The Village Maidens is also known by the name Young Ladies of the Village. This painting shows Courbet’s three sisters—Zélie, Juliette, and Zoé—strolling in a small valley near his native village of Ornans. The critics attacked it as repetitive, graceless, and traditional work. The painting followed realism as an execution-style and first exhibited at the Salon of 1952.

The work can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The post The Village Maidens appeared first on The Artist.

Honore Daumier’s paintings were influenced by rail traveling theme and painted many images on similar theme since 1840’s. During 1860s, and as of now too, third-class railway carriages were for only those people who couldn’t afford first or second class tickets. These carriages were dirty and open having hard benches for sitting. On the left hand side of this painting, a woman was holding her baby on a bench, a young boy  was asleep while another older woman hands were clasped onto a basket. They were seated and facing the viewer. Behind those benches were several men and women seated.

There was hardly any description available and thought to be were anonymous. Honore Daumier wanted to convey the message of the impact of industrialization during the middle of the nineteenth century in Paris on urban life. Through this painting many were attracted with the hardship and quality of life urban travelers were facing in the Third Class railways.

The second version of this painting can be viewed at the National Gallery of Canada with the same title name as The Third Class Carriage. The sequence of the composition of this painting was still unresolved. The dimensions of this painting The Third Class Carriage were 65.4 cm × 90.2 cm or 25.7 in × 35.5 in.

The work can be viewed at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The post The Third Class Carriage appeared first on The Artist.

Boating was termed as the last word in the painting by Mary Cassatt when it was shown in the Salon of 1879.

Boating was painted across the Seine at Argenteuil. Manet also spent time with other artists Monet and Renoir at the same place. In 1874, Edouard Manet during summer lived in Gennevilliers. Manet had used and adopted the lighter touch and palette in his earlier works which he learned from his impressionist younger colleagues. This time Manet adopted the broad color schemes and strong Japanese print diagonals which gave inimitable form to the canvas and several scenes of outdoor leisure. Rodolphe Leenhoff was the brother-in-law of Edouard Manet and he was thought to have posed as the sailor for the canvas but the identity of the woman is still unknown. Manet’s family home was opposite of Argenteuil at Gennevilliers on the Seine.

Claude Monet another artist and close friend of Manet had been living in Argenteuil during summers too and sometimes occasionally to Renoir. Manet then painted Monet and his wife and it was at this period of the time when he came near to adopting the impressionist technique of working in the open air. This technique uses short and rapid brushstrokes which helped Manet to adopt a much higher value to this work than compared to other earlier work.

The painting was much larger than the portable canvases his other colleagues, Monet and Renoir were using at that period. There was none other work that characterized impressionist works as this kind of work needs much careful earlier planning and also should be closest to the spirit of Japanese prints. The dimensions of the canvas were 97.2cm x 130.2 cm or 38.25 in x 51.25 in. In 1879, the work was shown at the Salon, five years after the work was completed but here its affinities to Impressionism were noticed by several critics.

The work can be viewed at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The post Boating appeared first on The Artist.

The painting focuses on the classical subject. The dimensions of the picture were 129.5 cm × 196.2 cm (51.0 in × 77.2 in).

The Death of Socrates as told by Plato in his Phaedo was the story of the execution of Socrates. In this story, Socrates was sentenced to death who was convicted for corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods to the city. He had to end his life by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his death sentence as a final lesson for the youth of Athens and faces it calmly rather than fleeing away when the opportunity arises. The Phaedo was also Plato’s fourth which depicts the death of Socrates and his last dialogue to detail Socrates final days. It is also more detailed in Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito.

In this painting, an old man in a white robe sits upright on a bed. His right hand was extended over a cup and the other left hand gesturing in the air. He was surrounded by several other men of varying ages which of most showing emotional distress on the death of Socrates, unlike the stoic old man. The young man handing him the cup from his right-hand looks the other way with his face in mourning state and his free left hand touching his eyes.

Another young man sitting on a slab clutches the thigh of the old man. An elderly man sits at the end of the bed on the far left of the painting and he was slumped over and looking in his lap. To the left of the painting, other men are shown through an arch set in the background wall. There was another painting painted by the Italian artist Giambettino Cignaroli depicting the same event but it showed Socrates already dead and surrounded by his anguished followers.

The post The Death of Socrates appeared first on The Artist.

The post Portrait of Princesse de Broglie appeared first on The Artist.

One of the loveliest scenes from Islamic culture and has considered as one of the best-known  illustrations in the world of Islamic art. The work is produced on paper using ink, gold, silver and watercolor.

The illustration is found in the manuscript of the mystical poem called The Concourse/Language of the birds (Martiq al-tair) written by Farid al-Din Attar, writer from XII century.  The painting depicts assembled birds in an idyllic landscapes that are about to start the search for ‘Simurg’, the mystical bird, known as ‘Phoenix’ in Western cultures.The Simurg represents the ultimate spiritual unity in Muslim world, and birds are symbols of individuals who are searching for this mascot.  

This composition has quite a few behaviours of  late fifteenth-century due to Timurid miniatures present in the manuscript, but three elements indicate that this image could be produced later – the presence of the hunter, who has no place in the narrative; his firearm, a weapon that gained currency in Iran after the mid-sixteenth century; and the signature of the late sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century artist Habiballah. The work can be viewed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.

The post The Concourse Of The Birds appeared first on The Artist.