that this predates the famous ‘Ophelia’ at Tate Britain (meaning it’s pre-Pre-Raphaelite), perhaps Millais was himself in the gallery when a visitor remarked that the poor girl in the picture was somewhat ugly. ‘Yes’, replied his associate, ‘one feels that the sooner she drowns herself the better’.

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – Pablo Picasso – 1932 Tate Modern

 At the age of 45, and married to the raunchily named Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, Picasso fell in love with seventeen-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter. When she accidentally walked in on Pablo with another mistress, Dora Maar, the two women demanded that he choose between them. He had a better idea, and instead had them fight each other for him. What a gent.

Nevermore – Paul Gauguin, 1897 – Courtauld Institute of Art

 Gauguin’s downtime in Tahiti was filled with enough rumpy pumpy to make Caligula blush. As well as the four children he had with his French wife, he had innumerable offspring with an impressive array of local indigenous women. So if he did anything in his life, apart from paint, it was love. A lot. And surely that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about.


For More Love Inspired Art be sure to click on the link below:
http://www.timeout.com/london/art/romantic-works-of-art-to-see-on-valentines-day




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