Paleta
Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez is one of the most written about paintings of all time
Las Meninas was among Diego Velázquez's, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, final works and speaks to the fact that he was no ordinary court painter. Most scholars continue to date the painting to 1656. Although it was originally described as a painting of Philip IV's family, in 1843, the work was dubbed Las Meninas in an effort to acknowledge its status as far more than a traditional family portrait. This group portrait perhaps most fully summarizes the pinnacle of Diego Velázquez's art. It was kept in the royal palace until 1819 when it was moved to the Prado Museum in Madrid.
Inspiration by Jean-Honoré Fragonard depicts the moment when an artist receives inspiration
Many eighteenth-century artists, French Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard among them, sought ways to depict artistic inspiration. The painting Inspiration, from 1769, in popular Rococo style, differs from many of his other paintings, especially the portraits painted during his early years, in that it is warmer and more longing than the others. This portrait, likely of Louis François Prault, a publisher in Paris, is one of a series that is now known as the Fantasy Figures. The painting Inspiration is today in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Émile Zola and Impressionists
Famous French writer Émile Zola was a close friend of many young Impressionists artists during the early stages of his career. He spent much time with them in the cafes and bars of Paris, visited them in their studios, watched them in work, and, when needed, posed for them. Also further organized evening gatherings at his large country home from 1866 onwards. By 1868, as the critic and novelist, Émile Zola wrote in defense of the young Impressionists. In appreciation for Zola's support, Édouard Manet devoted a portrait to the writer in 1868, one of his most beautiful ever painted.
The First Exhibition of the Impressionists was a bit of a bust
By 1874 the group of younger artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers that would become known as the Impressionists had been trying to achieve recognition by submitting their works to the annual Salon (exhibition) held by the Academy des Beaux-Arts for over a decade in an old studio that belonged to the famous photographer Nadar. Its founding members included Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot and Camille Pissarro, among others. But the exhibition was a bit of a bust although 3,500 people came, most attended to sneer and scoff at the works on display. Art critics did not take it seriously, and the newspaper critics were remarkably hostile.
Impressionism: Bright and joyful painting
Impressionism is an artistic direction that emerged in French painting between 1860 and 1870 as a reaction to realism. It was set in motion with Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise. This painting was first shown alongside over two hundred works by thirty artists, including Edgar Degas, Camille Pissaro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley at what would become known as the Exhibition of the Impressionists in Paris in April 1874. However, of all of the pieces displayed there, Impression, Sunrise became the most famous due to the criticism it attracted, which gave rise to the name of the Impressionism movement.
The painting Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet inspired the name of the Impressionism
In 1872, Claude Monet visited Le Havre, his hometown. During this holiday, he completed a series of six paintings featuring the harbor at Le Havre "during dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from varying viewpoints, some from the water itself and others from a hotel room looking down over the harbor." Impression: Sunrise resonated more strongly than other works in this series. Two years after completing this painting, Monet exhibited it in the First Impressionist Exhibition, an independent show hosted by Paris' avant-garde artists. Despite its hostile contemporary reception, the painting sold instantly and was later gifted to the Musée Marmottan in Paris where it currently resides.
Castle and Sun by Paul Klee is an abstract cityscape painting
The very individual style of the German-Swiss painter Paul Klee was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. His artworks are often full of allusions to dreams, music, poetry. Burg und Sonne was the original title of his 1928 painting, which translates directly as Castle and Sun, capturing the main focal points of this painting. Whilst conforming to abstraction, it could be argued that Castle and Sun fits into any or all of Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee himself produced several of these intricate tiled scenes and this artwork becomes amongst the most reproduced of all his artworks. Today, this painting is in a private collection.
The Swan Princess by Mikhail Vrubel is under the impression of fairy tales and folklore
The Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel sought inspiration in literature and usually presented tragic situations or dark sides of the figures in the paintings. He painted The Swan Princess at the farm of his parents in Chernihiv province, in present-day Ukraine, in the summer of 1900. It is believed that the painting was inspired by the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov which was based on the fairytale of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. Vrubel designed the decor and costumes for this opera and his wife, opera singer Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, sang in the role of The Swan Princess. However, he said that he set the character of Tatiana from the poem by Eugene Onegin by Pushkin. The painting The Swan Princess is in The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Stéphane Mallarmé's symbolist poetry anticipated and inspired Cubism
Symbolist poetry of French poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé anticipated and inspired artistic schools of the early 20th century like Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, and Dadaism. The idea of poetry as evocative, derived from the world of ideas, philosophy, and arguably, from the poets own drive to create something original from the depth of their being. Stéphane Mallarmé said: “The art of evoking an object little by little so as to reveal a mood or, conversely, the art of choosing an object and extracting from it an ‘etat d’ame’” -- a state of the soul.
Girl with a Mandolin was one of Pablo Picasso's early Analytic Cubist paintings
Girl with a Mandolin is one of the most beautiful, lyrical, and accessible of all Cubist paintings but is also an early example of an Analytic Cubist painting. The idea for this painting originated in Cadaques where Pablo Picasso and Fernande Olivier spent a summer vacation in 1910. The same year Picasso painted in Paris Girl with a Mandolin within the Cubism. Today it is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.