Bright Bits

Émile Munier
“Breakfast,” 1880

Wake up each morning believing something good is bound to happen today—and it just might.

— Nina Dobrev

Bright Bits

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
*Gazelle the White Horse*, 1881

Painted when Lautrec was 17, this work shows a white horse gazing from the deep shadows of its stable. Its wise, accepting eyes seem to belong to the hero of an Eastern tale.

A poor man’s white horse ran away. When neighbours called it a misfortune, he replied, “Let’s not rush to judge.”

Two weeks later, it returned with wild horses. They called him lucky, but he said, “Who knows whether it’s good fortune or bad?”

Soon, his son broke his legs trying to tame one. The neighbours called it a curse. A year later, war took every able-bodied young man, but the son was spared because he was lame.

Life is a chain of events. Today’s disaster may become tomorrow’s saving grace. Don’t panic or draw hasty conclusions from temporary setbacks.

Bright Bits

Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar
“Delphiniums,” 1903–1907

Bright Bits

Richard Savoy’s paintings are pure magic—they give you chills.

Are you already looking forward to the New Year?

Bright Bits

Why is Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid one of the world’s most battered artworks?

The harmless waterfront statue has been sawn off twice, lost an arm, blown up with dynamite, dumped into the sea and splashed with paint. Easily accessible at the water’s edge, she makes a headline-grabbing target—and a megaphone for others’ causes.

For over a century, she’s been cast as a feminist icon, political slogan and even a “racist fish” during Black Lives Matter protests. Activists dressed her in a burqa to protest migration policies; animal-rights campaigners painted her blood red to support whales. So many attacks have left the original parts replaced by replicas. Yet the bronze figure keeps returning to her rock, Denmark’s resilient and unlikely symbol.

Bright Bits

Balthus
*In the Living Room*, 1942

The painting feels like a hypnotic dream. One girl sprawls across the sofa while another stands motionless over a book; together, they capture the awkward angles and restless clumsiness of adolescence.

Their unconventional poses sparked controversy. Some viewers were unsettled by the veiled eroticism, while Picasso and Camus, for instance, saw profound psychological insight. Balthus rejected any suggestion of vulgarity: “I ask you to look at my paintings as pure painting. Don’t search for ambiguity in them—it isn’t there. My figures are simply angels in an interior.”

Bright Bits

Unknown artist, fresco from Pompeii
“Medea Contemplating the Murder of Her Children,” 62–79 AD

Medea stands outside a house in Corinth, staring straight ahead, still rooted to the spot. The sword hangs at her side; her children are still alive. Yet her gaze tells us the decision has already been made. The Roman artist captured the instant when fury hardens into a plan.

The story is as old as tragedy itself. For Jason, Medea left her homeland and father and helped him claim the Golden Fleece. Years later, he chose a new bride and set out to cast Medea and their children aside. The revenge she would take became one of antiquity’s most horrifying tales.

Bright Bits

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
“Julie Le Brun Looking in a Mirror” (1787)

A celebrated French portraitist, Vigée Le Brun was Marie Antoinette’s favorite painter and a member of the Royal Academy. Her 1787 masterpiece is a remarkable optical illusion: using an impossible perspective, she brings together the thoughtful profile of her seven-year-old daughter, Julie, and her lively reflection in the mirror as a single double portrait.

Bright Bits

The remarkable *Man Resting His Chin on His Knee* (500 BCE–500 CE) offers a glimpse into Africa’s ancient past. Why is this Nok masterpiece, now in the Louvre, so significant?

The Nok were the first people south of the Sahara to create large, hollow terracotta sculptures. Without modern kilns, they mastered the firing process well enough to keep the clay from cracking in intense heat.

Wooden figures were lost to the climate, but terracotta endured. Details such as hairstyles and beads reveal the fashions and social status of the time.

The contemplative pose, almond-shaped eyes, and pierced pupils—hallmarks of Nok art—helped shape African sculpture and later inspired the European avant-garde of the 20th century.

Bright Bits

Mher Chatinyan
“Friends,” 2019

Jim, give me your paw for luck—
I’ve never seen a paw like yours.
Let’s howl together at the moon
On this quiet, windless night.
Jim, give me your paw for luck.

Please, sweetheart, don’t lick me.
Try to understand just one small thing:
You don’t know what life is,
Or why it’s worth living.

Your master is kind and well-known,
And often welcomes guests into his home.
Each one, with a smile, reaches out
To stroke your velvet-soft coat.

You’re devilishly handsome, Jim,
With such a sweet, trusting face.
You don’t ask anyone’s leave—
You lean in to kiss like a drunken friend.

My dear Jim, among your guests,
There have been all kinds of people.
But has the quietest, saddest one
Perhaps stopped by here by chance?

She’ll come, I promise you.
And when you gaze into her eyes,
Gently lick her hand for me—
For all I was, and wasn’t, to blame for.

Sergei Yesenin, “To Kachalov’s Dog”

Bright Bits

John James Audubon’s The Birds of America is a landmark of ornithological illustration.

Between 1827 and 1838, Audubon published 435 prints depicting birds at life size—from tiny hummingbirds to towering flamingos. The work was accompanied by five volumes of Ornithological Biography, featuring species descriptions and stories of America’s wild landscapes. Today, the collection is considered an exceptionally rare treasure.

Bright Bits

Vladimir Makovsky
*“At a Rural School,”* 1883

A wooden hut serves as a classroom, where children of different ages learn together under the guidance of two teachers. With kerosene too expensive to use, lessons took place only during the day, and there was no homework. The pupils’ clean, festive clothes reflect how much education meant to poor families. The foliage visible through the doorway suggests that the school year begins in September.

Bright Bits

In Fritz Thaulow’s (1847–1906) landscapes, the river is always in motion. There’s a quiet wisdom in that: each day brings fresh possibilities, even when everyday life feels routine. Let yesterday’s worries drift away.

Today is a chance to start anew!

Water flows and flows, forever flowing, yet it is always here, always the same—and still, new with every passing moment!

— Hermann Hesse, *Siddhartha*

Bright Bits

Kathy Hegman (born 1958) is an American contemporary figurative artist and writer from Holly Bluff, Mississippi. With nearly four decades devoted to painting, she has earned recognition for profound, layered and introspective depictions of the human body, poised between realism and abstraction.

Bright Bits

Susan McDonnell
“Guardians of the Desert,” 2020

Susan McDonnell captures a quiet, moving moment: a wild rabbit pauses on a rock as soft sunlight shines through its enormous ears. The painting was a finalist in the prestigious 15th International ARC Salon, an international competition celebrating realism, and was featured in its official catalog of outstanding works from around the world.

Bright Bits

Love, betrayal, and a flood that never happened: the greatest deception in Tretyakov Gallery history

Princess Tarakanova (1864), by Konstantin Flavitsky, moved Russia to tears—and angered Alexander II. Inspired by real events, it falsifies the ending.

In the early 1770s, a mysterious woman in Italy claimed to be Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s daughter and rightful heir to Russia’s throne. Catherine II sent Count Orlov to stop her. He won her affection, staged a sham wedding, then lured her aboard a Russian ship in Livorno. She was secretly taken to St. Petersburg and imprisoned.

Flavitsky depicts her dying in the 1777 flood, water filling her cell as rats climb over her bed. But the scene is invented: she died of tuberculosis in December 1775, taking the secret of her identity to the grave.

For drama, Flavitsky rewrote history, turning myth into an indictment of authority’s cruelty. Can great art justify a lie?

Bright Bits

Love is waking up to the scent of yellow flowers.

Tom Lovell’s *A Day of Yellow Flowers* (1956) often appears on art pages, but few know it began not as a traditional painting, but as an original magazine illustration.

During the Golden Age of American illustration, artists worked with paint, not pixels. Lovell created this piece by hand in gouache on illustration board for *McCall’s*. He hired models, carefully staged the lighting, and painted a complete scene that was later photographed and printed across a spread in the magazine’s spring issue.

Lovell captures the tenderness of morning through the contrast between the cool blue of the headboard and the warmth of the sunlit yellow roses. Today, this magazine illustration is recognized as fine art and belongs to a private collection.

Bright Bits

Frank O. Small
“Salem Witchcraft Trial,” 1892

The year is 1692. In Frank O. Small’s painting, “Salem Witchcraft Trial,” a chilling psychological drama unfolds. At the center, on a raised platform, stands the accused: Pastor George Burroughs. In the foreground, 12-year-old Ann Putnam writhes in a fit, clutching her throat and pointing at him. She claims his invisible spirit is strangling her right there in the courtroom.

Small captures the absurdity of Salem, where men as well as women were tried as “witches.” The judges believed the children’s performance—after all, how could anyone prove an apparition wasn’t guilty? This courtroom spectacle cost Burroughs his life: he was hanged without mercy.

But the story’s final turn came years later. In 1706, Ann, now grown, faced a crisis of conscience. She went to church and publicly apologized to the families of those who had been executed. She admitted she had falsely accused innocent people, becoming Salem’s only accuser to repent.

Bright Bits

Artist Brett Kern creates intricately detailed ceramic sculptures that, at first glance, are almost indistinguishable from inflatable rubber toys.

He recreates their familiar air-filled shapes and creases—but every piece is made of clay.

Bright Bits

Sarah Gale Carter is a contemporary American artist and designer known for her vivid abstract landscapes. She reimagines familiar scenes from nature through geometric forms, expressive lines, and bold color combinations.

Bright Bits