Introduction
The analyzed work was created by French painter Oscar-Claude Monet in 1872. This highly recognized work of art illustrates the morning view of the port of Le Havre in northwestern France. Monet’s masterpiece Soleil Levant also known as Impression Sunrise, gave birth to a new movement, Impressionism, straying away from many traditions, creating a new method of painting–and of seeing the world around us. It is considered to be one of Monet’s most poetic expressions of his engagement with France’s revival after the Franco-Prussian War, and is unlike any other artworks of its time, the subject and techniques achieve to unravel a visual experience and feeling.
Formal Analysis Unlike other styles of painting in the 19th century
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The most significant aspect of the painting is its tribute to the Impressionist Movement. This painting was hardly recognized when it was first shown to the public in the L’Exposition des Révoltés - the exhibition independent of the Salon, of which was created by Monet himself among other artists - many critics were extremely disapproving of the rebel’s works, especially that of Monet’s. Another significant attribute of the painting is its variety in technique: short, broken brushstrokes that convey loose forms, pure vibrant colors, and of course, an emphasis on the effects of light. In addition to these unaccustomed techniques, the bright colors of Soleil Levant and other Impressionist canvases were shocking for eyes accustomed to the more sombre colors of Academic paintings. Rather than neutral white, grays, and blacks, Impressionists often rendered shadows and highlights in color. Many of the independent artists of this time and movement used more vivid paints and chose not to apply the thick varnish that painters customarily used to tone down their works. The nineteenth century saw the development of synthetic pigments for artists’ paints, providing vibrant shades of blue, green, and yellow that painters had never used before. For instance “Edouard Manet, Boating 1874. Oil on canvas. 97cm x 130cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York” highlights a big portion of the scene with a span of cerulean blue. The composition is illustrated as drastically cropped, the modern boater and his companion personify modernity in their form, their subject matter, and the very materials used to paint
In Gustave Caillebotte’s painting, he uses a wide range of colors too, but these are more vibrant. The viewer is enticed to see themselves in the in the painting as there is an empty waiting to be occupied. The method of his
I chose to do my paper on a painting by René Magritte, The Treachery of Images. I found this painting when visiting LACMA and was both amused and challenged by this mundane piece of art. It was so simple in its depiction of a beautiful wood pipe yet the words denied the painting completely. It was almost funny in how controversial the painting was when simply pointing out the bleeding obvious to its viewers, it’s a painting. In this paper I will be discussing who René Magritte was as a painter, what influences he may have had, and what the meaning behind his artwork was.
Seurat is commonly known for being a post-impressionist painter whose work did not signify the fluid and naturalism of impressionism. He used highly calculated geometry to develop his compositions and perfected the technique of pointillism, a method of placing small dots or brushstrokes made out of pure color right from the tube of paint. When viewing Seurat’s, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), you recognize the pointillism technique making up the entire composition, as well as Seurat’s reaction to the 19th-century social hierarchy in Paris. This colossal artwork, measuring in at 7x10 feet, shows the day in the life of a bourgeoisie person. The figures represent a range of bourgeoisie types that would have been easily recognizable to the 19th century viewer with their confident stance and expensive attire. Unfortunately, many are unsure what Seurat was trying to translate in this work. One theory believes that Seurat is mocking the barren habits and unyielding attitudes of the upper-middle
The Sea at Le Havre, painted by Claude Monet in 1868, is a 23 5/8” x 24 3/8” oil on canvas landscape painting. Monet was a French artist who lived from 1840 to 1926 and was considered to be an impressionist. A unique quality of Monet was unblended “sloppy” brushstrokes combined with a use of precise choice of color, as seen clearly in The Sea at Le Havre. Because of his vigorous and richly textured painting style, Monet was able to capture the look and feel of the movement of water, which was demonstrated in The Sea at Le Havre, using an impasto style. He used erratic brushstrokes to show the ripples of forming waves and the foam of the waves crashing on the shore. His brushstrokes are also almost completely horizontal, which seemed to make the painting feel heavier. In the sky, Monet used thicker, longer, and more opaque strokes, as well as of varying hues of blue and gray, along with white, to create a look of overcast. To give the clouds fluffiness and substance, the paint that was used for the sky was inconspicuously smudged in some places, with more defined clouds layered overtop. The depth of the painting is attributed to his choices of color. Black is rarely used in the painting aside from where necessary, but rather replaced with darker shades of blue to show divots in the water, heavy clouds, and the distance of the village of houses that line the horizon. The different shades also give a more realistic form of light to his paintings, which was a focus of the impressionism era. His painting appears to be slightly gloomy, but doesn’t convey sadness. The piece is uniform in color, to emphasize the overcast, darkened day. Monet also used symmetrical spacing, with the canvas split nearly in half between the sea and the sky. The only thing that separates the sea and the sky is a piece of jutted-out land that shows he is on a gulf or an inlet. On that piece of land, that goes a little over a third of the way onto the canvas, Monet used heavy contrast, then continues the horizon with a slightly thick, darker blue-gray line to clearly separate the halves of sea and sky. There are three places where it appears that Monet used black along with darker shades of purple and blue, and each of those three places are
Shepard Fairey’s piece titled Pay Up or Shut Up is a representation of the role that money or your role in society dictate the power of your speech. This piece of art by Fairey was released in May of 2015. It is a screen print on cream speckletone paper.
She created the “spontaneity and freshness…associated with sketches” through “[painting] on unprimed and unsized white canvas,” allowing her paintings to appear much more in the moment, a hallmark characteristic of Impressionist art. Sometimes, she would leave the edges of the canvas devoid of paint, furthering the sketch-like quality of her paintings. White was dominant in her palette, be it through the application of paint or the peeping through of the canvas, giving her paintings the luminosity she desired. Her palette consisted of vibrant colors that “[were] admirably suited to her essentially feminine subjects” and she created the illusion of depth through
This 1879/80 scenic multicolored and glossy oil on canvas painting (47.5 x 56.4 cm) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), a French artist of the Impressionism of Modern Art era. The painting is of two people (an older man and a young preadolescent girl), whom are about three feet apart from each other and are gathered on a rustic looking brown rail overlooking a wakeless sky-blue lake with one small dark-blue boat floating along the shore. There is a one occupant standing on the boat with a single pole in his hand (sometimes used to push small boats along rivers and lakes in Italy) and an outboard motor is attached to the other end of the craft. The lake’s blue color is the reflection of the calm blue color of the sky. In addition, there
In the year of 1840 little did France, let alone the world, know that it was a year to be put in the history books. On this beautiful year a man of great recognition in the art world was born. The founding father of Impressionism, Claude Monet. He had been a painter of a new style. One of his paintings titled “Across the Meadow” was simply one of the art pieces among a multitude of other phenomenal impressionist works he had completed.
When entering the room, people crowded around Monet’s pieces, which felt like an honor to see the type and techniques his work has. The colors describe the feeling of an early morning. The painting has a muted palette of blues, greens, and grays. The sunrise is orange and yellow which are surrounded by the clouds and smoke from steamboats. Three boats are shapes and visible while the rest fade into the distance. This painting is an example of plein air or outdoor painting. I also notice that Monet layered the colors so that when I viewed the painting from a far distance I knew what the painting was about however when I looked at it up close I saw brush strokes and
The painting required sketches on panel, 25 drawings and three important preliminary studies. The skirt of the woman in the center with a parasol is painted in an orange-pink hue. It casts a blue shadow. Her red jacket is seen against bright green grass. The orange dress of the young girl running (to the right) has a blue-tinted shadow. The skirt of the woman with a parasol walking beside a man is predominantly purple, so it seems, but is made up of a myriad of hues. Notice the lighter yellowish “halo” separating the skirt from the foreground grass, particularly just behind her skirt. At the same time, Seurat defines form by brushstrokes: close, parallel strokes define the contour of the woman’s bustle. He continuously experiments in his manner of applying paint; in the sunlit grass, for example, short, even strokes are laid over one another. It is clear that Seurat never followed any of the popular theories rigidly. His paintings are also intended to convey social commentary. The La Grande Jatte makes use of symbols. A monkey in French (and female) is known as “singesse,” denoting a prostitute. The smartly dressed woman is fishing but for what? Then, as now, spectators have questioned Seurat’s meaning. Whether Seurat intended the Bathers and this painting to be considered as pendants (a pair) is still debated; certainly he contrasts the natural world with the unpleasant artificiality of bourgeois life, as these artists saw it. However, the critics applauded such elements as the controlled surface of the painting, the use of aerial perspective, which gives an impression of space, and Seurat’s deeply shadowed foreground that leads into a light, bright distance. Strictly speaking, Pointillism refers to the technique of using dots of pure color in such a way that, seen at the appropriate distance, they achieve maximum luminosity. However, a pointillist painting is no more “luminous” than anything else that is printed with small dots,
In Monet’s painting, there is an extraordinary use of colour and texture which brings out the meaning that nature is spectacular. First, the colours are green, blue, yellow, and white which are the colours mostly found in nature. The blue in the water is the same blue used in the sky. Also, further out in the painting it’s dark blue which suggest that there is a shadow from a cloud. To continue, the clouds are white, but is almost pink ;therefore, the sun seems to be rising. In addition, the flowers have hints of yellow and white which helps to make the flowers stand out. Next, the water has the reflection of the trees so there are different colours in the water ;in fact, texture helps to make the reflection, by using the ripples in the water
The Impressionist paintings usually had as its subject the outdoors, with figures enjoying their leisure time. Although one might argue that this subject had been common in French painting since Medieval Times, The Impressionists shifted the subjects matter from the Ancient Regime’s scenes depicting the high classes, to “scenes of bourgeois domesticity and of more risqué forms of urban entertainment”. The Haussmannization of Paris, the egalitarian mindset born from the revolutions, and the facilitation of transportation made the bourgeoisie able to engage in outdoor activities like “boating, strolling”, and luncheons, which before were exclusive to the elites. Because of this, The Impressionists, lead my Monet who picked up from the Realist and Naturalist Schools, began depicting trivial activities of leisure, popular destinations surrounding
Claude Monet had a different style of painting in the 1800’s. He was a French painter who shed a whole new light on the way painting could be done; he also was a lead figure in the impressionist movement. To this day, Monet made such a huge impact on the world, that you can find his paintings in museums across the globe!
The 1800’s were a time when art merely showed our three-dimensional world on a two- dimensional plane. Claude Monet, a famous French impression painter, sought to change these Victorian standards that he so resented with his Impressionist ideals. During an art exhibition in 1874, Monet debuted his painting Impression, Sunrise which was critiqued by many other artists. One artist acridly dubbed it the title of Impression in that it did not focus on the scene at hand but instead favored lighting. However, Monet did not let this get to him and in fact, let it drive him to push for change in the art community. Monet used colors, technique, and impressionism ideals on to convey the new way that he believed art should be created.
Jean-Francois Millet’s Potato Planters is a portrayal of two farmers; more likely husband and wife, planting seeding to grow potatoes during the day on their farm. This art has a lot of emphasis, movement, color, line, light, and depth.