His final two years, painting the rural poor in France, and street children in London, in increasingly documentary form. Then his final works before an untimely death.
naturalism
Biography and paintings of the lead Naturalist, from his 2 failed attempts to win the Prix de Rome, switching to depicting the rural poor, and growing success at the Salon.
Start with genre paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, add GĂ©ricault’s ‘Raft of the Medusa’, Courbet and Millet’s social realism, Manet and Lhermitte and you’ve made Naturalism.
A spectrum of purposes and styles, inspired by Émile Zola’s experimental approach to novels, documenting ordinary people with objectivity, in a neutral realism.
Eclectic and mysterious paintings first in academic style, then Naturalist, a few years as the ‘foreign Nabi’ before painting unusual landscapes.
By 1880, an artist’s colony was forming in this village on the southern edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and attracted painters from all over the world.
Trained in Germany because there was no academy in Norway, he soon developed themes of poverty, social injustice, and Norway’s independence. A major influence on Edvard Munch.
Series showing the sailing of smaller vessels, and ship, then a further series of a model getting dressed and leaving the studio, and one last painting.
Portraits of his young wife, struggling for survival in the Norwegian winter, bathing a newborn baby, the discovery of America, nationhood and open narrative.
Themes of exhausted mothers with sick children, the tired out seamstress and her descent into prostitution, the failure of law enforcement, and documenting those living in Skagen.
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