Approach to Venice / J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (artist) British, 1775 - 1851 Approach to Venice, 1844 oil on canvas

The painting needs its title, since we are presented with a haze of colored nothingness, through which there loom the bright accents of what we make out to be boats and a far-off steeple. The water is golden with light, but so is the sky: where does one end and another start? There is no perspectival depth, just space, height, clouds, dazzle, glory.

The impression given is of immense exhilaration, almost ecstatic in its power; the natural is allied with the spiritual. Turner has torn the world into paper shreds and thrown them up to the sun : there they catch fire and he paints them for us, crying "Alleluia!"

The clouds of glory, the lakes of light, the stone and mortar transformed into citadels of Heaven: these are not inventions. Few people have not seen the extravagances of glory that the sun produces with casual ease each morning! It was Turner's special gift to know that these extremes of light and color demand from the artist an extremity of technique.

When Turner first exhibited this painting, he accompanied it with these lines from a poem by Lord Byron-

"The moon is up, and yet
it is not night
The sun as yet disputes
the day with her"

The Boating Party Lunch/ Auguste Renoir

Artist

Renoir's painting satisfies the fantasies we have about leisure activities of the Parisian life in the Impressionist age. The sun-filled , genial image of casual socialability in the painting is such that the viewer equally participates in the scene. Besides, the visual impact is greater when we consider the kind of richness of form,  fluidity of brush stroke, and a flickering light that governs the painting.

The diagonal of the railing serves to demarcate the two halves of the composition, one densely packed with figures, the other all but empty, save for the two figures of the proprietor's daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr, which are made prominent by this contrast. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. The main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth all work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.

The painting shows a group of Renoir's friends enjoying that supreme delight of a day out. Renoir shows us inter-relationships: notice the young man intent upon the girl at the right chatting, while the girl at the left is occupied with her puppy. We also notice, the loneliness, however relaxd, that can be part of anyone's experience at a lunch party. The man behind the girl and her dog is lost in a world of his own, yet we cannot but believe that his reverie is a happy one. The delightful debris of the meal, the charm of the young people, the hazy brightness of the world outside - all communicate an earthly paradise.

Dance at Bougival / Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Renoir is perhaps the only painter", said Octave Mirbeau, "who never produced a sad painting." But a close look at the painting 'Dance at Bougival' has a slightly different story to tell. Pictured in this painting is Marie Clementine, who later changed her name to Suzanne Valadon. According to Fosca, she had been a dressmaker before becoming an acrobat, when she injured herself and started posing for artists. Based on what authors have written about Renoir and his feelings about women, we can hypothesize that the reason for Suzanne’s unhappiness in the painting is because Renoir would not have liked her as a person. Suzanne was so wild that he probably didn’t feel comfortable painting her in such an intimate activity as dancing. According to Ann Dumas, Renoir was “a nervous, restless man with contradictory ideas about almost everything, including women”. He believed that the woman’s place was in the home being practical and domestic, or out of the home sitting for him as a model. Thus, since Suzanne was so active dancing and having a career as an acrobat, he would not have liked her role in society. From his dislike for her, Renoir portrays Suzanne unhappily. Januszczak noticed this straying from happiness and writes about her eyes as he did for the women’s eyes in Le Moulin de la Galette: “But she…ah, she is a typical Renoir girl, and so instead of throwing herself into the dance with abandon, she gazes into infinity. Eyes that should be gay are full of thought”. Januszczak recognizes that her eyes do not engage with her partner, yet he does not notice the more prominent feature that shows her uneasiness: her mouth. Her eyes only seem to be looking away from her partner, but her lips actually show she is uncomfortable. They droop, when they should have been smiling, enjoying the dance. Her mouth shows unhappiness, while her eyes only show diversion. This seems to point to the fact that Renoir was uncomfortable with Suzanne. He was uneasy about her as a person, and thus reflected it in her discontent, through her frowning mouth.

The Raft of the Medusa / Theodore Gericault

The painting is a landmark in the progress of the romantic fervour in visual arts. The French painter, Eugene Delacroix presented a recent horrifying emotional realism, depicting man 'in extremis' - overwhelmed by the forces of nature beyond his control. Man is fitted against the elements, not in triumph but tragedy. The macabre aspect, an element of Romanticism, is heightened by the dramatic composition, the dramatic lighting picking out figures as in a spot-light. Their flesh has a waxen, deathly pallor, intensifying their helplessness before nature, and their ultimate fate.

The painting is not a literal representation of the actual incident it depicted; rather the artist seems to be deliberately pushing emotion to extremes, and Gericault meant this emotion to be a reflection of what he found within himself.

Mona Lisa /Leonardo da Vinci

Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda or La Joconde) is a 16th-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. The work is currently owned by the Government of France and is on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman (it is almost unanimous that she is Lisa del Giocondo) whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work. The image is so widely recognised, caricatured, and sought out by visitors to the Louvre that it is considered the most famous painting in the world!

Some interesting revelations made on the painting by the research study of a French engineer Pascal Cotte include the following-

• Lace on Mona Lisa's dress
• The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
• A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
• The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
• The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.
• The left finger was not completely finished.
• A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
• And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.

Talking about the mysterious quality of 'Mona Lisa', E.H Gombrich, the great art historian, makes an illuminating study on the painting-

We see that Leonardo has used the means of his 'sfumato' with the utmost deliberation. Everyone who has ever tried to draw or scribble a face knows that what we call its expression rests mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes. Now it is precisely these parts which Leonardo has left deliberately indistinct, by letting them merge into a soft shadow. That is why we are never quite certain in what mood Mona Lisa is really looking at us. Her expression always seems just to elude us. It is not only vagueness, of course, which produces this effect. There is much more behind it. Leonardo has done a very daring thing, which perhaps only a painter of his consummate mastery could risk. If we look carefully at the picture, we see that the two sides do not quite match. This is most obvious in the fantastic dream landscape in the background. The horizon on the left side seems to lie much lower than the one on the right. Consequently, when we focus on the left side of the picture, the woman looks somehow taller or more erect than if we focus on the right side. And her face, too, seems to change with this change of position, because, even here, the two sides do not quite match. But with all these sophisticated tricks, Leonardo might have produced a clever piece of jugglery rather than a great work of art, had he not known exactly how far he could go, and had he not counterbalanced his daring deviation from nature by an almost miraculous rendering of the living flesh. Look at the way in which he modelled the hand, or the sleeves with their minute folds. Leonardo could be as painstaking as any of his forerunners in the patient observation of nature. Only he was no longer merely the faithful servant of nature. Long ago, in the distant past, people had looked at portraits with awe, because they had thought that in preserving the likeness the artist could somehow preserve the soul of the person he portrayed. Now the great scientist, Leonardo, had made some of the dreams and fears of these first image-makers come true. He knew the spell which would infuse life into the colors spread by his magic brush."

Wanderer above the Sea of Mist / Caspar David Friedrich.

Caspar David Friedrich is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".

Some meaning of this work is lost in the translation of its title. In German, the title is "Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer." There are several things to note about this German title. First of all, Wanderer exists as both the word for "wanderer" and for the word "hiker." The character can thus be seen as lost and trying to find purpose, or as a resolute journeyman. The second subtlety is that the word "Nebelmeer" translates as "Fogsea", or "the Fog Sea." The first of these leads to a more abstract and philosophical view that complements the "wanderer" translation of the first word. The second is more concrete and challenging, complementing the view of the determined hiker.

'Wanderer above a Sea of Mist' is a beautiful spiritual interpretaion of Nature. A way-farer surveys a spectacular panorama - a glorious affirmation of God's role as the creator. Friedrich's travellers are mostly viewed from behind. so that they could represent a universal figure comparable to the Christian Everyman. However, the theme of a man climbing a mountain is also a traditional metaphor for the journey of life. His arrival at the summit signals life's end. In this context, the image of the misty panorama may be interpreted as heaven, or more probably, as a view of the earthly realm witnessed from heaven.

The Balcony / Manet.

Edouard Manet, in 'The Balcony' represents urban life and the contemporary leisure activities of the Parisians. The painting is unconventional in its subject matter and also the approach towards the concept of viewing. Perception was an important attribute of Impressionist paintings, and Manet, though not an Impressionist in its typical form, shows certain convincing reasons for us to believe he was so.

The painting tells no story or anecdote; the protagonists are frozen, as if isolated in an interior dream, evidence that Manet was freeing himself from academic constraints, despite the obvious reference to Goya's Majas at the Balcony. The painting thus, shows a shift in art where it strives to free itself from teh conventional patterns of being bound to literature and moral responsibilities. The vividness of the colours, the green of the balustrade and shutters, the blue of the man's tie, as well as the brutal contrast between the white dresses and the darkness of the background, were perceived as provocation. The hierarchy usually attached to human figures and objects has been disregarded: the flowers receiving more detail than some of the faces.


It is important to keep in mind that in this painting, Manet painted an image about viewing: the sexuality, anonymity and hierarchy of viewing. As such, the subject of his painting is contemporary urban visual culture. His painting also places the viewer of the painting in the position of being viewed by the figures in the painting, so that the traditional function of the painting, as a world viewed and consciously represented, is reversed. It is precisely Manet's consciousness of the representational efficacy of viewing that characterizes his 'particular' modernism.

'The Balcony' makes clear that, in modern art, the viewer is as important as the viewed, that seeing or perception is itself now the subject of art. The viewer is temporary, the painting is permanent!