Introduction
Taking a break from the monotonous life routine is necessary to keep going. Activities like visiting museums can help in refreshing yourself. Expanding your horizons is the most significant benefit that visiting a museum can provide you with. In my museum tour, I will introduce you to pieces of art of a different variety, of which some will help you get a breath of inspiration to refresh your psyche and provide you with a chance to recharge yourself. I will also introduce you to the piece paintings from well-known artists that will stimulate new ideas in your mind and help you create various art forms. These pieces of serenity will surely help you decompress yourself from the stress of life.
Let’s take a museum tour to enjoy various art forms and stimulate our love for culture and art.
Second Beach, Newport
This painting was made in 1865 by Worthington Whittredge, one of the most experimental painters of the American Hudson School. He had a deep knowledge of the landscape and had the idea of adding aesthetics to his artwork, with the help of which he created this outstanding landscape of the era. In this painting, we can see how a differently dressed individual, carrying something on his shoulder, goes somewhere along with his dog. Perfectly stopped in time and fixed indelibly, the artist has perfectly made this piece of art with the help of his sensibility. Sunset and peaceful beach are the beauty of this painting. Such scenery that shows a beautiful sunset on the seaside plays the role of a stress reliever for most people. This piece of art at the museum provides a great alternative to decompress the stress and ward off anxiety. The artist, with the help of canvas painting, has perfectly shown the sunset with perfection selection of colors. More than half of the painting is taken by waves of the sea and at the beach is a big stone that covers the view of the sun. But with the help of colors, the artist has shown the scene of sunset. As the picture shows, it’s about to get dark, so people have returned to their homes as no one can be seen in the scene. Only one figure, along with his dog, is seen carrying something with him, depicting that he is done with the day’s chores and is heading back home with his dog. This freshly brushed and radiant work is a famous American piece of art. The sea has a healing power for many people. The presence at such a place at the time of sunset can make you refresh and nurture the connection with earth at an emotional level (Omoto 331-335).
Fruit with Water Glass
This painting is created by Severin Roesen. This Porcelain painter is known for his highly detailed and lavish still-life painting that amazingly celebrates nature’s bounty. This painting reflects the ease of availability and a great variety of fruits due to good cultivation and transportation. The presence of fruits in a painting represents the short-lived nature of the existence of living things. Fresh represents a symbol of bounty and abundance, whereas decayed symbolizes inevitability to change or undeniable mortality. This painting shows how the artist has paid careful attention to detail, the precise arrangement, and the close brushwork. The artist has paid detailed attention to every subject and the small motifs of the subject. In this painting, the fruit bowl is accompanied by a transparent glass of water. This glass is nearly placed in the fruit bowl, loaded with apples, grapes, and plums of all hues. He perfectly balances his composition with light and dark grapes on both sides present with scattered apples, raspberries, etc. The yellowing edge of one leaf of grape and the insect-eaten hole in another leaf reminds us of the uncertainty of life and the inevitability of death. Through this still-life painting, he explained the idea of life. Through this painting of still fruits, the artist shows the concept of life and death. By giving the painting a dark background with the perfect selection of colors, he has made all his painting subjects visible. The abundance of fruits in the still life painting of Roesen shows how beautifully he focuses on the meticulous details (Southgate 679).
Still
Next in this museum tour is the painting which gives a kind of horror idea representing the head of a dead figure. This painting is introduced by Jenny Sallie, who shows a dead woman’s head in a morgue. The picture shows her matted hair sagged flesh on her face which has fallen to one side due to gravity. The painting is given a light blue color. The two-round forms shown in the upper right of the picture depict examination lights that are present in the morgue room. The artist has performed fluid strokes using a great variety of oil colors. The iridescent hues and creamy texture seduces the eye but seems odd as we look at the nature of the subject. The realistic contour of the subject’s flesh is an eye-catcher of the museum as it captivates the viewers. The artist is known to tackle the thoughts of body image, transition, imperfection, and death in a unique way. To show the details of the body, she has used heavy layers of oil paint, with each painting mark showing a mobile life on its own. She is known for such kinds of flesh paintings. The perfect strokes depict that the subject might be swollen or bruised due to some injury. This painting of flesh shows all folds, marks, and blemishes of the skin. The main idea behind such a painting is to kill the taboo issues (Maioli 70-92).
The sisters, ZÉNAÏDE AND CHARLOTTE BONAPARTE
The painting shows the protective nature of siblings portrayed by how they hold each other. This painting is made by David showing two sisters sitting on a sofa, reading a letter. They both are Napoleon’s nieces and are reading a letter written by their father. It also shows the individual personalities of both the subjects in the picture. The elder sister in the painting is shown wearing a black dress. She meets the viewer’s eye with a confident look.
On the contrary, the younger sister shrinks behind the elder one in her long-sleeved dress, which gives a modest and less worldly look. She shyly raises her eyes to look at the viewer. Both are wearing tiaras that depict the Bonaparte family tradition. The painting shows the characteristic realism of the artist and his attention to the details of the subject. The painting perfectly shows the siblings’ close relationship seated on a red-colored sofa (Mitchell 175-197).
White Crucifixion
This painting was introduced by Marc Chagall and represented a significant turning point in their life of Marc Chagall. He brought attention to the inhuman treatment Christian audience of European Jews. He documented the targeting of Jews in Germany, which was a preliminary place of the Holocaust. Through this painting, he showed Jews’ tragedy and their unspeakable suffering. That is a crucial series of compositions that shows the image of Christ as Jews martyr and calls attention to the suffering and persecution of European Jews. This largest and first work on the subject focused on the Jews’ identity of Jesus in many ways: he replaced the thorn crown with a headcloth, the loincloth with a prayer shawl, and the morning Angel, which normally surrounds Jesus with a matriarch and three biblical patriarchs. On each side of the cross, the artist showed the destruction of pogroms. On the left side, a village is being burned and pillaged; refugees are forced to leave the place by traveling by boat. Three figures in beards are shown at the bottom left; one of the senior figures is clutching a Torah- to escape. On the right side of the cross, a synagogue and Torah are seen going up in flames, whereas at the bottom right mother is seen comforting her child. With the help of these scenes, the artist has linked the martyrdom of Jesus with mistreated Jews and Crucifixion with several events. The painting identifies Nazis with tormentors of Christ and warns regarding the moral impact which their actions (Amishai 139-181).
Bridge with a Sluice
This painting is presented by Jacob Van Ruisdael, Which shows a bridge bathed in sunlight breaking through clouds. A rustic sluice is shown, which controls the water level and irrigates the farmland sitting at a side of pastureland. The landscape motif in this work is a big attraction to the audience. The clouds are shown in the painting describe that heavy rain is about to come. The artist has used perfect composition in the picture and managed the light accurately to depict the scene. With the help of color in the painting in the painting, the visual effect produces an entrancing effect. The light and dark contrast is a powerful way to draw the attention of the audience. The dark cloud in the painting has enhanced its beauty. The perfectly used colors for the greenery of the area portray a realistic image. A good color selection is required to show lush greenery, which has been amazingly portrayed by the artist. In this painting, the artist has created an ordinary object and made it monumental by increasing its size of it as compared to other surrounding elements in the painting, and in this way, he has made the audience focus on the use and placement of the object in the countryside. He also showed two cattle in the background, which portrays an idea of peace in the painting. The rugged road on the left is beautifully shown by the artist. It shows a rocky path up towards the bridge and down towards the land. A single person populates the scene, and the sluice in the painting shows the importance of human presence in nature and how it can play a role in controlling it (Lacina and Halas 606-68).
Works Cited
Amishai-Maisels, Ziva. “Chagall’s” White Crucifixion”.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 17.2 (1991): 139-181.
Lacina, Jan, and Petr Halas. “Landscape painting in evaluation of changes in landscape.” Journal of Landscape Ecology 8.2 (2015): 60-68.
Mitchell, Jerrine E. “Picturing sisters: 1790 portraits by J.-L. David.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31.2 (1997): 175-197.
Maioli, Francesca. “Nomadic subjects on canvas: Hybridity in Jenny Saville’s paintings.” Women’s Studies 40.1 (2010): 70-92.
Omoto, Sadayoshi. “The Sketchbooks of Worthington Whittredge.” Art Journal 24.4 (1965): 331-335.
Southgate, M. Therese. “Still Life With Fruit.” JAMA 280.8 (1998): 679-679.