The Stories Behind the Paintings

On the limited palettes of turn-of-the-century cycling posters, the pigments that made them, and why a five-colour set turns out to be en...

On painting faces from the 1903 Tour de France, and why the dead make the most honest subjects.

From Alphonse Mucha to the Cycles Gladiator poster - the story of cycling's golden age of visual art, why the tradition faded, and the fi...

The story behind The Telescope - Cecilia Payne's discovery that changed astronomy, a historically accurate 1920s night sky, and the quiet...

The definitive account of the 1927 Tour de France — Nicolas Frantz's dominant ride, the steel bikes of the era, the mountain stages, and ...

The story behind Luna - a deep dive into the greatest cycling advertising of the 1890s-1910s, from Cycles Gladiator to Alphonse Mucha, an...

In 1934, a Tour de France winner rode on aluminum rims painted to look wooden — because the race required wood by law. The full history o...

The story behind The Stone Fountain - a rider in the Italian Alps, a centuries-old mountain spring, and the balance between effort and ea...

The story behind The Three Sisters painting - how bicycle manufacturers in the 1890s built campaigns around women's freedom, and why the ...

The philosophy behind Couch Theory — why the rest after a hard ride is categorically different, what the afternoon light means, and why a...

The story behind Girl on a Bridge - Day and Night, the only two-painting series in the Golden Age of Cycling. On Monet, the Impressionist...

The Crescent Moon and the liminal hour between day and night - a painting in the Art Nouveau cycling tradition, with every brand name str...