Art Review: The Impressions of Venice at Dusk by Claude Monet

If you seek a spectacular sunset reenacted on canvas you shouldn’t miss Venice at Dusk or San Giorgio Maggiore al Crepuscolo painted by French Impressionist Claude Monet. The work was finished in 1908 with 37 others in the ancient city of Venice Italy.  Monet did not feel that his paintings were that great and had significant self-doubt about is work but they nevertheless became well known. 

He wrote to an art seller about that doubt ,"Although I am enthusiastic about Venice, and though I've started a few canvases, I'm afraid I will only bring back beginnings that will be nothing else but souvenirs for me" (1).

Despite his yearnings to quit Monet continued to paint each and every day completing a number of great masterpieces. His works are known for their simplicity and eloquence that many other painters seem to forget in forging their works. 

The painting is of a sunset behind San Giorgio Maggiore the sanctuary and monastery (2). Colors are vibrant yet soft while the brush strokes are thin and small to give it a slightly distorted view that coincides with early morning light. The brushstrokes also contribute to the choppy water impression that reflects the monastery in an imperfect manner. 

Claude Monet was one of the main characters behind the French Impressionist movement. Impressionism is the way in which the eye first sees an impression and then adds additional detail upon inspection (3). It is like being blind and then seeing. The goal is to catch a reality or a mood on canvas form. 

Each viewer makes their own interpretation and impression of the painting.  Monet obviously had a mood and perception which he painted onto canvass. Yet each of us brings our own mood and perception to understanding that meshes with the authors to create unique experiences. Art is always in the eye of the beholder.

Lost Painting by Vincent van Gogh-The Road to Tarascon

The painting on the Road to Tarascon is a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh traveling with its artwork in 1888. It was seen as a lost masterpiece and a rare glimpse into van Gogh’s life as an individualist and a traveling painter. To him real painters don’t paint things how they are but they do paint them as they feel they are. Francis Bacon thought it was a haunting painting of van Gogh as an outsider to the world. 

Even though the artist is alone, hot, and following a path between Arles and Tarascon he will be meeting his friend Paul Gauguin in less than a month. Within a year of this time he had a seizure and within two years sold his first piece of artwork. With all of his life’s happenings his dark shadow indicates his only true friend is himself. 

The Nazi’s removed and destroyed the art as a degenerate for their culture. It was believed, at that time in history, that anyone not part of the overall Germanic bloodlines created art that was insulting to religion, Germans, and the world. Other artists were told not to paint if their art was not of sufficient Germanic qualities and regular inspections of their homes were common.  Anything that did not conform was removed. 

Vincent was a child who drew pictures and began painting in his late twenties. Over 2,100 paintings were produced and only six were ruined or destroyed.  Much of his time was spent as an art trader and he desired to someday be a pastor. As he matured his works became stronger and brighter. It is believed that his distinct style contributed to his overall success as a painter.  It was his type of signature. 

If you would like to seek a bit of Tarascon you may watch the following:

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

1888-Starry Night

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh is a depiction of a village in a whistling night. The swirls are designed to ensure the viewers eyes move around the picture and create a point-to-point effect.  It was a surreal painting designed to enhance the overall senses drawn from the picture. He purposely used things like lines where shadows would have been more correct and bright yellow stars where only small figure was needed. 

Some have argued that the peaceful village and stormy night are dichotomies. One offers safety and protection with inviting lights in the window. The night is uninviting, interesting, but wholly a wild place. As with all art, there are psychological interpretations that include his feelings and inner conflicts are expressed onto the painting. A few have argued he suffered from lead poisoning changing his perception.

The Cyprus brush is right in front of the viewer and sort of distorts the view. Analysts believe that the author is expressing his emotions and fears into the painting. He creates his own reality and gives the components within the painting a bigger than life expression indicating the vividness of his memory.  The brush appears to be knotty and creates disequilibrium within the painting that leaves viewers perplexed. 

Van Gough was a post impressionist who attempted to free the art from the forms of the world to create feelings and moods within the viewers. An impressionist would try and paint reality exactly as they saw through their emotions with heightened sensory colors. A post impressionist attempts to distort the lines and use unnatural colors to create feelings.  The paintings are not supposed to be exact reality but full of life beyond reality.

The interpretation I prefer is the people sleeping in the quiet night village are wholly unaware of the life of nature outside.  As humans we are focused on our routines and patterns that center around our immediate needs. Despite our narrow focus the world and its nature continues to move with more life than most of us understand. No one knows the true meaning of the painting thereby leaving the distinct possibility that Vincent van Gough was a night owl who simply enjoyed the life of the evening air. You have to decide for yourself.

Painting: Tobit Accusing Anna of Stealing the Kid

The subject of the painting was taken from the Apocryphal Book of Tobit. Tobit was a wealthy and strict adherent to Mosaic Law. He lost all of his money and was blinded by an accident. The wife went to work sewing and washing to support the family. She brought home a kid goat and Tobit accused her of stealing it. She chastised him for his self-righteousness and frees him from his limited thinking. Later their fortunes are restored by the efforts of their son and his eyes fixed from blindness from fish entrails.

The painting helps us think about how even from the lowest depths man’s lot can change. It is difficult for us to judge others with any real sense of accuracy. To do so requires the ability to weigh and balance all of the possible reasons and justifications. Unfortunately, many of us make the fatal mistake of using self-righteousness to make ourselves look better than and more moral than others. In this case, freeing himself from his narrow thinking also freed him to improve his life. 

The painting is from Rembrandt and was completed in Leiden in 1625. He had a knack for putting religious themes and emotion within his paintings. These emotions related around concepts such as joy and anguish. As he got older his paintings improved expressing such feelings with ever increasing finite detail. He turned from a timid painter to a bold painter with lifelike scenes.

Rembrandt made a mistake in this painting and covered up an object. He painted over a spinning wheel to express the anguish and supplication better with Tobit’s hands. The wheel would have shown the rest of the story and difficulties his wife was having to make ends meet but would have confused the area. One can still see a part of the spinning wheel and spokes. Tobit’s is naturally darker in this area. 

Rembrandt, known as Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, was born in 1606 during the Dutch Golden Age. He is seen as one of the world’s greatest painters. Even though he achieved success early in his life and his paintings were popular throughout Europe during his lifetime he had significant financial hardship in his later years. He liked to buy lots of unique works and had an extensive collection. Perhaps more than he could afford. Eventually he needed to liquidate his work through bankruptcy. 

One unique feature of Rembrandt was his stereo blindness. An analysis of a number of paintings helped to determine that his two eyes did not function together well. He did not perceive the same level of depth as others. This flattening made it easier for him to draw pictures on a two dimensional canvas. This became a modern method of teaching art students to close one eye while painting to create the same effect. 

The Reading of Tobit

The Potato Eaters by Vincent van Gogh

The Potato Eaters-1885

The Potato Eaters presents five figures of which three are females and two are males. One of which appears to be younger than the others and standing before her family. The meal is simple consisting of baked potatoes without any type of dressing. Spices were expensive and imported from other areas. 

This meal was a regular staple for people who did not have the access to the refrigerated varieties we have today. The other woman is serving coffee for the group through cheap cups and a pot. You can see the conversation within the picture as the family discusses their daily happenings. One might be talking about the hens and the other about the saving of seeds. Their lives consumed them and filled up their conversational needs. It was all about survival.

The colors are dark which gives the painting a dark and dirty look. On the ceiling is a single hanging lamp that brightens the families faces. Even though each female is wearing drab clothing and a bonnet we can see a touch of youth behind the center figure's face. Life has yet to wear her down as you can see from the wonderment in her eyes. As a peasant farming family clothing was likely in high demand and coarse by nature. People simply didn’t throw their clothes in the washing machine or run down to Macy’s for another pair. 

The depiction is a real family in the spirit of naturalism painting styles. At this time the Great Recession (before the modern one) ran until 1879. This time was replaced a few decades later by the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The painting was completed by a young Vincent Van Gogh in 1885 who had not yet mastered his skills. Poverty was still everywhere as people have not had equal opportunities to achieve economic footing. It was just the beginning of a more global economy. This picture is about poverty and the simplicity of life that existed at the time for a huge percentage of the population.

The painting was originally finished in Netherlands as a study of “real” people. Vincent van Gogh wanted to depict people as he saw them. To him these peasants were not only the backbone of the country but also legitimately earned their food. He stated in a letter, "You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and — that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours — civilized people. So I certainly don’t want everyone just to admire it or approve of it without knowing why.”

What Van Gogh was capable of doing was creating a “snap shot” of life in the rural countryside. Even though they were poor they were still together. To him people actually worked hard to achieve the things they needed in their lives. Imagine if we were living back then where backbreaking work was the norm and only a very few luxuries of life were available. There were no credit cards, buses, racks of clothing, and medical benefits. With such a hard time people had an average mortality rate of 50 years or less. Now look around at all the things you have! Do you still have each other? Perhaps their poverty provided them a rare gift?