Painting in our life

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Dutch painting. By the late 1600's, the Netherlands had become one of the world's major commercial and colonial powers. As the country gained wealth, the Dutch people became interested in luxury goods, including works of art. They liked almost any subject that

reminded them of their own comfortable middle-class lives. Dutch painters developed a distinct style during the baroque period. Many Dutch artists specialized in painting specific subjects, such as domestic scenes or tavern scenes. Painting that deals with such ordinary, everyday subjects is called genre painting.

Jan Vermeer probably ranks as the greatest Dutch genre painter of the 1600's. Vermeer and other Dutch genre artists painted small pictures, most of which had smooth, glazed surfaces. Vermeer, a master of painting interior scenes, usually portrayed women working at quiet household tasks. His art is particularly noted for its treatment of sunlight as it floods into a room or falls on objects.

Rococo was a painting style that developed out of baroque. Rococo artists gave their paintings the decorative quality of baroque. But they painted most of their pictures on a smaller scale than did the baroque painters. Much baroque painting was energetic and heroic. Rococo painting communicated a sense of relaxation. It also was light-hearted and had none of the seriousness of baroque painting. Antone Watteau and Honore Fragonard are the most famous rococo artists.

Neo-classicism was a movement in painting which reflected political changes in Europe. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, stressed the virtues of Roman civilization. These virtues included discipline and high moral principles. Neo-classical artists helped educate the French people in the goals of the new government. They painted inspirational scenes from Roman history to create a feeling of patriotism. They are Jacques Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique of France.

Romanticism was a reaction against the neo-classical emphasis on balanced, orderly pictures. Romantic paintings expressed the imagination and emotions of the artists. The painters replaced the clean, bright colors and harmonious compositors of neo-classicism with scenes of violent activity dramatized by vigorous brushstrokes, rich colors, and deep shadows.

Two English painters - John Constable and Joseph M. W. Turner -made important contributions to romanticism. Constable was a master of landscape painting. He developed a style of rough brushstrokes, and broken color to catch the effected of lights in the air, trees bent in the wind, and pond surfaces moved by a breeze. In his works he tried to capture in oil paintings the fresh quality of water color sketches.

Turner was increasingly concerned with the effects of color. In his late works color became one dazzling swirl of paint on the canvas. The influence of Constable and Turner appeared during the late 1800"s in the works of the French impressionists.

Realism. As neo-classicism and romanticism declined , a new movement - realism - developed in France. Guctave Courbet became the first great master of realistic painting. Courbet painted landscapes, but his vision of nature was not so idealized as that of other painters. He recorded the world around him so sharply that many of his works were considered social protests. In one painting, for example, he portrayed an old man and a youth in the agonizing work of breaking rocks with hammers. The artist implied that something is wrong with a society that allows people to spend their lives at such labor. The neo-classicists called Courbet's paintings low and vulgar. But Courbet's works helped change the course of art. The paintings were based on the artist's honest. Unsentimental observations of life around him. From Courbet's time to the present day, many painters have adopted his approach.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an English art and literary movement founded in 1848. The leading painters of the movement were William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett, Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelite painters stood apart from the major art movements of their century. They wanted to return to what they believed was the purity and innocence of painting before Raphael. Most Pre-Raphaelite art has a strong moral message through religious paintings.

Edward Manet was a French artist who revolutionized painting in the mid-1800's. He developed a new approach to art. He believed that painting do not have to express messages or portray emotions. Manet was chiefly interested in painting beautiful pictures. To him, beauty resulted from a combination of brushstrokes, colors, patterns, and tones. Since Manet's time, most painters have emphasized the picture itself, rather than its storytelling function. His "Luncheon on the Grass" illustrates lack of concern for story.

Реферат опубликован: 18/02/2007