paintings
“GOLDEN AGE” OF THE ENGLISH WATERCOLOR SCHOOL.
The works of masters of the Georgian era, who clearly showed the picturesque possibilities of watercolors, honed already known techniques and created many new ones, led to the true flourishing of the English school of watercolors in the XIX century. Many of the best old paintings of the Victorian era are executed in this technique. Researchers of antique painting in England with good reason claim that at the beginning of the XIX century, watercolor becomes almost the most important type of English fine art.
A sign of the popularity of the watercolor technique was the Foundation Of the society of watercolors in 1804. Continue reading
Artist Konstantin Andreevich Somov
Konstantin Somov is one of the representatives of Russian symbolism. The composition of the artist’s style was largely influenced by his training in the Paris Studio Colorassi (1897-1899), it was then that he mastered the lessons of modernity and French Rococo. The scenes of his paintings resemble the gallant balls and masquerades that were characteristic of the past XVIII century. Modernity in his works is mystically connected with the previous era, the genre scenes of his paintings are reminiscences of the past century, his characters vaguely resemble the puppets of Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, but unlike his predecessors, the artist gives the images a mystical ghostliness rather than elegant refinement. V. A. Lenyashin rightly noted that the origins of Somov “beyond the past days”, much deeper, more hidden: Botticelli, Watteau, Hoffman[.
Ghostly-transparent eroticism, without which Somov could not think of art, then permeates the irreparably spicy pages of the “Book of the Marquise”, and appears (like a Casanova doll) in the naively defiant and mechanically Frank appearance of Columbine. Continue reading
Paintings with bridges
The bridge-a sacred symbol of change and transition from one state to another, has always attracted the attention of artists of all times and peoples. Throughout the history of world painting, famous and little-known masters have created tens of thousands of paintings with bridges. Very often, bridges become elements of an integral urban landscape, presenting a single complete ensemble in the neighborhood of monumental architecture.
At the same time, a great number of works are devoted to charming rural landscapes with modest wooden bridges that look more like a ferry. Continue reading
