Select two works of art from your virtual tours and do the following:

1.Cite the work

Artist’s Last Name, First Name. Title of Artwork. Year, medium, Name of Institution or Private
Collection Housing Artwork, City
ex.Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. Aristotle with a Bust of Homer. 1653, oil on canvas.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Art #1- Rijksmuseum

Asselijn, Jan. The Threatened Swan. 1650, oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Art #2

Seurat, Georges. A Sunday On La Grande Jatte. 1886, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of
Chicago, Chicago.

2. Write a 5-7 sentence description of the artwork.

Art #1 - Rijksmuseum

The Threatened Swan, which is an oil painting on canvas created by the Dutch painter
Jan Asselijn in 1650, combines warm golden hour hues with dark cerulean and cobalt blues.
Asselijn’s painting depicts an intimidated swan spreading its wide wings while flying at the
viewer. The canvas is square, and centered in the middle is the soft cream goose whose gentle
feathers sharply contrast with the angry expression on its face. Unity is an important element of
this painting, and unity can be seen in the dark neutral color palette, the amount of space
dedicated to the subject compared to the background, and in the textures expressed through
brush strokes. Asselijn kept his textures minimal and instead focused on applying thin layers of
oil paint to create a layer of depth. This depth is seen through the goose’s head being in the
foreground, its body being in the mid ground, and the hills and river being in the background.
The painting also includes a curly brown-haired dog who is swimming in the river in the lower
left corner of the painting. This dog is the assumed agitator for the swan which is why the swan
seems to be directing its head and wings slightly towards both the dog and the viewer. Behind
the swan dark olive green hills roll in the background, the muddy-ness of this color is further
exacerbated by the warm brown clouds that cut diagonally across the top right-hand corner of
this piece.
Art #2
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, which is an oil painting on canvas created by French
painter Georges Seurat in 1886, is a pointillism piece that is created through the use of small
dots in a variety of colors, these dots create an image when the viewer stands far enough away
from the painting. The painting depicts around 40 individuals each enjoying their afternoon on
this French island. There are four main colors seen in this painting. A lime green for the grass
and the trees which take up most of the painting, a light ultramarine blue for the water and sky in
the top left-hand corner of the painting, a warm tangerine accent color which is featured on
many peoples; dresses and hats, and faded plum color for shadows and clothing. The men and
women in this painting are wearing late 1800s outfits which consist of long dresses for the
women, parasols, and hats very similar to top hats. Styling-wise, the figures, the trees, and the
animals are all very simple, the emphasis is placed on the forms rather than any particular
details. As the viewer steps closer to the painting, what previously looked like one solid color,
quickly becomes a whole collection of colors. For example, in the bottom right-hand corner of
the painting, there is a whole collection of this rich forest green color, as the viewer looks closer
at the painting, they can see that it is actually a whole collection of colors like purples, blacks,
blues, and yellows.

3. Identify an argument you believe the artwork is making. Create a claim.

Art #1 - Rijksmuseum

In The Threatened Swan, an argument that it is making is that the angry geese
stereotype is actually incorrect and in many situations, the geese are actually being threatened.
This can be shown through the expression on the goose, the dog in the left-hand corner
swimming towards the goose, and the dark dreary colors which help emphasize the white
goose. At that time, white in paintings often symbolized purity, this helps prove that this painting
was attempting to say that the goose was actually being threatened by the dog rather than the
other way around.

Art #2

In A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte, an argument that this artwork is making is

that science and art are not exclusionary and often can be used to benefit one another. This is
shown through his use of pointillism instead of only traditional impressionism. Using pointillism
allowed him to understand the science behind how the human eye perceives color. Traditional
impressionism normally revolves around using broad strokes of paint for a scene. There
typically is no science that goes behind this method. That is why it was critical that Seurat
combined both science and art in his work.