On a recent visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario, I came across J.L. Gérôme’s “The Antique Pottery Painter,” which was accompanied by this statement:

Artists often have the ability to make us believe their paintings are real. Gérôme mastered and exploited this quality, using the incredibly smooth surface we see here to challenge our perceptions of reality and illusion. The interplay between life and art is the central message of the painting: in the act of painting sculptures, this pottery painter breathes life into them. As if exhaling her own life into these objects, she becomes so still that she appears to turn to stone.

This painting—which we could describe as art about art—reminded me of my prior post on meta-creativity. It turns out there is a long lineage of artists who paint scenes with paintings in them. Vermeer’s “Love Letter,” recently exhibited at the Frick, is one. 

So is, “A Picture Gallery with an Artist Painting a Woman and a Girl,” by Gillis van Tilborgh. 

So is Mary Alabaster’s, “The Artist’s Painting-Room” (also at the AGO).

And “Portrait of an Elegant Couple in an Art Cabinet,” by Peeter Neefs II and Gillis van Tilborgh (which I came across at the Royal Ontario Museum).

These paintings are often described as allegories, which Webster’s defines as, “A figure representation which has a meaning beyond notion directly conveyed by the object painted or sculptured.”