PAINTERS OF MILITARY SCENES, GENRE, ETC

PAINTERS OF MILITARY SCENES, GENRE, ETC.: The art of Meissonier (1815-1891), while extremely realistic in modern detail, probably originated from a study of the seventeenth-century Dutchmen like Terburg and Metsu. It does not portray low life, but rather the half-aristocratic—the scholar, the cavalier, the gentleman of leisure. This is done on a small scale with microscopic nicety, and really more in the historical than the genre spirit. Single figures and interiors were his preference,oil paintings for sale, but he also painted a cycle of Napoleonic battle-pictures with much force. There is little or no sentiment about his work—little more than in that of Gérôme. His success lay in exact technical accomplishment. He drew well, painted well, and at times was a superior colorist. His art is more admired by the public than by the painters; but even the latter do not fail to praise his skill of hand. He was a great craftsman in the infinitely little. As a great artist his rank is still open to question. art oil paintings for sale
The genre painting of fashionable life has been carried out by many followers of Meissonier, whose names need not be mentioned since they have not improved upon their forerunner. Toulmouche (1829-), Leloir (1843-1884), Vibert (1840-), Bargue (?-1883), and others, though somewhat different from Meissonier, belong among those painters ofgenre who love detail, costumes, stories, and pretty faces. Among the painters of military genre mention should be made of De Neuville(1836-1885), Berne-Bellecour (1838-), Detaille (1848-), and Aimé-Morot (1850-), all of them painters of merit. oil painting on canvas
Quite a different style of painting—half figure-piece half genre—is to be found in the work of Ribot (1823-), a strong painter, remarkable for his apposition of high flesh lights with deep shadows, after the manner of Ribera, the Spanish painter. Roybet(1840-) is fond of rich stuffs and tapestries with velvet-clad characters in interiors, out of which he makes good color effects. Bonvin (1817-1887) and Mettling have painted the interior with small figures,modern abstract art oil painting, copper-kettles, and other still-life that have given brilliancy to their pictures. As a still-life painter Vollon (1833-) has never had a superior. His fruits, flowers, armors, even his small marines and harbor pieces, are painted with one of the surest brushes of this century. He is called the "painter's painter," and is a man of great force in handling color, and in large realistic effect. Dantanand Friant have both produced canvases showing figures in interiors. reproduction oil paintings uk
A number of excellent genre painters have been claimed by the impressionists as belonging to their brotherhood. There is little to warrant the claim, except the adoption to some extent of the modern ideas of illumination and flat painting. Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-) is one of these men, a good draughtsman, and a finished clean painter who by his recent use of high color finds himself occasionally looked upon as an impressionist. As a matter of fact he is one of the most conservative of the moderns—a man of feeling and imagination,oil paintings for sale cheap, and a fine technician. Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) is half romantic, half allegorical in subject, and in treatment oftentimes designedly vague and shadowy, more suggestive than realistic. Duez (1843-) and Gervex(1848-) are perhaps nearer to impressionism in their works than the others, but they are not at all advance advocates of this latest phase of art. In addition there are Cottet and Henri Martin. still life oil paintings

FIG. 68.—MEISSONIER. NAPOLEON IN 1814.

THE IMPRESSIONISTS: The name is a misnomer. Every painter is an impressionist in so far as he records his impressions, and all art is impressionistic. What Manet (1833-1883), the leader of the original movement, meant to say was that nature should not be painted as it actually is, but as it "impresses" the painter. He and his few followers tried to change the name to Independents, but the original name has clung to them and been mistakenly fastened to a present band of landscape painters who are seeking effects of light and air and should be called luminists if it is necessary for them to be named at all. Manet was extravagant in method and disposed toward low life for a subject,modern oil paintings of flowers, which has always militated against his popularity; but he was a very important man for his technical discoveries regarding the relations of light and shadow, the flat appearance of nature, the exact value of color tones. Some of his works, like The Boy with a Sword and The Toreador Dead, are excellent pieces of painting. The higher imaginative qualities of art Manet made no great effort at attaining. dafen oil painting village
Degas stands quite by himself, strong in effects of motion, especially with race-horses, fine in color, and a delightful brushman in such subjects as ballet-girls and scenes from the theatre. Besnard is one of the best of the present men. He deals with the figure, and is usually concerned with the problem of harmonizing color under conflicting lights, such as twilight and lamplight. Béraud andRaffaelli are exceedingly clever in street scenes and character pieces; Pissarro handles the peasantry in high color; Brown(1829-1890), the race-horse, and Renoir, the middle class of social life. Caillebotte, Roll, Forain, and Miss Cassatt, an American, are also classed with the impressionists.

 Died, 1903. oil paintings of nature