Holland Gallery

Animalcules observed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, c1795

Animalcules observed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, c1795. Hand-coloured engraving showing various items viewed through a microscope, including sperm, (29 & 30) and human spermatazoa from a warm cadaver (31-40). Van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was a Dutch scientist and microscopist who was the first to observe bacteria and protozoa using his own simple microscopes

© Ann Ronan Picture Library / Heritage-Images

The New Learning, c1910, (c1900-1920). Artist: Frank Cadogan Cowper

The New Learning, c1910, (c1900-1920). Erasmus (right) and Thomas More visit the children of Henry VII at Greenwich in 1499. The boy in the centre is the future King Henry VIII. One of six paintings from a mural commissioned in 1910 for the Houses of Parliament in London. A print from Art History and Literature Illustrations, by Jessie Noakes, Virtue and Co, (London, c1900-1920)

© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images

Wheatfield with Crows, (detail) 1890. Artist: Vincent van Gogh

Wheatfield with Crows, (detail) 1890. In Auvers, Van Gogh painted a large number of landscapes with wheatfields, all on unusual, elongated canvases (50 x 100 cm). He wrote to Theo about two of these works: They depict vast, distended wheatfields under angry skies, and I deliberately tried to express sadness and extreme loneliness in them. But these pictures also had a positive side: I am almost certain that these canvases illustrate what I cannot express in words, that is, how healthy and reassuring I find the countryside. Painted in the last weeks of his life. From the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

© Art Media / Heritage-Images