The Examination of a Witch - T H Matteson

Tompkins Harrison Matteson was an American portrait painter born in Peterboro, New York, in 1813. Matteson studied at the National Academy of Design and was inspired by the works of William Sidney Mount, a contemporary of the Hudson River School.  He ran a studio in New York City from 1841 to 1850 and he died in Sherburne, New York, in 1884.  His works focused on rural everyday life, historical events and, patriotic and religious figures. His widely known for his depiction of George Washington at Valley Forge (circa 1854), The Spirit That Won the War (circa 1855) and The Spirit of '76 (circa 1845).  In the Examination of a Witch (circa 1853), Matteson re-tells an event that possibly occurred during the Salem witch trials in 1692, where Mary Fisher, a young girl, is arrested by Deputy Governor Bellingham of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and forced to disrobe. The deputy tries to ascertain if she is a witch with the Devil's mark upon her.  Matteson assists the viewers with describing the event by using the facial expressions of the constables, the direct pointing and fainting of the trial room attendees, to suggest a serious transgression has taken place. (source:http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/intro.html) 

Examination of a Witch

The Sin - Franz Von Stuck

Franz Von Stuck (1863 - 1928) was a German symbolist painter, sculptor, and engraver.  His works focused mainly on the use of female nudes to express serious and immediate danger of the subject and viewer.  The Symbolist movement or symbolism peaked in Europe between 1886 and 1900, and unlike realism, which was concern with the ordinary: the working class, and gritty street life, symbolism seeks to express greater emotion and states of the mind.  In The Sin (circa 1893),  von Stuck displays a temptress; a semi-nude female with her face slightly hidden by shadow, embraced by a serpent whose head is positioned to strike and her upper nude body glows with a desire. The use of the snake clearly points to the fall of eden when the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the tree of wisdom, and with her face slightly darken tends to symbolize an importance of body instead of mind.  Franz von Stuck crafts the emotion of lust, desire with foreboding. The Sin visually informs the viewer that her body comes with a payment of one's mortality. 

The Sin circa 1893

Campbell's Soup Cans - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) was an American commercial illustrator that sparked artistic expression in the realm of pop art.  He used multiple art forms such as filmmaking, performance art, video installations, and various media types like photography, printmaking, sculpture, film, and music to critically push the boundaries of what is fine art and commercial illustration.  His first successful meager of fine art and illustration expression can be embraced in his "Campbell's Soup Cans" which was finished in 1962.  Each can is hand-painted using a synthetic polymer paint and thirty-two canvases. 

"Though Campbell’s Soup Cans resembles the mass-produced, printed advertisements by which Warhol was inspired, it is hand-painted, while the fleur de lys pattern ringing each can’s bottom edge is hand-stamped. In this work, he mimicked the repetition and uniformity of advertising by carefully reproducing the same image across each individual canvas. He varied only the label on the front of each can, distinguishing them by their variety. Warhol said of Campbell’s Soup, “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” (MoMA website)

     British artist Richard Hamilton described pop art as"popular, transient, expendable, low cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business." As Warhol himself put it, "Once you 'got' pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought pop, you could never see America the same way again. (bio. website)

The Course of Empire: Desolation - Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848) was an American landscape artist and was the creative energy for the Hudson River School.  The Hudson River School was a 19th century American art movement that was focused on the aesthetic and emotional aspects of nature.  The School weaved the concepts of Europe's romanticism to create a wonderment for America's wild, and unexplored territory.  The Hudson River School started in upper New York State around the Catskill, and Adirondack mountains. The members included Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Hill, John Frederick Kensett, Asher Brown Durand, William Hart, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Thomas Cole.  Cole's imaginative visualizations of natural landscapes powered the romanticism in American landscape art in the 19th century. In his The Course of the Empire series, which include the title paintings, The Savage Lands (1833 -1836), The Arcadian or Pastoral State (1833-1836), The Consummation of Empire (1836), Destruction (1836), Desolation (1836), Cole expresses a divine and noble presence in his works.  The open landscape with the horizon unbroken, the bluish hue of the sunlight and moonlight, the sizing of human figures with reference to environment, the induced feeling of weather that is experience, are the precise elements that induce an emotional reaction to the work. With other Hudson River School artist expressing similar effects, "shimmering water and hazy skies, lit by diffused light" lead to a modern label for these type of works as Luminist.  "In Luminist works, man is sufficiently at peace with Nature that he can be reintegrated into the landscape without danger of starting a Course of Empire." (from "a river runs through it" by John Dorfman in Feb 2015 issue Art and Antiques)

 

The Battle of Trafalgar - Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, water-colorist, and printmaker. He is regarded as the artist who elevated landscape/marine painting thru the uncanny, and noble ability of arranging colors to offer a feel and stimulating effect of luminosity and volume. In his works, The Battle of Trafalgar c 1824, Fisherman at Sea c 1796, and in Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, c 1817,  Turner fascinates his audience with a great command of color to capture moments either historical or current, in nature where things appear to be dire for the subject has he faces the wraths of god either thru war, storm or volcano.  This ability was developed with academic inquiry and travel to Italy and Sweden. In 1817 , Turner again crossed to the Continent, this time to explore the Lowlands and the Rhineland. In 1819, he traveled to Italy where he stayed for six months before returning laden with over two thousand sketches, studies and rough watercolors. Angoh, Stéphanie (2013-03-15). Turner (Kindle Locations 179-181). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.

He is commonly known as "the painter of light" for a distinct and well deserved reason.

Turner's sense of the vivacity of color was enormously stimulated by his visit to Italy in 1819, understandable, given that the color sensibilities of most northern European artists are transformed by their contact with Italian light and color. Angoh, Stéphanie (2013-03-15). Turner (Kindle Locations 291-293). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.