Paintings
Monet's 1868 "The River" depicts a woman relaxing and enjoying a sunny afternoon on the river's banks. Monet's palate is earthy and soft, almost pastel. The color scheme reflects the peaceful tone of the painting. Not only are the colors relaxing on the eye, they are also highly conducive to the delivery of light that characterizes impressionist painting.
Also a landscape scene painted in France, Derain's 1906 "The Turning Road" has a far different feel than Monet's "The River." Like Monet, Derain relies on earthy tones to emphasize nature. However, Derain's palate is more saturated. The hues allow the painting to approach expressionism, especially the predominance of red-orange on the canvas. Using violet periodically such as on the lower part of the tree trunks also makes the painting seem more abstract than Monet's.
In "Le Moulin de la Galette," Renoir creates a remarkably light feeling with his palate. Using white liberally to convey visual light but also emotional lightness, Renoir balances his impressionist masterpiece with black. The black in the male cafe patrons' suits, renders an aura of sophistication. The combination of white and black grabs the eye and creates a sense of movement that corresponds with the lively dancing.
Painted only 12 years later, Van Gogh's "Night Cafe" conveys a completely different cafe ambiance. Whereas Renoir's cafe is full of life and light, Van Gogh's is strikingly lonely, occupied by a few sullen drunks with their heads on their tables and the central figure who stands next to a billiards table. Van Gogh uses muddy hues to parallel the theme of the painting. Renoir's black and white affair conveys a bourgeois ambiance, and Van Gogh's ruddy earth tones clearly impart a working class sensibility. Moreover, Van Gogh's cafe uses indoor lighting, which is less inspirational than the uplifting feeling from the open-air "Le Moulin de la Galette." Correspondingly, Van Gogh uses yellow for lights rather than the pure white of Renoir.
Painting Read Monet's the Stroll Monet Monet's the Stroll, Camille Monet Her Son Jean (Woman With a Parasol) This painting epitomizes the impressionistic style and artistic philosophy in a number of different ways. If one looks closely at the painting by Monet one can see that the foreground, the sky as well as the dress and parasol are created by many short strokes of opaque paint. This gives the impression of a moment captured
Paintings Both Salvador Dali and Raphael incorporated Christian imagery into their paintings. Raphael renders a scene from the life of Christ in "Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints." The painting is rendered on wood, with oil and gold leaf. It was designed to be a panel installed in a church: meaning that the painting had a cultural, religious, and ritualistic context as opposed to being art for art's sake. In Dali's
Painting analysis of Jean Helion's 1948 painting "Grande Citrouillerie" (Big Pumpkin Event) Rather than a traditional harvest painting, as its title might suggest, "Grande Citrouillerie," or, in English translation the "Big Pumpkin Event," has the appearance of a poster or advertisement painted in an art deco fashion typical of the 19th century. The painting shows the form of a twisted, half cut open pumpkin with its inner seeds and hanging pulp
His work can be seen as fitting into a wider context of artists working to represent the France their generally well-off and comfortably middle-class and upper-class purchasers wanted to see and to believe in. The purchasers of Millet's works may never have visited the Normandy countryside for themselves, but they could share in its beauty and its spiritual and moral values through Millet's art and the art of other
Is this a simple soldier pulling away the cadavers of his companions or death itself taking away dear individuals into the unknown? Who is connecting the physical bodies with the symbolic meaning of the stripes painted with their blood? The characters in the background also play an important role in the creation of the painting. With their presence, they create an antithesis to the characters in the foreground. They are
Painting as a Leisure Activity History of Painting Humans have been painting pictures since roughly 15,000 to 17,000 years ago. How do we know? The oldest known paintings were found on the walls of a cave near Lascaux, France, by in 1940 (by a dog named "robot" who led four boys into the cave). These extraordinary cave paintings (of very large animals: horses, bulls and stags), were tested through carbon dating and
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