Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘The Blue Boy,’ a sensation from the moment it was unveiled, will be returning briefly to London for the first time in a century.

Masaki Kobayashi’s ‘Kwaidan’ recounts a series of supernatural encounters adapted from Japanese folklore.

In George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia,’ the writer looks back on his service in the Spanish Civil War and the way Communists turned against their allies.

In his ‘Les Grandes Baigneuses,’ Cézanne combines the clarity of Old Master painting with his sense of the mobility of the natural world.

Jean Renoir’s ‘The River’ reflects a traveler’s delight in a foreign land.

Willem van de Velde the Younger’s ‘Ships in a Stormy Sea’ captures the exhilaration of piloting a boat under sail through surging waters.

Frances Glessner Lee’s ‘Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’ are hyper-detailed dioramas used to educate forensic experts.

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman bring sparks to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious,’ a film that weaves together morals and emotions.

Mysteries abound in Edward Hopper’s ‘Western Motel,’ which invites viewers to craft their own story about what’s happening.

In ‘Lucky Strike,’ Stuart Davis repurposed the imagery of tobacco packaging, becoming the first artist to capture the modern American ‘landscape’ of consumer culture.

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’ is an affectionate portrayal of the Black matriarch’s thoughtfulness and strength.

Nicholas Hilliard’s ‘Young Man Among Roses,’ whose subject is likely Robert Deveraux, second earl of Essex, captures the romantic spirit of the Elizabethan era.

A prehistoric biface, or hand tool, on view at the Met may be one of the earliest examples of art.

In his ‘Les Femmes d’Alger’ series, Pablo Picasso paid tribute to the French romantic Delacroix and generated an imaginative realm of his own.

John Steuart Curry’s ‘Tornado Over Kansas’ showed the threat of a natural disaster and served as a powerful metaphor for an economic cataclysm to come.

Symmetry and simplicity prevail in Philip Johnson’s Glass House, a getaway home turned architectural museum in New Canaan, Conn.

Louis Malle’s ‘My Dinner With André’ features captivating dialogue elevated by astounding filmmaking.

Diego Rivera’s ‘The Flower Carrier’ beautifully renders the daily strain of Mexico’s indigenous laborers.

The Korean Veterans Memorial pays tribute to former servicemen through a plain-spoken acknowledgment of the harshness of war.

In Yasujiro Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Story,’ a quiet domestic drama pushes us to reflect on our own lives.