100 Great Paintings is a British television series broadcast in 1980 on BBC Two, devised by Edwin Mullins.[1] He chose 20 thematic groups, such as war, the Adoration, the language of colour, the hunt, and bathing, picking five paintings from each.[2] The selection ranges from 12th-century China through the 1950s, with an emphasis on European paintings. He deliberately avoided especially famous paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or John Constable's The Haywain.[3] The series is available on VHS and DVD.[4]
100 Great Paintings | |
---|---|
Created by | Edwin Mullins |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Original release | |
Network | BBC Two |
Release | 1980 |
On the basis of the series, Mullins published the book Great Paintings: Fifty Masterpieces, Explored, Explained and Appreciated (1981), which contained about half of the theme groups. A German translation of Mullins' book appeared as 100 Meisterwerke in 1983. In 1985, a second volume came out, only in Germany, which discussed the remaining 50 paintings.
From 1980 through 1994, the West German broadcaster WDR produced a television series called 1000 Meisterwerke (originally named 100 Meisterwerke aus den großen Museen der Welt; "100 Masterworks from the Great Museums of the World"), which was broadcast by ARD, ORF and BR. In each of the 10-minute broadcasts, a single painting was presented and analyzed by an art historian. The Sunday evening broadcasts had five million viewers.[5]
The following is a complete list of the 100 Great Paintings.[6]