Art Appreciation – April/May 2023
At the April meeting members were invited to select a work of art which showed an historical event. As is always the case, our members came up with a hugely diverse selection.
We looked at some very famous paintings such as Picasso’s Guernica, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, and David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and The Death of Marat.
Less familiar to most of us were Velasquez’s The Surrender of Breda, and Guercino’s The Woman Taken in Adultery. Ford Madox Brown’s The Execution of Mary Stuart showed a very famous event in history, but somewhat ‘imaginative’ in its portrayal, as was Jean-Leon Gerome’s Pollice Verso, showing the thumbs down of the crowd in the Roman arena. Both of these captured the drama and in the latter case, the excitement of the moment.
We all learned some fascinating facts about the historical circumstances and context of these works, as well as about the artists themselves. An example of this was Sunday Morning painted in 1877 by the American artist Thomas Waterman Wood. This showed two generations of African Americans. A formerly enslaved woman is shown doing her needlework, sitting alongside her grand daughter who is reading a book to her, probably the Bible as it is a Sunday. This was an optimistic statement about emancipation just a few years after the ending of slavery. Although they are portrayed living in impoverished surroundings, the youngster appears to be benefiting from emancipation having had some education and her grandmother, presumably once enslaved, appears now nto have some leisure and family time.
Molly showed two paintings of the same subject, The Rape of the Sabine Women, one by Poussin and the other by Rubens. Although they were both painted in the 1630s, the treatment was very different, illustrating the contrasting styles of Classicism and Baroque art.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 8th May when David Gearing will be talking about the work of Berthe Morrisot.
Lynne Vick