Private Life of a Masterpiece

Latest Episodes

• Season 5 Episode 1: Liberty Leading the People

  An exploration of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, copies of which have been brandished by would-be revolutionaries on numerous occasions. The work depicts a bare-breasted figure of Liberty leading a rabble over a barricade, and its creator later complained that the trouble with revolutions was they got in the way of dinner parties

• Season 4 Episode 5: Portrait of the Artist's Mother

  The last episode of the series examines the story behind James McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black No1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother, a painting which has been seen as both a celebration of aestheticism and a precursor of abstract art. The documentary reveals that, even though the artist's mother was a last-minute replacement for a younger model who failed to turn up for the sitting, the image has gone on to become one of the best-loved and most frequently satirised paintings in American art. Sam West narrates

• Season 4 Episode 5: The Kiss

  The series concludes with the story of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, the erotically charged and popular work that has been the subject of intense interest since its unveiling. Speculation revolves around the identities of the sitters - though the man is thought by some to be the artist himself - and which of the pair is the dominant partner. Narrated by Samuel West