Ed Wheeler | Santa Classic

In a series of self-portraits dressed as Santa Claus, Philadelphia-based artist Ed Wheeler, photographer, incorporates himself in classical paintings from Botticelli to Caravaggio to Monet.

In so doing he transforms the masterworks of art history from the Renaissance to the Surrealists. Santa Classics, his derivative art series, is based on a digital photography process.

Wheeler’s goal is to pay homage to the original paintings while offering art lovers an additional reason to smile.

Francesco Hayez | The Kiss, 1859 | Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Claude Monet | Valley of the Petite Creuse, 1889

The striking effects of Monet’s several paintings of the Creuse Valley in central France are achieved through complex, superimposed layers of color, as he combined bold brushstrokes with intricate passages made up of many small touches.

Title: Valley of the Petite Creuse

Author: Claude Monet (French painter, 1840-1926)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 65.4 x 81.3 cm (25 3/4 x 32 in.)

Current location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jean-Francois Millet | Rest after work, 1866

During the harvest, a peasant's workday could last from the early hours of the morning until well into the evening, punctuated only by meal times and a rest from the sun at midday.

Here, a man and woman lay in the shade of a haystack.

The wheat sheaves to their right mirror their pose, while the pairs of sickles, shoes, and distant cows all reinforce the theme of companionship.

Jean-Francois Millet | Rest after work, 1866 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Singer Sargent | Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1921

'Orestes Pursued by the Furies' was created in 1921 by John Singer Sargent (American painter, 1856-1925) in Neoclassicism style.

It is part of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

"Orestes Pursued by the Furies" is an event from Greek mythology that is a recurring theme in art depicting Orestes.

In the Iliad, the king of Argos, Agamemnon, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the Gods to assure good sailing weather to Troy.

In Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus as revenge for sacrificing Iphigenia.

Vincent van Gogh | The Ravine of the Peyroulets, 1889

In the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh painted the ravine near the asylum in the southern French town of Saint‑Remy.

He wrote about it to his dear friend Emile Bernard:

"Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy, but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one’s easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over".

The following spring, Van Gogh sent this painting to Paris, where Paul Gauguin saw it and wrote to him:

John Singer Sargent | Fishing for Oysters at Cancale, 1878

In 1877 the twenty-one year old Sargent spent the summer in Cancale on the coast of Brittany sketching fisherfolk.

He sent his first completed painting, "Fishing for Oysters at Cancale", a finished sketch, to New York for display at the newly-formed, avant garde Society of American Artists from March 6 to April 5, 1878.

Sargent submitted the second painting, "Oyster Gatherers of Cancale" (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), a larger, more finished version of the same subject, to the 1878 Paris Salon, where it was awarded an Honorable Mention.

Edward Hopper | Room in Brooklyn, 1932

"Room in Brooklyn" è una delle numerose opere d'arte di Hopper che raffigurano un individuo che guarda fuori dalla finestra la città.

In questo dipinto, una donna è seduta su una sedia a dondolo accanto a una pittoresca finestra del suo appartamento, guardando il paesaggio urbano di Brooklyn.

Hopper ha cercato di catturare la condizione umana in una città moderna e mostrare l'effetto della modernità che spesso può portare all'isolamento e alla solitudine.

Edward Hopper | Room in Brooklyn, 1932 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston