Painting
12 episodes
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.
12 November 2020
Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack
Berthe Morisot
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the daring and innovative work of the French woman at the heart of the impressionist movement, capturing the domestic world and life in the open air
13 October 2022
Featuring: Tamar Garb, Lois Oliver, Claire Moran
Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bruegel's painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.
15 January 2015
Featuring: Louise Milne, Jeanne Nuechterlein, Miri Rubin
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Eugene Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, his celebrated depiction of the events of the 1830 July Revolution.
20 October 2011
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Tamar Garb, Simon Lee
Holbein at the Tudor Court
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hans Holbein's role in the Tudor Court, painting Henry VIII as he asserted himself as supreme head of the Church during the Reformation.
15 October 2015
Featuring: Susan Foister, John Guy, Maria Hayward
Monet in England
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the French impressionist Claude Monet painted the foggy Thames in central London more often than water lilies, haystacks or Rouen Cathedral.
27 June 2024
Featuring: Karen Serres, Frances Fowle, Jackie Wullschläger
Picasso's Guernica
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pablo Picasso's Guernica, which he painted in 1937 soon after the bombing of that Basque town in the Spanish Civil War, and its wider context.
2 November 2017
Featuring: Mary Vincent, Gijs van Hensbergen, Dacia Viejo Rose
Tagore
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.
7 May 2015
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens
English-language poets from IndiaNational anthem writersKnights Bachelor19th-century Bengali poets, 19th-century Indian composers, 19th-century Indian dramatists and playwrights, 19th-century Indian educational theorists, 19th-century Indian essayists, 19th-century Indian male artists, 19th-century Indian musicians, 19th-century Indian painters, 19th-century Indian philosophers, 19th-century Indian poets, 19th-century classical musicians, 19th-century male musicians, 20th-century Bengali poets, 20th-century Indian composers, 20th-century Indian dramatists and playwrights, 20th-century Indian educational theorists, 20th-century Indian essayists, 20th-century Indian novelists, 20th-century Indian painters, 20th-century Indian philosophers, 20th-century Indian poets, Alumni of University College London, Bengali Hindus, Bengali male poets, Bengali musicians, Bengali nationalists, Bengali philosophers, Bengali zamindars, Bengali-language poets, Brahmos, Dramatists and playwrights from British India, Hindu poets, Indian Hindus, Indian Nobel laureates, Indian classical composers, Indian male dramatists and playwrights, Indian male essayists, Indian male painters, Indian male poets, Indian male songwriters, Indian portrait painters, Indian social reformers, Indian songwriters, Musicians from Kolkata, Oriental Seminary alumni, Painters from West Bengal, People associated with Santiniketan, People associated with Shillong, People from the Bengal Presidency, Poets from British India, Poets from West Bengal, Presidency University, Kolkata alumni, Rabindranath Tagore, Tagore family, Vangiya Sahitya Parishad, Writers from KolkataNobel laureates in LiteratureArtist authorsFounders of Indian schools and collegesHaiku poets19th century20th centuryLanguageMusicPaintingThe Fighting Temeraire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Fighting Temeraire, JMW Turner's painting of a famous ship from the Battle of Trafalgar on its way to a breakers' yard on the Thames.
10 November 2016
Featuring: Susan Foister, David Blayney Brown, James Davey
The Zong Massacre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the drowning of 132 enslaved Africans, purportedly as there was not enough drinking water to go round. The owners profited; nobody was prosecuted.
26 November 2020
Featuring: Vincent Brown, Bronwen Everill, Jake Subryan Richards
Vigée Le Brun
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who painted Marie Antoinette around 30 times and became arguably the most successful portraitist of her age throughout Europe
25 June 2026
Featuring: Rosalind Polly Blakesley, Robert Wenley, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper
Vincent van Gogh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the career of the Dutch artist celebrated after his death for his paintings of sunflowers and starry nights but selling only one work in his life.
21 December 2023
Featuring: Christopher Riopelle, Martin Bailey, Frances Fowle
