The National Gallery: 30 Highlight Paintings

Vincent van Gogh, "Sunflowers" (1888)

Vermeer, Seurat, Gainsborough, Rembrandt - the National Gallery in London presents this website with thirty "greatest hits" of their collection. Visitors to the site can zoom in on the details of any of the paintings, such as a close-up of Venus' elaborately braided hair in Sandro Botticelli's Venus and Mars, 1485, or get close enough to see the individual brushstrokes in Van Gogh's Sunflowers, 1888. Each painting is accompanied by commentary, for example, this version of Sunflowers is one of four that Van Gogh painted in 1888 (not counting several in other years), and "the various versions and replicas remain much debated among Van Gogh scholars."


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Source: The Scout Report (April 29, 2011)

Sandro Botticelli,"Venus and Mars" (about 1485)

CLAUDE-OSCAR MONET, "BATHERS AT LA GRENOUILLERE" (1869)

Canaletto,"The Stonemason's Yard" (about 1725)

Paul Cézanne, "Les Grandes Baigneuses" (about 1894-1905)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, "The Fighting Temeraire" (1839)

Raphael,"La Madonna dei Garofani" (about 1506-7)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, "The Supper at Emmaus" (1601)

Diego Velázquez, "The Rokeby Venus" (1647-51)

Georges Seurat,"Bathers at Asnières" (1884)

A God's-Eye View of the World

Wall Street Journal
April 22, 2011

A wave of ambitious social-network experiments is underway in the U.S. and Europe to track our movements, probe our relationships and, ultimately, affect the individual choices we all make. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports.

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Your name, sir?

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie perform a hilarious short comedy sketch in a police station. A man making a statement has a surname that is pretty hard to pronounce! Watch this classic moment from the ground-breaking comedy sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie for free with BBC Worldwide.