As today is New Year’s Eve, it is time to look back on some of my favourite paintings which I have featured in articles here over the past year.

This is one of my favourite articles to write, because it gives me an excuse to go back and enjoy the many paintings which I have shown, but it is also one of the most difficult, given the choice. I hope that you will enjoy these few.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), The Apparition (1876-77), oil on canvas, 55.9 x 46.7 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop), Cambridge, MA. Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums.

Gustave Moreau’s The Apparition (1876-77) was featured in my series looking at who killed John the Baptist?

Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), The Tortoise Trainer (1906), oil on canvas, 221.5 x 120 cm, Pera Müzesi, Istanbul. Wikimedia Commons.

I had not come across the paintings of…