Who would you choose if you could travel back in time to let someone know the impact their work would have after their death? In season five Doctor Who episode 'Vincent and the Doctor,' our favorite Time Lord (Matt Smith) does just that when he takes Vincent van Gogh (Tony Curran), who died in penury in 1890 having never sold a single painting, to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. She stayed there for the next 30 years, deprived of all her art materials, and this sombre and deeply affecting film takes place two years after she's committed. Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915 (2014)Ĭhocolat star Juliette Binoche plays French sculptor Camille Claudel, who was confined by her family to an insane asylum after she suffered a breakdown. Colin Firth in The Girl With the Pearl Earring (2003)īased on the bestselling novel by Tracy Chevalier, this film about the woman behind one of the world's most famous portraits (Scarlett Johansson) also features the painter himself, Johannes Vermeer, aka a rather fetching and bewigged Colin Firth.Ĩ.

But her performance here is every bit as resolved, with subtle touches and a mischievous sense of humor.ĩ. It's fair to say Sally Hawkins' 2017 film, The Shape of Water, overshadowed this one about Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, and her unlikely romance with the reclusive Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke). Focusing on Dalí's battle to suppress his sexuality, it was a brave and unusual performance so soon after his turn as vampire Edward Cullen in the first Twilight film.

Surrealist Salvador Dalí has been played numerous times, most notably by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris and Robert Pattinson in this film about Dalí and his friends, the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca. It got us thinking about other great artists who've been portrayed in films - and the great actors who played them.ġ1. The second season of Genius starts tonight (April 24) on the National Geographic Channel, turning its attention to the world of art and Pablo Picasso after the first season dramatized the life of Albert Einstein.Īntonio Banderas stars as Spain's greatest artist, following in the footsteps of Sir Anthony Hopkins, who portrayed him in 1996 Merchant Ivory film Surviving Picasso (with Clémence Poésy playing painter Françoise Gilot, the role played by Designated Survivor's Natascha McElhone).

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