At the heart of Nainsukh’s A Leisurely Ride, a court painting produced in the Pahari or Indian hill state of Jasrota in the mid-18th century, is an exchange of gaze which transfixes the moment.
In the painting, horses of varied hues stride across an Indian landscape. It comprises a mustard field against the backdrop of the smoky-blue rolling hills of Jasrota. The seven riders include a prince, Mian Mukund Dev. There’s a woman – a singer-dancer called Amal – and two musicians, who are at the front of the group and perform on the go. An escort of three nobles, one of whom holds a hunting bird, makes up the rear.
In the centre, the prince and his paramour exchange glances after she has turned around in the saddle to look at him as he follows her. He holds her gaze even as he coolly smokes a hookah, the base of which is carried by the bearer who walks alongside his horse – and time stands still in the hills.
Yashaswini Chandra is a lecturer in South Asian art history
2. Le Sommeil by Gustave Courbet (1866)
I first saw Le Sommeil (The Sleepers) in the Petit Palais museum in Paris in 2011. I was at the end of a long relationship and the erotic tenderness of this painting really spoke to me.
The redhead was Joanna Hiffernan, an Irish artist, model and mistress of Courbet. The brunette was Constance Quéniaux, the mistress of the man who commissioned the painting, the Ottoman ambassador to France, Khalil Bey.
Despite Courbet’s reputation as a realist painter, it is not known if the two women depicted were lovers. But with its discarded clothes, broken pearl necklace and disordered bed, Le Sommeil has usually been read as a sexually charged challenge to 19th-century morality.
No wilting flowers to hint at the transgressive nature of queer love here! Yet, as the title suggests, this painting is not about the passion hinted at, but the gentle, comforting embrace of these two women in the intimacy of sleep.
Pippa Catterall is a professor of history and policy
3. Rinaldo and Armida by Nicolas Poussin (circa 1628)
The French painter Nicolas Poussin has a reputation for being a very high-minded and austere artist. Early on in his career, however, he painted many mythological and literary subjects in a sumptuous, colourful style inspired by 16th-century Venetian painting.
One of these early paintings depicts a scene from a Renaissance epic, Jerusalem Delivered, by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581. The wicked sorceress Armida plans to kill the noble warrior Rinaldo in his sleep, but, at the sight of his beauty, she falls instantly in love and drops her dagger.
The sudden rush of love that overwhelms Armida is brilliantly represented in the form of a winged putto or cupid who seizes her arm. The startled expression on her face and the tender way that her hand brushes Rinaldo’s are also eloquent of her unexpected feelings for him. It’s the vivid way that it conveys a sense of love as an irresistible force that makes this painting so romantic.
Emma Barker is a senior lecturer in art history
4. Medallion (YouWe) by Gluck (1937)
The English artist known as Gluck deliberately adopted a gender-neutral name, rejecting conventional labels and societal expectations of gender. Open about their relationships with women in England’s high society, Gluck’s life and work challenged social norms at a time when representations of lesbianism were heavily censored.
In 1936, Gluck fell passionately in love with the playwright Nesta Obermer and became utterly convinced of their shared future. Gluck went so far as to destroy letters, photographs and paintings associated with previous lovers. The couple exchanged rings, and to commemorate this symbolic union the artist painted Medallion (1937), a double portrait in which the figures appear almost fused as one.
Gluck occupies the foreground, identifiable by their distinctive cropped hair, while Nesta rests just behind, cheek to cheek. Their gaze is cast into the distance, emphasising private introspection. Measuring just over 30x35cm, the work’s scale and its conjoined subtitle, YouWe, reinforce its intimacy. Conceived as a private object and kept in Gluck’s studio rather than publicly exhibited, Medallion endures as a tender and iconic expression of love and queer desire.
Daniel Fountain is a senior lecturer in art history and visual culture
5. Bank Holiday by William Strang (1912)
The Scottish painter William Strang’s Bank Holiday, in the Tate Britain collection, is not obviously brimming with passionate adventure. But it has stuck in my mind as a touchingly realistic depiction of the slight social awkwardness of courtship.
The nice-looking couple in their best clothes are probably not yet married, while the bouquet and moment of ordering suggest hope and promise rather than settled familiarity. Although freighted with class and gender conventions, there is evident respect and esteem between them. The woman’s eyes wander, more in mild discomfiture than boredom, when their close conversation is interrupted by the waiter. However, she still leans attentively forward with her hands towards her companion, with the cat-like dog (often an artistic symbol of fidelity and sometimes desire) by her side.
Love and companionship take patience and learning how to spend time together. One only wonders how these two would have fared through the first world war that came two years later.
Marius Kwint is a reader in visual culture
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
