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These five works show how artists across different periods and traditions can shape the way we look: through expressive color, immersive surfaces, layered viewpoints, subtle transitions, and dramatic perspective. “Stunning” is a matter of response, not a universal ranking. One selection note matters: Hokusai’s The Great Wave is a woodblock print, not a painting, so it belongs here only under a broad definition of traditional art.
Five works that change how we look
Rather than rank unlike works, this selection follows a shared question: how does each artist guide the viewer’s eye? The examples range from a Japanese print to European oil paintings. Their dates, media, and approaches differ, but each makes looking part of the experience.
1. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (June 1889)
Van Gogh painted this oil on canvas at Saint-Rémy. Its night sky is recognizable as a landscape, yet it is not a straightforward record of the view from his asylum window: the village could not be seen from that window, and the celestial forms were altered. Observation and invention meet in the painting’s vivid blues and yellows and its emphatic, gestural brushwork.
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MoMA reproduces a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about the view before sunrise: “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.” The letter gives a point of contact with the artist’s experience without turning the finished image into a literal transcription of it.
2. Claude Monet, Water Lilies (MoMA triptych, 1914–26)
This work is an oil painting across three panels, part of Monet’s late series based on the lily pond in his garden at Giverny. MoMA says he produced and reworked around forty large panels for the project from 1914 until his death in 1926. In this triptych, the absence of a horizon and the dense, continuous surface make it difficult to settle on a distant viewpoint. The pond becomes an immersive field of color and reflection, close to abstraction.
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The title Water Lilies also applies to other paintings. The Met’s work with that title is a separate, single-panel oil painting dated 1916–19; it is not the triptych discussed here.
3. Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)
Velázquez’s painting brings the act of looking into its own subject. He depicts himself within the scene, while a mirror complicates what the viewer can see and suggests another space beyond the painted room. These choices make the viewer consider where they stand in relation to the people pictured—and what a painting represents when it seems to include both its maker and its audience.
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The Prado describes the composition as a portrait that reaches beyond the usual aims of portraiture toward history painting. Its layered actions and viewpoints help explain why the work can feel less like a single posed likeness than a reflection on representation itself.
4. Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
Vermeer’s portrait-like image stands out for the way its figure emerges from a dark background through vivid color and softly modeled light. The Mauritshuis describes gradual transitions and brushwork that is difficult to see, rather than hard outlines that define every feature. That softness asks the eye to complete details for itself.
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The earring is a useful example: the museum notes that its hook is not painted, and describes the blurred transitions as sfumato. Conservator Abbie Vandivere led research into the painting’s pigments and process. The Mauritshuis says the identity of the figure who posed is unknown; the title does not establish that the object in her ear is definitively a pearl.
5. Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), circa 1830–32
Hokusai’s image is a Japanese woodblock print on paper, made with ink and color, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It is not a painting, but it broadens the selection to include a major example of traditional printmaking.
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The composition makes Mount Fuji appear small inside the hollow of the cresting wave. The contrast between the looming foreground and distant mountain gives the scene its striking sense of scale. The Met notes Hokusai’s use of indigo and imported Prussian blue, which help unify the wave and sky while keeping the mountain legible in the distance.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What connects these works—and what sets them apart
Each work directs attention differently. Van Gogh intensifies a remembered and observed landscape through color and brushwork. Monet reduces the sense of distance until the viewer seems surrounded by the pond’s surface. Velázquez makes the viewer conscious of the scene’s viewpoint. Vermeer leaves transitions soft enough for the eye to supply detail. Hokusai turns a carefully controlled print composition into a dramatic play of scale.
The media matter, too. Four examples are paintings; Hokusai’s is a print. The group is therefore best understood as a cross-cultural selection of traditional art, not a list of ten paintings or an objective ranking of the greatest works.
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