Gustave Courbet (1819–77) was a French painter and a leading proponent of the Realist school of painting. Courbet’s “Realist Manifesto” states that his aim was "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation." Due to his involvement with short-lived, socialist government of the Paris Commune of 1871, he was forced to move to Switzerland in 1873, fearing arrest by the French authorities. During his exile, the French state seized his property and put his friends and family under surveillance.

During the Spanish Civil War, the word “Crusade” featured heavily in Nationalist propaganda. Franco himself recognised its emotional power to conjure up Spain’s medieval role as a Crusading nation when he observed in July 1936 that “we are faced with a war that is taking on each day the character of a Crusade.” Similarly, the Bishop of Salamanca emphasised that the war was “really a Crusade for religion, for the fatherland, for civilisation… a Crusade against communism in order to save religion.“ Claiming an imminent communist revolution, Spanish bishops asserted the right – authorised by St. Thomas – “of defensive resistance by force” after “having exhausted every legal means.” The Spanish coup was described as a combined “civil-military movement” and an “armed plebiscite” against forces that were “anti-divine.”

Lockheed Martin is a global security company covering the research, design, development, manufacture, and integration of advanced technology systems, products, and services. It specializes in aerospace and defence and was instrumental in the development of projects such as the space shuttle and Polaris missiles. Polaris was the U.S. Navy’s first SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) brought into service in 1961. It was regarded as invulnerable to counterattack due to the fact that Polaris was launched from below the sea from a moving submarine. Lockheed was very proud of its development of the weapon and would advertise Polaris in newspapers and magazines, calling it the “Free World Deterrent.” In 1955, the “Russell-Einstein Manifesto” was published calling for the abolition of thermonuclear weapons. Eventually, the image of nuclear weapons changed; they came to be seen as a global menace and such advertisements were discontinued.

This is a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s 1787 painting of Lady Elizabeth Foster. It is currently in the collection at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England. The title comes from Barnett Newman’s 1946 painting, regarded as a seminal work in his career. Prior to Moment, Newman had experimented with vertical bands of varying lengths and intensities but had not yet given the device such prominence. The painting was never exhibited during the artist’s lifetime. The violet stripe of paint in this work contains Giemsa stain.

Joseph Stiglitz (1943–) is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, author, and Professor at Columbia University, New York. His research centres on income distribution, asset risk management, corporate governance, and international trade. He is the author of several books, including The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them (2015). In 2001, the Nobel Committee acknowledged Stiglitz’s contributions to the theory of Asymmetrical Information. The theory refers to a situation where one party in a transaction has more information than the other, producing an imbalance. This often happens in transactions where the seller knows more than the buyer, although the reverse can also happen. Potentially, one party can take advantage of the other’s lack of knowledge.

Lady Elizabeth Foster (1758–1824) grew up in relative poverty before her marriage to John Thomas Foster. The marriage only lasted four years and resulted in two children, from whom she would be estranged for most of her life. Two years after her marriage ended, she became friends with Georgiana, the wife of the Duke of Devonshire. Elizabeth, Georgiana, and the Duke famously formed a ménage à trois, in which Elizabeth had two more children who were regarded as illegitimate by the standards of the day. She eventually married the Duke of Devonshire in 1809, after the death of Georgiana in 1806.

Chris Zylka (1985–) is an American actor, producer, and director of German, Polish, and Ukrainian heritage. He appeared in the 2012 movie The Amazing Spider-Man where he was cast as Flash Thompson, a bullying, arrogant jock character who doesn’t realize that his classmate Peter Parker is actually the superhero Spider-Man. This painting depicts him at the premiere for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. Although he is part of the cast, his scene was deleted and is not in the final cut of the movie. Off-screen he is a fine art painter and model.

In 2012, Christopher Kubasik, President and COO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, was fired after he admitted to an improper relationship with a subordinate. At the time Kubasik said, “I remain confident in the future of the company. I regret that my conduct in this matter did not meet the standards to which I have always held myself.” Outgoing CEO Robert Stevens said he was “deeply disappointed and genuinely saddened… But the situation should not undermine [Lockheed Martin’s] standing with the Pentagon, other customers or its shareholders.” Kubasik was replaced by Marillyn Hewson who went on to become CEO and then Executive Chairman of the company. In 2018, Hewson was named the most powerful woman in the business world by Fortune magazine.

This painting began as a portrait of one of the sheep in the background of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Extraction of the Stone of Folly (1501–05) painting. It is in fact a portrait of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal. Dolly was created at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, with funding provided by the biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics and the UK Ministry of Agriculture. The sheep was actually named after country singer Dolly Parton because the cells used for the cloning process were taken from breast tissue. The technology, called CRISPR, has been hugely influential and has allegedly been used to create gene-modified human babies.

General Charles Douglas Jackson (1902–64) was an expert on psychological warfare who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II as Deputy Chief of the Psychological Warfare Division, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. After the war, he became Managing Director of Time-Life International from 1945–49 and went on to become publisher of Fortune magazine. He was a speechwriter for Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 presidential campaign and was assigned to be President Eisenhower's liaison between the newly created CIA and the Pentagon. He was also a member of the U.S. President's Committee on International Information Activities – known, after its chairman William Jackson, as the Jackson Committee.

Estée Lauder is a major cosmetics company and luxury brand that manufactures beauty products including make-up, hair care, and perfumes. Founded in 1946 by Estée and Joseph Lauder, it began with only four items for sale: Cleansing Oil, Skin Lotion, Super Rich All-Purpose Crème, and Crème Pack. The company now owns over thirty global cosmetics brands including MAC, Clinique, and Bobbi Brown.

The Creation of the World Up to the Third Day is the outer panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s famous The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted between 1490 and 1510 and housed in the Prado Museum, Madrid. It features a flat Earth under a celestial firmament and depicts the world before humans were created. The dragon seen here is a copy of an illustration from a children’s book called Reading Mastery, which George W. Bush was reading to second-graders on September 11, 2001 at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. In the background of the painting is Bothwell Castle, Scotland. In the 14th-century Wars of Scottish Independence, Bothwell became the headquarters of King Edward’s appointed Warden of Scotland before Sir Walter FitzGilbert, the Castle’s constable, surrendered it to the Scots in 1314. For this act, he was granted the barony of Cadzow, where his descendants became the powerful Hamilton family.

The Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus) is native to Europe and to the forest and steppe zones of the former Soviet Union. Prior to the Middle Ages, it was widespread throughout Eurasia. Historically the wolf was much more important than it is in modern times. Many Indo-European cultures have several words for “wolf.” It was held in high regard in Baltic, Celtic, Slavic, Turkic, ancient Greek, and Roman cultures. Across much of Europe, wolves were heavily persecuted for attacking livestock. They were wiped out in much of Europe during the 19th century.

Within the aristocracy of Great Britain, a baronet is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. This painting depicts two British baronets that shared the same name: Osborne. The figure on the left is the Right Honourable George Osborne (1971–), the onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Secretary of State of the United Kingdom. The figure on the right is Sir George Osborn (1742–1818) a military general who fought as a British Officer in the American Revolutionary War and whose father was the colonial governor of New York. Osborn was painted by George Romney c. 1787. These Osborns had removed the “e” from the end of their name to avoid confusion between baronetcies.