Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride; Gérôme’s Carpet Merchant; Sargent’s Arab Woman; Cézanne’s Forest Scene. Each at different levels of detail.
brushstrokes
Were Turner’s and Cézanne’s late paintings becoming more abstract? What distinguishes representational painting from abstract?
First shown in the Salon at the age of only 18, Vincent van Gogh spotted his talent. Not only was it cut short, but his paintings are vanishing.
His rough and gestural style turned his dark tales into the stuff of nightmares.
We still associate brushmarks with sketchiness, speed of painting, spontaneity, bravura, and panache – and smooth paint surfaces, assembled from multiple layers and glazes, as being heartless mechanical essays in technique.
Portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Kauffmann, and others show extensive brushstrokes.
Was painterly style a Venetian phenomenon, or was it more widespread in the early sixteenth century?
We should add these Masters to the growing list of those with ‘painterly’ style, and consider whether Impressionism was a development of Venetian ‘colorito’ painting?
This extended essay is likely to change much of our thinking about painting, perhaps art in general. It may be the most important book about art of this decade.
An innovator with his painterly style, some have suggested that he was even Impressionist – a whole century before Monet.
