Post by cenydd on Sept 21, 2013 11:09:29 GMT
This occurred to me after mentioning in the music thread my love of both the music and art of the Romantic period, so I thought I'd ask what kind of stuff everyone else likes.
I'll start with a couple of my favourites (starting with my absolute favourite painting).
An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump - Joseph Wright of Derby (1768)
It is what it says - a scene of a 'scientist' conducting an experiment to see what happens as the bird is robbed of its air, caught just at the moment where the bird is on the point of death. There are just so many great things about this painting, from his superb use of the light source to the facial expressions of the different personalities gathered around the experiment that give away their various different emotions and gives them real character. It's an early work for the period, of course, and on the borders between Neo-Classical and Romantic in some ways, but the way in which it deals with life and death, and even the questioning way in which the experimenter seems to look out at the viewer to decide whether the bird should live or die, falls definitely into the latter camp. I have a large print of this on my living room wall, and it's a picture I have stared at for many hours - there is just so much involved in it, and so many different aspects to see and think about.
I'll start with a couple of my favourites (starting with my absolute favourite painting).
An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump - Joseph Wright of Derby (1768)
It is what it says - a scene of a 'scientist' conducting an experiment to see what happens as the bird is robbed of its air, caught just at the moment where the bird is on the point of death. There are just so many great things about this painting, from his superb use of the light source to the facial expressions of the different personalities gathered around the experiment that give away their various different emotions and gives them real character. It's an early work for the period, of course, and on the borders between Neo-Classical and Romantic in some ways, but the way in which it deals with life and death, and even the questioning way in which the experimenter seems to look out at the viewer to decide whether the bird should live or die, falls definitely into the latter camp. I have a large print of this on my living room wall, and it's a picture I have stared at for many hours - there is just so much involved in it, and so many different aspects to see and think about.
