Romantic Era Blog

 Romantic Era Blog

When asked to decide on my favorite style, I found that I was more drawn to Impressionism over Romanticism because of the drastic use of color and brush techniques. Some of the loose brush strokes and bold colors that are present in Impressionism paintings are appealing to me because I'm often drawn to earth tones. The like the messy look, because it's a bit more realistic, and has a better flow in the technique in the paintings. Impressionism paintings have such a freeing feeling to them because it leaves something to be imagined by the audience since the paintings are often not as clear as their counterparts in Romanticism.



Interestingly, the piece Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh is one of the most well-known images in modern culture, Van Gogh painted Starry Night while in the Asylum at Saint-Remy in 1889. This image is of a night sky that is filled with stars, a crescent moon, and swirling clouds. The picture has a sense of movement throughout the stars in the sky. 



Van Gogh’s had several amazing pieces throughout his life, I chose these two because they are very different to me. The Almond Blossom painting Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890. The delicate flowers with their white and pink petals against the rich blue background with many different textures were a great post-impressionism. 


Sara Handin a Toy to the Baby
Oil on canvas, ca. 1901
Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was American and lived from 1844-1926. She became friends with Edgar Degas and the Impressionists, and exhibited with them in four of their eight Impressionist Exhibitions held from 1874 to 1886 – the only American artist invited to do so. After 1900, Cassatt became known primarily as a painter of mothers and children. In Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby, Cassatt employs compositional techniques used in Japanese prints, such as cropping both sides of the picture to give the viewer a glimpse of an intimate moment. Some elements I enjoyed were crisp colors, earth tones, and also the use of smaller strokes when compared to Van Gogh. Only Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby and the print, Gathering Fruit, remain in the collection.


View of Cap d’Antibes
Oil on canvas, 1888
Inscription lower left: Claude Monet 88

Claude Monet was French and lived from1840-1926. I believe Monet was the best known, and today, most popular among the Impressionist artists, Claude Monet’s early work Impression, Sunrise (1873) lead to the coining of the term. Monet was “keenly attuned to the natural world” and triumphed above early failures and slights to achieve his place in the highly competitive Parisian art world. His career spanned over 60 years evolving from realism uncharacteristic with how we see generally him in our mind’s eye to the mid-career works so well known to the highly abstract late waterlilies. Alfred Pope ultimately purchased nine works by Monet, four of which remain in the collection. 


Overall the Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned the traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality. I found myself really enjoying this technique because it's so free, and it captures the optical effects of light. It also, conveys the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases in a very warm way.


Works Cited

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 35

Impressionists - hill-stead museum (2021) Hill. Available at: https://www.hillstead.org/our-collection/paintings/impressionists/#monet (Accessed: October 31, 2022).

Vincent van Gogh - Almond Blossom (no date) Van Gogh Museum. Available at: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0176v1962 (Accessed: October 31, 2022).

Comments

  1. DScottNovember 3, 2022 at 5:03 PM

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  2. DScottNovember 3, 2022 at 5:04 PM

    Hello Autumn, it was great to read your post and appreciate the beautiful art you chose to analyze. I had the pleasure of attending the Van Gogh interactive museum. They displayed his paintings all around the surfaces of the room, while incorporating music and commentary. It was an amazing sight to see. According to The Art Story, Vincent van Gogh in his paintings, uses light and colors to express emotions and sensations. The way Van Gogh uses the blue in Starry Night portrays the gloom and depression he felt at the time painting this. From a viewer’s perspective we can feel his emotion on the canvas and his paintings give us a sense of his humanity. Great post!

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