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Old Woman by Candlelight - Unknown Artist, circa 19th Century
This painting shows an old woman sitting quietly in front of a candle. Her hands are folded on her lap. The candle’s flame is small, but it lights up her face and part of her shawl. The rest is mostly in darkness. It’s not dramatic like Rembrandt or anything. The light is soft, like she’s just waiting. There is no name written for the artist. No title either. It just shows up in a page labeled “Plate XXVI” inside a 1901 book about European painting. She don’t look famous, and the painting ain’t signed. The light is the main part....
The Girl With a Watering Can
I was browsing thru Renoir stuff when I found this cool painting. One painting caughted my eye, it’s called “A Girl With a Watering Can” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The painting lives in the National Gallery of Art now.
Ophelia in Art
Ophelia is a character from Hamlet. It is said that you can remove her from the play and it works just fine. Hamlet in a sense is a study of madness. Both Ophelia and Hamlet lost their fathers. Hamlet started to hallucinate ghosts that told him to kill. He went on a murder spree. Ophelia reacted by singing and gifting flowers. In a sense, she suffered a childhood regression. She dies by falling from a branch and landing in a river. With her cumbersome dress she drowns or she freezes to death. It depends on the story. On her funeral,...
Artists Transformed by Debilitating Illness or Injuries
The first artist I wanted to talk about is Frida Kahlo. She used to paint for the fun of it. Originally, she was going to be a doctor. One day, her bus crashed. A steel pole pierced right through her. This gave her chronic back pains. Since she had nothing better to do, she started to paint more. Her style didn’t change much, just her subject matters. She got into symbolism a lot. She also tended to depict skulls often, to show her fear and respect of death. When her big exhibition opened, she was in too much pain. Her...
Overpainting in Art and Its Reasons
Overpainting is to paint over something that is more or less finished. The most common reason is to save money. Beneath the Mona Lisa there is another maiden. The canvases were expensive back in the day. So, it was cheaper to just paint over it. Hunt painted over just the face. He had gotten married. For this reason, he changed the face of the woman in the painting. Now, she has the face of the wife and the hair of the other woman. Las Meninas only got a cross. It was important for folks to know that Velazquez was a...