This, in and of itself, is a very simple image – both stylistically and color-wise. There is nothing complex or challenging about it. However, in a room full of paintings, it is the one that draws you in and tugs you across the way to look at it. It radiates peaceful serenity and the gentle harmony of a world that is at rest before the oncoming storm of a new day.
Tag: romanticism
Sunday
There is something very powerful about the nature of this work; it screams strength in solitude, but also strength in nature’s embrace. Without one, you cannot have the other. There is beauty in the madness, and softness in the darkness.
Saturday
This particular painting is very small but very mighty in its mastery of spacial acuity, color, dimensional flow, and everything else that goes with holding the attention of an audience. By far, it is my favorite of the newest additions to the collection.
Monday
This is one of those examples of landscape art where the true beauty of the painting isn’t actually of the landscape itself: it’s of the stormy sky and the light peeping through the clouds. Everything else is immaterial.
Sunday
This is one of those paintings that you just have to experience in person. No mere photograph is ever going to do it justice. You turn the corner from a room full of 18th century religious art and find yourself looking through a doorway with the long view that I’ve presented one of the photos above of this absolutely magnificent piece of stunning beauty. I was dumbfounded the first time I saw it, and it always makes me giddily happy to see it when I turn that corner. It isn’t a particularly overwhelming subject (in fact, if you asked most art historians, they would poo-poo it and roll their eyes at it as a bit of play-acting attempting art), nor a particularly effective execution of the subject itself (if you look closely in the detail shots, you can see that the statues are rendered rather poorly, and the bones in the sand are out of proportion, etc.), however, the overall effect is stunning. When the sun is shining and the light comes in just so from the outer galleries, it causes the frame to catch the light, which illuminates the sunset even more, giving it almost an ethereal glow.
Good thing I didn’t go to school for this shit, right? I just make it up as I go along!
Saturday
So here’s where I start to turn on the nerd a little bit… This painting, while definitely being high Victorian (as evidenced by the cluttery nature background and the ‘false modesty’ drape for the boy while leaving the girl nude aside from the flowers which are an allegorical reference in and of themselves), is also a masterclass in emulating high Renaissance portraiture ideals, 18th century framing and pastoral design, and 17th century color palettes. And that, my friends, was a run-on sentence of epic proportions.
I love this work because it shows a striking balance of color, composition, and simplicity despite being incredibly complex stylistically.