Caselyn D.

Canaman

Art Appreciation

International Artist

1. Rembradnt

The Jewish Bride

One of Rembrandt’s most famous works is the painting known as The Jewish
Bride. The painting acquired this name at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, but the subject of the picture remains a mystery to this day. Is it an Old
Testament couple? Or is it a double portrait of two of Rembrandt’s
contemporaries? It could also be a combination of both possibilities—a man and a
woman who had themselves immortalized as biblical figures. This is known as a
portrait historié, a historicized portrait. If this is the case, most art historians
believe that the couple represent Isaac and Rebecca. Another, more neutral
explanation is that the man is declaring his love to his wife. In that case the
subject of the painting would be the virtue of marriage. As well as the uncertainty
as to the subject, we also do not know the year in which Rembrandt painted this
work. It is dated to about 1666. Rembrandt applied the paint very roughly in this
painting. The paint on the man’s sleeve is so thick that it seems as though
Rembrandt used a palette knife to put it on.

Return of The Prodigal Son

At one moment in his youth Rembrandt depicted himself in one of his many self-
portraits as a reveller and spoilt child of fortune at the height of his fame and his
powers, with a goblet in his hand and his beloved woman in his lap. His turning to
the subject of the return of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32) is a sort of finale to that
story. The artist painted the work just months before his death. It is hard to
recognize the pale, emaciated, shattered man returning to the father whom he
left in his youth as that same reckless pleasure-seeker, gambler and spendthrift,
who asked his parent for his share of the inheritance and squandered it away
down to the last coin. What has become of his self-confidence and fine clothing?
Everything impermanent has slipped from him like an empty husk. At the cost of
suffering and losses he has gained insight. Entering his father’s house, miserable,
sick and exhausted, he falls on his knees before his parent, who bends over him,
full of love and forgiveness. In the smoky twilight of the space the old man’s face
shines like a star in the night sky: the light of consolation descends on the son.
The red wrap over the old man’s shoulders forms a sort of canopy above the
unhappy wanderer. The astonished witnesses look on in silence. In Holland, a
Protestant country where there were no painted altarpieces in the churches and
large pictures on religious subjects were rarely painted, Rembrandt produced
without any commission a huge painting in which the peculiarities of the artist’s
mature manner, colour and light themselves, acquired a spiritual character. It is as
if he was drawing the balance of his life and his artistic career, placing himself
before the judgement of Higher Mercy and of the world.

2. Vincent Van Gough

The starry night over the rhone

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 Rhone. In the
foreground, two lovers stroll by the banks of the river. Here his stars glow with a
luminescence, shining from the dark, blue and velvety night sky. Dotted along the
banks of the Rhone houses also radiate a light that reflects in the water and adds
to the mysterious atmosphere of the painting.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. Here, everything lies spread beneath the sparkling tranquillity of the
natural lights in the heavens. The glittering stars and wavy reflections in the water
could scarcely cater better to Romantic tastes. In fact, this night scene was
prompted by a genuinely moving experience of the endless darkness, an
experience Van Gogh describes in a letter: "Once I went for a walk along the
deserted shore at night. It was not cheerful, it was not sad - it was beautiful." This
is the only place in his letters where he is so far carried away as to invoke Beauty
so emphatically - reason enough to view his enthusiasm as something more
profound than a mere momentary indulgence in aesthetics. Van Gogh was
drawing upon all his Romantic resources, contesting the positivist attempt to see
the stars, scientifically and banally, as mere objects in the realm of the known.
Café Terrace at Night, 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh

This painting of a colorful outdoor view is a picturesque work, the vision of a

relaxed spectator who enjoys the charm of his surrounding without any moral
concern. It recalls Van Gogh's mood when he wrote that "the night is more alive
and more richly colored than the day." The color is more profuse and the eye
wanders along the steeped or dove-tailed edges of neighboring areas - irregular
shapes fitted to each other like a jigsaw puzzle design. To divide this space for
long into a large object and background themes is difficult for the eyes; the
distant and nearer parts are alike distinct. The yellow of the cafe plays against the
blue-black of the remote street and the violet-blue of the foreground door, and,
by a paradox of composition that helps to unify the work, at the strongest point of
contrast the awning's blunt corner nearest to us touches the remote blue sky.
Foreshortened lines that thrust into depth, like the lintel of the door, are strictly
parallel to lines like the slope of the yellow awning and the roof of the house
above, which lie in planes perpendicular to the first. For this roving, unengaged
vision the upward dimension is no less important and expressive than the depth

The silhouette of the starry sky is key to the patterning of the whole; the poetic
idea of the work - the double illumination and contrast of the cafe and the night
sky - is developed through this jagged form. In the silhouette of the orange cafe
floor and the adjoining window and doors, we discover the inverted shape of the
blue sky; the scattered disks of the stars are matched in the elliptical tabletops
below.

The most eye-catching aspect of the painting is the sharp contrast between the
warm yellow, green and orange colours under the marquise and the deep blue of
the starry sky, which is reinforced by the dark blue of the houses in the
background. Van Gogh was pleased with the effect: "I believe that an abundance
of gaslight, which, after all, is yellow and orange, intensifies blue."