Lines and Colors

View of Ischl, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, roughly 18 x 22 inches (45 x 57 cm), oil on wod panel; in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

This landscape by the early 19th century Austrian painter is a view of a mountain village in 1838.

The museum’s site has both a zoomable and downloadable version of the image. There is also a zoomable version on the Google Art Project. I found these images to be somewhat dingy looking, as though the painting’s varnish had yellowed.

There is an image version on Wikimedia Commons, that looks appealingly brighter, and unlike many “adjusted” art images on the web, appears to have been worked on by someone with professional level graphic arts skills.

However, it may still be a bit too far from the real thing given the appearance of the museum’s version.

Taking into account my experience with art images of paintings I’ve seen in person that are often reproduced too darkly on the museum websites, I’ve taken the liberty of making my own adjustment, somewhere between the two.

Gossip, John William Waterhouse; oil on canvas, roughly 28 x 36 inches (72 x 93 cm). Link is to image page on Wikipedia; image is via a previous Christie’s auction; the painting is now in a private collection.

English post-Pre-Raphaelite (if that makes any sense) John William Waterhouse — whose usual metier was dramatic mythological and literary subjects — here gives us an unusually prosaic domestic scene.

Three women, engaged in doing laundry or taking care of a child, discuss events over the garden wall.

To me, the calm undramatic nature of the scene highlights its simple beauty. I love the tone and texture Waterhouse has created for the bricks, pots and stone pathway. The muted colors indicate an overcast day, and the colors take on a subtle strength as a result.

When you get up close, you see that Waterhouse was much more painterly than the Pre-Raphaelite painters he admired.