Starry Night over the Rhone - van Gogh!

Starry Night over the Rhone (September 1888) is one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings of Arles at night; it was painted at a spot on the banks of river which was only a minute or two's walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine which Van Gogh was renting at the time. The night sky and the effects of light at night provided the subject for some of his more famous paintings, including Cafe Terrace at Night (painted earlier the same month) and the later canvas from Saint-Rémy, The Starry Night.

The challenge of painting at night intrigued Van Gogh. The vantage point he chose for Starry Night Over the Rhone allowed him to capture the reflections of the gas lighting in Arles across the glimmering blue water of the Rhône. The sky is illuminated by the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). In the foreground, two lovers stroll by the banks of the river.

Depicting color was of great importance to Van Gogh. In letters to his brother, Theo van Gogh, he often described objects in his paintings in terms of color. His night paintings, including Starry Night over the Rhone, emphasize the importance he placed in capturing the sparkling colors of the night sky and the artificial lighting that was new to this period.
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van Gogh - Irises

Irises is a painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It was one of his first works while he was at the asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France in the last year before his death in 1890.
It was painted before his first attack at the asylum. There is a lack of the high tension which is seen in his later works. He called the painting "the lightning conductor for my illness", because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint.
The painting was influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, like many of his works and those by other artists of the time. The similarities occur with strong outlines, unusual angles, including close-up views and also flattish local colour (not modelled according to the fall of light).
He considered this painting a study, which is probably why there are no known drawings for it, although Theo, Van Gogh's brother, thought better of it and quickly submitted it to the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in September 1889, together with Starry Night over the Rhone. He wrote to Vincent of the exhibition: "[It] strikes the eye from afar. The Irises are a beautiful study full of air and life."
[edit]Ownership history

Its first owner was the French art critic and anarchist Octave Mirbeau, who was also one of Van Gogh's first supporters: he paid 300 francs for it.
In 1987, it became the most expensive painting ever sold, setting a record which stood for two and a half years.[1] Then it was sold for US$ 54,000,000 to Alan Bond, but he did not have enough money to pay for it and it had to be re-sold. Irises is currently (as of 2008) seventh on the inflation-adjusted list of most expensive paintings ever sold, and in 18th place if the effects of inflation are ignored.
Irises is now owned by the J. Paul Getty Trust and is on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, USA.
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van Gogh - Sunflowers!

Vincent van Gogh painted these sunflowers after leaving his native Holland for the south of France with the dream of starting an artistic community. He began to paint sunflowers to decorate a bedroom for his friend Paul Gauguin.

The series of paintings was made possible by the innovations in manufactured pigments in the 19th Century. Without the vibrancy of the new colours, such as chrome yellow, Van Gogh may never have achieved the intensity of Sunflowers.

These most famous of all sunflowers in art hold at their heart a simple parable about the brevity of life; they are at varying stages in the life cycle, from withered and wilting to vibrant full bloom.
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Danae by Klimt - Symbol of divine love!

Danaë is an oil painting by Gustav Klimt, created in 1907. The canvas measures 77 x 83 cm, is cataloged as Symbolism; and is currently housed within the Galerie Würthle, in Vienna, Austria. Danaë was a popular subject in the early 1900’s for many artists; she was used as the quintessential symbol of divine love, and transcendence. While imprisoned by her father, King of Argos in a tower of bronze, she was visited by Zeus, symbolized here as the golden rain flowing between her legs, apparent from the subject's face, she is very aroused by the golden stream. She is curled in a sumptuous royal purple veil which refers to her imperial lineage. Sometime after her celestial visitation she gave birth to a son, Perseus, who is cited later in Greek mythology for slaying the Gorgon Medusa and rescuing Andromeda. Many other early portrayals of Danaë were often erotic; other paintings completed in similar style are Klimt’s Hygeia (1900- 1907), and Water Snakes (1904 – 1907)
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Vincent van Gogh - Starry Night

We've all heard this sad story. Vincent van Gogh lived a short, deeply tormented life, throughout which he sought (in vain) his place in the world. He died, by his own hand, feeling his life was a miserable failure. Unbeknownst to Vincent, the work he did pioneered the Expressionistic style and, 150 years after his birth, his name would be world famous.

Movement, Style, School or Period:

Post-impressionism > Expressionism

Date and Place of Birth:

March 30, 1853, Groot-Zundert, Netherlands

Early Life:

Vincent was the son of a Dutch Protestant minister, and grew up believing that his calling, too, lay in serving his fellow man. Unfortunately, his nature was such that anything he attempted was doomed to failure. He wasn't inattentive to career moves but, rather, threw himself into endeavors with such ferocity that he quickly exhausted his body, followed by his mind. By the time he was 27, van Gogh had been a theology student, a semi-trained evangelist in the slums of London and the mines of Wasmes (in Belgium), a French tutor, an unsuccessful art salesman and spurned by love.

Body of Work:

During his time with the miners, van Gogh painted the rough, miserable lives of the peasants with which he lived. One of these works, The Potato Eaters (1885), is acknowledged as his early masterpiece.

In 1886, Vincent moved to Paris, where his devoted brother, Theo, was an art dealer. He quickly launched himself into study of the Impressionists and Japanese prints and emerged, after two years, with a highly original palette. He relocated himself to Arles, in Provence, where he began a frenzy of painting (sometimes going through a canvas per day) that showed his love for the town, countryside and sunlight of the area. Better known works from his time in Arles include Bedroom at Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888) and Starry Night (1889). His painting increasingly showed a lack of brushwork as he, in his haste to capture it, spread the color he saw in life thickly on to the canvas with his palette knife - and even straight from the tube.

In the last two years of his life, van Gogh also executed a number of self-portraits, had a brief, turbulent friendship with Gauguin (they were roommates until one final argument took place), veered in and out of madness (institutionalizing himself from time to time) and continued to have a disastrous love life. In a bungled suicide attempt, he shot himself on July 27th, 1890, but didn't die until two days later. Vincent van Gogh died having sold one painting in his lifetime.

Date and Place of Death:

July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Quote:

"I want to get to the point where people say of my work that man feels deeply."

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Klimt - The Kiss, Most expensive painting in the world!

Gustav Klimt 'The Kiss', Painted 1907-08 (100 Kb); 180 x 180 cm (71 x 71 in); Galerie Wien, Vienna
Man leaning over and kissing kneeling woman. All shrouded in symbolically patterned gold. A bed of flowers below them.

Just as Munch can be associated with both Symbolism and Expressionism, so the art of the Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), is a curious and elegant synthesis of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. The Austrians responded enthusiastically to the decorative artifice of Art Nouveau, and Klimt is almost artifice incarnate. He painted large ornamental friezes of allegorical scenes, and produced fashionable portraits, uniting the stylized shapes and unnatural colors of Symbolism with his own essentially harmonious concept of beauty.

The Kiss is a fascinating icon of the loss of self that lovers experience. Only the faces and hands of this couple are visible; all the rest is great swirl of gold, studded with colored rectangles as if to express visually the emotional and physical explosion of erotic love.
It is one of the most expensive paintings to date, Klimt used actual pure gold flakes mixed with oil paint on the painting !
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William Bouguereau

The Art Renewal Center announced on October 17, 2008 that the William Bouguereau Catalog has finally been translated, and is expected to be available in the Spring of 2009. The book will contain information on all 826 known paintings by Bouguereau, a 600 page biography on the artist by Damien Bartoli, 400+ B&W images, and 250-300 color images, at least 50 of which will be full-page. The price tag is a hefty $370.00, but it does promise to be quite a large book.