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Summary Of ' The Merry Family '

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Eric Chiaramonte
Anna Sparks
FAS-202
02/04/2017 Artist 's Name: Jan Havicksz Steen
Title: The Merry Family
Style movement: Baroque
Date: 1668
Location: Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Origin: Leiden, Netherlands Artist 's Name: Vincent van Gogh
Title: The Potato Eaters
Style movement: Postimpressionism
Date: 1885
Location: Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
Origin: Nuenen, Netherlands Artist 's Name: Jeremie Fischer
Title: Is the Family Dinner Overrated?
Style movement: Post Modernism
Date: 2012
Location: New York Times
Origin: New York Times

The Disappearance of the Traditional Family Meal
Imagine you just got off work and you arrive home to a hot meal waiting for you on the table. You walk in the door, take your coat off, and are greeted by …show more content…

Although these paintings were painted two hundred and seventeen years apart, they share some similar artistic qualities, but they are not so similar as to be indistinguishable from their own time period. Both Jan Steen and Vincent Van Gogh paint subjects around the table with hats and head coverings, a vanity that seems to stretch through both time periods and up to the modern era as well. The visual textures of both paintings are very similar as well. Each painting gives the illusion of a soft table covering and hard surroundings. In each painting the subjects are enjoying a vice, smoking in The Merry Family and Coffee in The Potato Eaters. The focal point of both paintings is similar too. In each the viewer’s attention is pulled to the table itself and is hastening to observe the people gathered around it. That seems to be where the similarities stop. Jan Steen uses a warm palette with a daytime natural lighting that plays across the painting from the window. In contrast, Van Gogh uses a cool palette and paints his scene at night using the whispering light of an overhead lantern.
The paintings originate from two vastly different time periods in art history. Steen’s The Merry Family was painted in the Baroque period and lends itself to the overly emotional style of the period. The painting is a reflection of the grand opulence that was the Baroque period. This can be seen in the robust merriment of the subjects as they enjoy the day’s

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