Saturday, 14 June 2014

Toulouse Lautrec And Gustave Courbet Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Toulouse Lautrec paintings of dancehall performers and prostitutes are personal and humanistic. They reveal the sadness and humor hidden behind rice powders and gaslights. Their influences were long lasting. To say the least, there would be no Andy Warhol, if there was no Lautrec.

En plein air Toulouse Lautrec paintings soon began after Toulouse moved to Paris in 1882. He often posed sitters in the Montmartre garden of his neighbour, Pere Forest, a retired photographer. One of his favourite models was a prostitute nicknamed Golden Helmet. She is seen in the painting The Streetwalker.

Yvette Guilbert and Jane Avril, two of Toulouse's favourite cafe concert stars were featured in one of his Toulouse Lautrec paintings, Divan Japonais. Yvette appeared at the upper left corner of the composition, with her head cropped at the top edge, her body elongated, wearing her trademark clothes.

Gustave Courbet paintings challenged convention by rendering scenes from daily life on a large scale previously reserved for historical paintings. These works included The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Omans. Omans was Gustave's native village in the Franche-Comte in eastern France and it was where this group of paintings was set.

In one of Gustave Courbet paintings done on monumental canvas, The Painter's Studio, Gustave featured figures on the left, suggesting the various social types that appear in his canvases and figures on the right, portraying his friends and supporters. The meaning behind his unfinished painting remains enigmatic to this day.

It was during the 1850s that Gustave Courbet paintings went beyond the Omans subjects that had established his reputation. Among these paintings was a portrait of actor Louis Gueymard and society portraits on commission. There was the more intimate Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, a fusion of portraiture and genre painting.




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