The Private Life of a Masterpiece - Season 3

The Private Life of a Masterpiece - Season 3

Season 3

Network
DatesJan 19, 2004 - May 15, 2004
Previous SeasonNext Season

Episodes

Auguste Rodin: The Kiss
Season 3Episode 150 min

Auguste Rodin: The Kiss

Rodin's The Kiss is arguably the most sensual sculpture in the art of the past 150 years. Its subject matter is more daring that most people understand: A it portrays a girl seducing a man. The sculpture has been controversial right up to the 21st century.

Jan 19, 2004
Francisco Goya: The Third of May 1808
Season 3Episode 250 min

Francisco Goya: The Third of May 1808

Arguably the most powerful painting about war ever achieved. It portrays the slaughter of civilians after Napoleonic troops entered Madrid in 1808. The programme reveals the historical truths behind the painting and shows exactly how Goya achieved this masterpiece of protest.

Jan 26, 2004
Auguste Renoir: Dance At The Moulin de lA Galette
Season 3Episode 350 min

Auguste Renoir: Dance At The Moulin de lA Galette

This painting was once described as the most beautiful of all the artworks of the 19th century. Certainly it seems the happiest. But beneath renoir's joyful portrayal of working class Parisians at leisure is another, darker story.

Feb 2, 2004
Rembrandt: The Night Watch
Season 3Episode 450 min

Rembrandt: The Night Watch

Why should a painting of a group of part-time Amsterdam militiamen, dressed up for an occasion that wasn't serious anyway, have become the most revered painting in Holland? The full story of Rembrandt's masterpiece.

Feb 9, 2004
Sandro Botticelli: The Primavera
Season 3Episode 550 min

Sandro Botticelli: The Primavera

Botticelli's painting is extraordinarily beautiful; his portrayal of Flora, the central character, reveals a face you might find in London or Bologna or Boston today. But what the painting is about is a mystery which scholars devote their lives to solving. It is rich is sex, even rape, but it also about love and the highest aspirations of man.

Feb 16, 2004
Hokusai: The Great Wave
Season 3Episode 650 min

Hokusai: The Great Wave

Perhaps the most celebrated of all Japanese pictures, the Great Wave's portrayal of a huge wave about to overwhelm three boats was only produced by Hokusai when he was old and broke and needed money badly. A print that cost little more than bowl of noodles to those who first bought it, the image has been hugely influential on later art.

Apr 17, 2004
Edgar Degas: Little Dancer, Aged 14
Season 3Episode 750 min

Edgar Degas: Little Dancer, Aged 14

The statue of the young girl in a real ballet dress is often seen today just as a pretty image of dancer making one of the classic moves of ballet. But to the people who first saw the statue when it was unveiled it was a dangerous, even disgraceful, portrayal of a degenerate girl little more than a whore. The programme reveals the story of the real woman who Degas used as a model and includes revelations about how the statue as actually made.

Apr 24, 2004
Vincent Van Gogh: The Sunflowers
Season 3Episode 850 min

Vincent Van Gogh: The Sunflowers

Perhaps the most reproduced of all 19th century paintings, The Sunflowers has a story that lies at the crux of the complex relationship between Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin. The programme reveals how Van Gogh started to paint sunflowers soon after he moved from Holland to Paris and how they became the emblem of his embrace of Southern France, warmth and the sun. It looks especially at the 8th of the Sunflower paintings, the one in the National Gallery in London which is arguably the best in the series. It was most admired and desired by Gaugin but denied to him by Van Gogh as their relationship deteriorated.

May 1, 2004
Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles D'Avignon
Season 3Episode 950 min

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles D'Avignon

Arguably the first modern painting, this portrayal of five huge prostitutes was so powerful and controversial when it was first revealed that one fellow artist declared that Picasso would be found hanged behind it one day. The programme sets out the origins of the painting in the intense rivalry for the leadership of the Parisian avante-garde between Matisse and Picasso and shows in great detail how Picasso worked and re-worked, changed and changed again his concept for the painting in an endless series of studies.

May 8, 2004
James Whistler: Portrait Of The Artist's Mother
Season 3Episode 1050 min

James Whistler: Portrait Of The Artist's Mother

The stark portrait, mainly in greys and black, that James McNeill Whistler painted of his mother is now a picture that is widely lampooned as a portrait of a prim Victorian lady. She is shown smoking reefers, wearing trainers, having a tatoo. But Whistler's approach was revolutionary in its time, wholly departing from the Victorian tradition of sentimental narrative painting. His relationship with his mother was also an intriguing study in contrasts.

May 15, 2004

Recently Updated Shows

Recently updated shows that might be of your interest.
The Bold and the Beautiful
Running

The Bold and the Beautiful

They created a dynasty where passion rules, they are the Forresters, the first name in Fashion. The Bold and the Beautiful, a world of fashion, glamor and romance. A place where power, money and success are there for the taking in a city where dreams really do come true. Follow the lives and loves of the Forresters on The Bold and the Beautiful...

Shifting Gears
Upcoming

Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears centers on Matt, a stubborn, widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop. When Matt's estranged daughter and her teenage kids move into his house, the real restoration begins.

GenreComedy
Going Dutch
Upcoming

Going Dutch

In Going Dutch a decorated, hard-ass colonel is tasked with running the least important U.S. Army base in the world, located in the tulip-hugging, wine-chugging Netherlands.

GenreComedy
Babylon 5
Upcoming

Babylon 5

From-the-ground-up reboot of the critically acclaimed 1990s series, which revolves around John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war.

The Simpsons
Running

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is the longest running scripted show in US television history. It captures the adventures of Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart and Lisa who are living in a fictional town called Springfield.