Harriet Backer’s canonical masterwork, Nikolai Astrup shows his technical skill, two wonderful views by Pierre Bonnard, and from Eric Ravilious.
painting
From Jan van Eyck to Caillebotte and Claus, these paintings show the view beyond an open doorway, commonly as a means of incorporating a landscape.
His magnificent triptych The Hutsul Madonna, and other paintings, as he lived between Poland and Lviv, a distinguished artist and teacher in both.
In the Spring, he changed style to Pointillism, then spent the summer at Les Andelys, where he painted a series of fine views, before ‘The Dining Room’, a masterly interior.
From the fur-trimmed cloaks of Jan van Eyck, to the soft folds of Lisa Gherardini’s dress: clothing and fabrics painted in oils.
A grisaille turned into a trompe l’oeil, symphonies in white, making the transition to oil paints, an exercise for pupils, and vibrant primary colours.
Arriving in the courtyard of the Duke and Duchess’s castle, a young woman’s body lies on a catafalque. It’s Altisidora, who died of unrequited love for Don Quixote.
Examples from Wright of Derby, Turner, Millet, van Gogh, Bonnard and others. But how many used the monochrome of scotopic vision?
Should chiaroscuro paintings show much in the way of colour, given that in the dark only the rods in our retinas function, giving us monochrome vision?
He was born and died in Lviv, now in Ukraine, but trained in Poland, where he settled and worked for much of his career. He specialised in triptychs.
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