ArtExpertOnLine

   Wind!   It must be Spring if there is wind.  If you are a regular blog follower, you may remember a very similar painting I reviewed a year ago.  Our artist is Claude Monet (1840-1926) and it was typical of Monet to make several versions of the same basic subject,  making alterations in the time of day and pose of the model.   But, I selected this for this week simply because I felt it was time for an artwork that was truly beautiful.       The model for this painting is Suzanne Hoschede, the daughter of Monet's second wife, Alice Hoschede.  It is considered by some to be a portrait, but there is obviously no attempt at creating a likeness.  This is a painting of the wind, the land, the air   It is so strong we can almost feel the breeze.    While the upper two thirds are figure and sky the bottom third is blowing grass.  Pull it up and look close.   Is there a color in the rainbow not depicted?      We can see the figure has on a white dress, but Monet paints it in yellow, rose

    Oh how I love to switch gears.  Last week we a had  mysterious mid-twentieth century landscape and this week let's   jump forward a few years to a subject many will find reasonably familiar.   Our artist is Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021).   It has been a long while since we looked at one of his paintings. We studied a landscape back in September, 2019, and now we turn to an entirely different subject.   On first look it would be easy to assume that a painting of three objects simple, but let's see what we find.     First it is good to remember that Thiebaud was a teacher.  He taught for most of his adult life at Sacramento City College and University of California.  Looking closely at the painting we see a female student at a desk with a clock behind her.  She  is looking straight at us!   We are part of this scene!   She must be listening to us, we must be the teacher.   Thiebaud has painted a scene he saw everyday, commonplace for him.  The only thing I find completely confus

    This week I am taking us briefly back to winter, but I think for good reason, so stay with me.   I want to review this painting slightly different than normal.    Our artist is Grant Wood (1891-1942).  As many Americans remember, Wood was an American artist who was considered a Regionalist because most of his subject matter was drawn from his native state, Iowa.   His most famous painting is American Gothic, an image of a farmer and his daughter which is part of the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Museum.  That painting appears one thing on the surface, but deeper examination uncovers a more complex artistic statement.   I believe the same can be seen in our painting for this week.   What we have here are:   stylized haystacks, uniformly spaced, and each exactly draped with a layer of snow.   Notice the snow covers the whole top, the uncovered side is in shadow, with only a sliver of light on the right.  Our center of attention is the front stack where a triangle has been r

    Welcome to the Netherlands!  Not only have we traveled across an ocean, but also back in time.  It is 1673 and our artist is Adriaen van Ostade, (1610-1685).  This style painting is called, genre, meaning showing the daily lives of ordinary people, and van Ostade made a profession of it.   One of the interesting things about this period and location in history, is that many people had a high standard of living and there was a strong demand for paintings inside reasonably average homes.  But the populace van Ostade portrayed, generally escape much of this prosperity.   Here we have a relaxed moment of leisure for peasants.        Van Ostade was a prolific painter.  Hundreds of his paintings survived and are spread across many museums around the world.   They are popular because he displayed peasants without social comment, often in a moment of fun and humor.     I find the composition of this work interesting.  Notice it is divided in half, with the people/scene on the bottom portio