From 1908 he became almost blind in his right eye, and had difficulty distinguishing colours. Evidence in his paintings up to 1925 shows how difficult his art became as a result.
vision
It has been claimed that he had xanthopsia, tinting what he saw with yellow. While there’s no medical evidence to support that, what his paintings from 1888 tell us?
How chronic problems with the tear duct of his right eye drove Pissarro from painting landscapes outdoors to painting cityscapes from hotel rooms.
First problems in 1870, with increasing loss of central vision in both eyes, yet he continued to paint until the end of the century. How is this reflected in his art?
With 1 in 20 males having impaired colour vision, and over half the adult population needing spectacles, you’d expect painters to be similar, and there are claims of those who were colour-blind or had other visual problems. Are they reflected in their paintings?
All of us rely on tone (brightness, lightness) to interpret what we see. Visual artists have gone to great lengths in tonal modelling, but macOS Tahoe offers only bleached-out white or blacked-out black.
King Candaules killed, Phryné acquitted of impiety, Musidora watched while bathing, a nude on a beach, and Bonnard’s partner Marthe.
Polyphemus watching the naked Acis, King David watching Bathsheba, two old elders watching Susanna bathing, each of them voyeurs.
Paintings in which he helped set the thumbs up and down sign, and painted himself making a sculpture he had previously painted in a painting as a sculpture.
From an early painting of the blind Michelangelo to that of a nude courtesan before a Greek court, vision and visual fidelity was his recurrent theme.
