You Pick BestYouPickBest

What is the greatest painting series in art history?

by YPB Team2 votes

Artists who could not leave a subject alone: the same haystack, the same mountain, the same face, again and again until something changed.

  1. Canaletto's Venice vedute — ranked #11
    Canaletto's Venice vedute
    Dozens of near-identical views of the Grand Canal, painted for British visitors in the 1730s.
    1000pts
  2. Van Gogh's Sunflowers — ranked #22
    Van Gogh's Sunflowers
    Cut sunflowers in a vase, painted in Arles to decorate a room for Gauguin.
    832pts
  3. Degas' Dancers — ranked #33
    Degas' Dancers
    Hundreds of rehearsal-room studies in paint, pastel and wax.
    718pts
  4. Monet's Water Lilies — ranked #44
    Monet's Water Lilies
    Roughly 250 canvases of one pond at Giverny, painted over thirty years.
    636pts
  5. Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji — ranked #55
    Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
    The woodblock series that includes The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
    538pts
  6. Hogarth's A Rake's Progress — ranked #66
    Hogarth's A Rake's Progress
    Eight paintings following one man from inheritance to the madhouse.
    538pts
  7. Monet's Haystacks — ranked #77
    Monet's Haystacks
    Twenty-five canvases of grain stacks in a field next door.
    538pts
  8. Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons — ranked #88
    Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons
    Sixteen etched fantasy dungeons, made in the 1750s and reworked a decade later.
    418pts
  9. Picasso's Las Meninas — ranked #99
    Picasso's Las Meninas
    Fifty-eight canvases taking apart one Velazquez painting in 1957.
    418pts
  10. Durer's Apocalypse — ranked #1010
    Durer's Apocalypse
    Fifteen woodcuts of the Book of Revelation, published by the artist himself in 1498.
    418pts
  11. Monet's Poplars — ranked #1111
    Monet's Poplars
    A line of trees on the river Epte, painted through a whole season.
    418pts
  12. Monet's Rouen Cathedral — ranked #1212
    Monet's Rouen Cathedral
    About thirty views of one facade at different hours and weathers.
    0pts
  13. Goya's Black Paintings — ranked #1313
    Goya's Black Paintings
    Fourteen murals painted straight onto the walls of Goya's own house.
    0pts
  14. Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations — ranked #1414
    Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations
    Fifty-five woodblock prints of the road from Edo to Kyoto, published in 1833.
    0pts
  15. Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire — ranked #1515
    Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire
    The same Provencal mountain painted more than sixty times.
    0pts

#art36#tv shows311#classics486#all-time321#paintings10

Comments

Monet bought a row of poplars outright to stop a timber merchant felling them mid-series. Artists who could not leave a subject alone: https://youpick.best/articles/monet-ranked-many-ways

YP
ypb-team
·3h ago·