ArtExpertOnLine

    This week I bring you a very different image from ones previously reviewed.  The artist is Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and the title is The Stonebreakers.       Courbet was one of the most important French artists of the mid nineteenth century.  Romanticism was the popular movement approved by the Salon, but Courbet was one of the few who broke from that tradition to establish Realism.  Here, in The Stonebreakers,  we can see exactly what the term Realism means.  From what I have read, Courbet saw this scene by the side of a road, and he immediately returned to his studio to paint it.  We see two men, the kneeling man lifting his pic, while the younger carries the basket of broken rock. We can only imagine they were able to sell the stone to help earn a living.      Looking carefully at the scene their torn clothing and wooden shoes help illustrate the men's plight. On the extreme right, mid canvas is depicted a metal pot, cloth and spoon so we can assume the men brought their

   It has been a while since we looked at a still life so this week we have a personal favorite. We have a reasonably simple  subject: flowers and vase on a plain background and base, but master painter, Vincent Van Gogh )1853-1890) worked his magic with it!   When I first see an image like this I often ask myself, "how much of this arrangement did the artist see and paint just as is, or, how much was arranged?" Here I think we can be pretty sure Van Gogh composed this image in front of him before he painted it.  Why?  Because  of the strength of his design.  Long floral leaves create a strong V shape, triangle pointing straight down to the center of the painting, but slightly left of the vase base.  The plain, circular vase balances the huge diagonal line created by the fallen stems.  And, wedged between all of this is a mass of iris flowers. Believe me, when making a decision to paint a bouquet of flowers in a vase, irises would be the last I would chose because they are so

    With the last days of summer almost upon us, and after a few weeks of challenging Art, I thought it was time we relaxed with a beautiful landscape.   So, here we have Childe Hassam's (1859 - 1935) oil painting: Celia Thaxter's Garden.       Hassam was one of the best of the American Impressionist painters.  He traveled to Europe early in his career to study art and see the developing trends coming out of France. He never met the French Impressionists, but did see their work and was attracted to it.     Returning to the United States, Hassam developed his unique style creating beautiful images of  the Eastern coast.  Our painting this week, is taken from the garden of Celia Thaxter (1835 - 1894).She was a poet and writer of short fiction, and his friend.  She lived on the Isle of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire, in Maine.  And, obviously, she had a beautiful garden for Hassam created several paintings of it during his visit to see her.    Dividing the work in half, ho

  I have a confession!   Pop Art is not my favorite.  When visiting a modern art gallery, one quick swing inside the Pop Art room will do it for me.  Although it was an exceptionally important movement in the 1960's, and it speaks to the commercial, disposable culture of that time, I am left not finding most images challenging in their own right.  But, this week, we have, what I think is an exception.       Standard Station  is a color screen-print by the American artist, Edward Ruscha (1937 -)   He was part of the 1960's pop art movement but also experimented with a variety of styles and media.  Standard Station was done in 1966 and was created after a painting he did in 1963.  I have not found a reproduction of that painting, so we shall look at this print, instead.  He did do a series, but I found this one the most interesting.      The composition is extremely dynamic, it is hard NOT to look at it. The image is divided horizontally by the blue and the orange red, and the ev

  Today many viewers may quickly disregard this portrait because of its opulence and decorative quality, but I suggest we look close and let me show you a couple of interesting things.      Madame Pompadour was the mistress of King Louis XV of France and used her position to become a powerful influence in French life.  She has been quoted as saying that every day she wanted to make the world a more beautiful place, and one critic has called this oil painting a visual biography of her interests, because of its many symbols.       Francois Boucher (1703-1770) created this portrait of his patroness in 1756.   Boucher was the ideal for the French Rococo style which is easy to dismiss today, but he was a highly skilled painter and etcher.  So looking closely at this work, do you see anything unusual? Look at her delicate little feet, and hands.  Take the distance from the top of her head to the bottom of her chin....now figure how many heads could be placed from the bottom of her chin to he