Two groups of paintings: figures seen mostly in planar mirrors arranged vertically, and landscapes reflected by a horizontal water surface.
reflections
After reaching a peak around 1909, in 1916 Bonnard suddenly stopped painting mirror play, and didn’t resume until the 1930s.
For over 40 years, Bonnard used mirror play in many of his paintings of intimate domestic scenes, often involving his partner Marthe as model.
From Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding to Velázquez’s Las Meninas, how the skilful use of mirrors can add to a painting in mirror play.
When you see the same face in a mirror that you presume that figure can also see, despite that being optically impossible. An exploration.
Unusual use and manipulation of reflections by Ferdinand Hodler in his Parallelism, and by Gustav Klimt painting through a telescope on his summer holidays.
Although he painted many reflections, Paul Cézanne’s are the most enigmatic, as they almost all have substantial anomalies according to optical principles.
Technically challenging for painstaking Divisionist techniques, those who chose to depict reflections used studies to help, and Seurat was generally optically faithful. But the best of all was Théo van Rysselberghe.
Is it feasible to paint optically accurate reflections quickly in front of the motif? Examples from CamilleCorot, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley demonstrate that it is.
Increasingly challenging reflections by Caillebotte, Martin Rico, Normann in the Norwegian fjords, specialist Frits Thaulow, and an essay in optics by Kazimierz Sichulski.
The Eclectic Light Company 