Famous Oil Paintings: 12 That Show What Oil Can Do
The most famous oil paintings are a showcase of what oil paint alone can do, from van Eyck's jewel like detail to Van Gogh's thick ridges of color. Slow drying oil gave painters five hundred years of tricks the older paints never allowed.
So I have picked twelve not only for fame but for what each one shows the medium doing, glazing, blending, thick paint and pure light. The short history is in what oil painting is.
What oil paint made possible:
Blending. Oil dries slowly, so a painter can melt one tone into the next with no hard edge.
Glazing. Thin, see through layers stack up like colored glass, giving depth and glow.
Impasto. Thick paint holds the mark of the brush, so light catches the ridges like a relief.
Time. A picture could take months, reworked wet on wet, instead of drying in minutes.
The next three things to read
These go past the caption and into what actually happened:
The Arnolfini Portrait, detail by detail, the mirror, the dog, and the question everyone asks
Twelve famous portraits and the real people, the faces behind the paintings
Inside Monet house at Giverny, room by room, including his own bedroom
1. Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)
For centuries people believed Jan van Eyck invented oil paint. That is a myth, yet in 1434 he perfected it so completely that the Arnolfini Portrait still looks like the moment oil painting truly began, a whole Flemish room glowing in jewel like detail down to the reflections in a tiny round mirror.
Older paints dried too fast for such work. By grinding his colors in oil, van Eyck could work slowly, glaze layer over layer, and reach a depth and shine that egg based tempera never allowed, and the medium took off from him.
The fuller story is in what oil painting is.
2. Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1559)
Titian built his figures out of color, working up from paint instead of a drawing. In Diana and Actaeon, finished around 1559, warm flesh, red drapery and blue sky all seem lit from within, because oil let him lay glaze over glaze until the color itself became the light.
Late in life he loosened even further, pushing and smearing paint with his fingers. The Venetians called this way of working colorito, color first, and it ran straight through to Rubens, Rembrandt and beyond.
3. Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600)
A shaft of light cuts across a dark room and lands on the one man who does not yet know his whole life is about to change. Caravaggio painted The Calling of Saint Matthew around 1600, and oil is what let him drop most of the scene into deep, smoky shadow.
Only oil could hold that range, from near black gloom to a single blazing highlight, without the colors going flat or chalky. This drama of light and dark, called tenebrism, changed religious painting across Europe.
4. Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Two Circles (about 1665)
Stand close to a late Rembrandt and the face breaks into thick, rough ridges of paint you could almost feel. Around 1665 Rembrandt painted himself as a tired old master, building the lit side of his face from heavy oil laid on like plaster.
He used the thickness itself as light, letting real ridges of paint catch the real light of the room, a trick called impasto. In shadow he went thin and smooth, so the whole head turns in space.
5. Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft (about 1660)
Vermeer painted his home town under a broken sky, and the whole city seems to hold its breath after rain. In View of Delft, from around 1660, tiny beads of thick pale oil sit on the rooftops and boats like drops of real light.
Marcel Proust called it the most beautiful picture in the world and slipped it into his great novel. Only oil, glazed and then dotted with these little points of paint, could make wet stone and water gleam this way.
6. Diego Velazquez, Portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650)
Up close this portrait is a blur of quick, loose strokes, yet step back and a living man looks straight at you. Velazquez painted Juan de Pareja, his own assistant, in 1650, working wet and fast in what painters call alla prima, all at one go.
He trusted oil to do the work from a distance, letting a few sure marks stand for lace, stubble and a steady gaze. When it was shown in Rome, people said the portrait was truth and everything else was only art.
7. Peter Paul Rubens, Le Chapeau de Paille (about 1622)
Nobody made oil paint feel like living skin the way Rubens did. Around 1622 he painted a young woman in a wide hat, her cheeks and hands glowing with a warmth that looks almost like breathing.
He loved oil for its speed and flow, sweeping it on in fluid, confident strokes and layering warm glazes over cool underpaint to build flesh from the inside out. The trick fooled the eye then and still does now.
8. Jean Simeon Chardin, The Ray (about 1728)
A gutted ray fish hangs on a hook, glistening and faintly monstrous, next to a hissing cat and a pile of oysters. Chardin painted The Ray around 1728, turning a plain kitchen bench into a lesson in what oil can do with pure texture.
He built the wet, slippery flesh of the fish from rough, grainy paint that looks almost crude up close and perfect from across the room. Painters have studied that surface ever since, wondering how so little says so much.
9. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Grande Odalisque (1814)
Where Rembrandt piled paint on, Ingres rubbed every brushmark away. In The Grande Odalisque of 1814 the skin is so smooth and cool it looks like polished porcelain, with not a single stroke left showing.
Oil let him blend endlessly, working the surface until it was flawless and hard as enamel. Critics complained his reclining woman had a few too many vertebrae, but Ingres cared only for one long, perfect, impossible line.
10. J M W Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed (1844)
A train tears through a golden storm, and the whole world seems to be turning into light and weather. Turner painted Rain, Steam and Speed in 1844, pushing oil so far toward pure atmosphere that solid things almost dissolve.
He scrubbed, scraped and glazed the paint until rain, steam and speed melted into one blur, decades before anyone spoke of abstraction. Oil, in his hands, stopped describing the world and began to become it.
11. Auguste Renoir, Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876)
Sunlight falls in dancing spots through the trees onto a crowd of dancers, and you can almost hear the band. Renoir painted the Bal du Moulin de la Galette in 1876, dabbing bright oil straight onto the canvas in quick, broken touches.
Working outdoors and fast, the Impressionists gave up a smooth finish for flecks of pure color that blend in your eye instead of on the palette. Wet, loose oil was the only paint quick and rich enough to catch a moment of shifting light like this.
12. Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Cypresses (1889)
By the end, Van Gogh painted a field as if he were carving it. In Wheatfield with Cypresses of 1889, the wheat, the clouds and the dark trees all swirl in thick ropes and ridges of oil squeezed almost straight from the tube.
He pushed oil to its physical limit, making the paint itself twist and heave with feeling, and I follow his last, blazing year in the last day of Vincent van Gogh. Five hundred years after van Eyck's quiet mirror, the same slow, generous paint could finally roar.
The walls these hang on today
Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, and Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed: the National Gallery, London.
Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew: the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Two Circles: Kenwood House, London.
Vermeer, View of Delft: the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Velazquez, Juan de Pareja: the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
If the paint itself pulled you in, keep going:
Luncheon of the Boating Party, detail by detail, who everybody at that table actually was
Ten women artists you need to know, the names the textbooks skipped
Was Monet really the first Impressionist, the painting that may have got there first
Oil paint, a few quick questions
What is the most famous oil painting? Leonardo's Mona Lisa, painted in oil around 1503, is the most famous of all, with Van Gogh's Starry Night close behind.
Why did oil paint take over from tempera? Because it dries slowly, letting painters blend, glaze and rework, which older egg based paints could not do.
What is impasto? Oil laid on so thickly that the brush or knife marks stand up from the surface and catch the light.
When was oil painting invented? Oil was used earlier, but Jan van Eyck perfected it around the 1430s, and it spread across Europe from there.
Why is oil paint so slow to dry? Its colors are ground in oil rather than water, so it hardens by a slow chemical change over days, not minutes.
Five hundred years in a tube
Line them up and you are really watching one material grow up. The same slow paint that let van Eyck count the hairs on a little dog also let Rembrandt pile light onto his own aging face, let Turner turn a train into weather, and let Van Gogh wring a wheatfield until it moved.
That last painter sold almost nothing while alive, yet in 1990 a single Van Gogh oil, the Portrait of Dr Gachet, sold for eighty two and a half million dollars.
Five centuries of slow, generous paint, and people still cross oceans to stand in front of the ridges a human hand left drying in place.