Vincent van Gogh, Sower at Sunset, 1888, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Jean-François Millet’s The Sower was Van Gogh’s favorite painting. He loved the way the French artist from the Barbizon School painted the peasant in such a way that he is ennobled, yet the scene is unemotional; his face is largely concealed. Millet presented the laborer as … Continue reading
Paul Gauguin, The Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao Tupapau), 1892, oil on canvas, 28½” x 36½”, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Paul Gauguin’s brightly colored paintings of the tropics represent a paradise that dis not necessarily exist. A leader of the Synthetist movement in painting in which artists used colors freely to express their personal feelings about a subject, Gauguin represented … Continue reading
Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou among Women, 1899, platinum print, 9/1/16
Pictorialist Photography (noun) Pictorialist Photography was an international photography movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in which artists manipulated their photographs so that they would appear to be more creative and therefore comparable to other fine arts, … Continue reading
Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863, oil on canvas, 73.5" x 120.7", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Albert Bierstadt, perhaps the most successful of the Hudson River School artists, painted very large canvases with majestic scenes of the American West that were hugely popular in New York and London. James McHenry, an American railway entrepreneur living in … Continue reading
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, crayon and tempera on cardboard, 35⅞” x 29”, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Public Domain via Wikipedia.
Tomorrow, one of four versions of Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream will be for sale at the Impressionist and Modern Art auction at Sotheby’s in New York. If you’re interested, it will run you about $80 million. No image of … Continue reading
Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas, 51.4” x 74.8”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Photo by Gautier Poupeau, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1865, at the Salon in Paris, the official exhibition space for the art academy, there were many, many paintings of nude women, so why did this one by Édouard Manet cause such an uproar? The public hated this painting! … Continue reading
Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, 1879-1887, bronze, 27½” high, Musée Rodin, Paris, Photo by Gertjan R., Creative Commons Attribution license via Wikimedia Commons.
Patina (noun) A colored film on the surface of a metal sculpture. Sometimes the patina appears over time as a result of the oxidation process and other times artists create the color with a wash of chemicals. Rodin developed his … Continue reading
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave, Edo Period, c. 1831, woodblock print, 9⅞” x 14⅝”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Ukiyo-e (noun) Click here for pronunciation. Japanese for “pictures of a floating world,” a Ukiyo-e is a type of woodblock print that was produced by an artist, a woodblock carver, and a printer. Katsushika Hokusai designed many popular Ukiyo-e, of … Continue reading
Georges Seurat, Circus Sideshow, 1888, oil on canvas, 39¼” x 59”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain
Pointillism (noun) Click here for pronunciation. Also called Divisionism and Chromoluminarism, this is a style of painting in which very small dots of contrasting color are placed next to one another on a canvas. When a viewer stands back from … Continue reading
Anna Atkins, Algae, cyanotype, 1843, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Cyanotype (noun) Blue photographic prints made with light-sensitive iron salts. The process reproduces items placed directly on the paper. The simple and low cost cyanotype process, invented by the renowned English scientist Sir John Frederick William Herschel, was often used … Continue reading
Vincent van Gogh, The Night Café, September 1888, oil on canvas, 28½” x 36⅓”, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
You are privy to the point of view of a very sick man. The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh suffered terribly from many diseases including syphilis, epilepsy, and alcoholism. He also was tremendously anxious and depressed, which is why he … Continue reading
Claude Monet, London, Houses of Parliament, 1904, oil on canvas, 32.1” x 36.4”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Avant-garde (noun) A military term meaning, “advance force,” that was adopted by French artists and critics in the nineteenth century to describe innovative art. The Impressionists were the first avant-garde artists. Their colorful and sketchy paintings were radically new.