A few months ago, my friends and I went for the ‘Dream and Reality’ exhibition located at Singapore National museum. The artworks were from Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The exhibition included many famous paintings from famous artists like Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. There were also many other key works by forerunners of modern art such as Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Jean-François Millet.
I really enjoyed the museum trip. It is amazing to be able to see so many master pieces of the famous artists.
Here are some paintings from my favourite artists 🙂
Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night.
The painting was painted with wide, energetic and spontaneous brushstrokes. The cobalt blue sky dominates the whole sky and highlights by the bright yellow stars. The bright yellow colour used to paint the stars was directly from the tube thus creates a distinct contrast from the rest of the painting. Van Gogh’s paintings are always highly personal style which reflected his passionate personality and expressed his inner feelings.
‘For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dreams.’- Vincent Van Gogh
Gauguin was interested in the use of the colour; his paintings are usually colourful, flat and simplified. His choice of colours was intended to stir the emotion. In this painting, Gauguin’s choice of colours is arbitrary, notably in the blue tree trunk and the red bush. The composition of this painting is made up of an arrangement of converging triangular plane.
‘Like music, the vibrations of colour touch the universal, omnipresent, widespread inner power of nature.’ – Paul Gauguin
The Alyscamps, Aries, by Paul Gauguin
Cezanne depicts the vegetation and rocks with juxtaposed brushstrokes to create the illusion of solidity. The subject matters in the painting are been reduced to their basic geometrical shapes. Man-made constructions like walls and houses are given a dark outline to accentuate their shapes.
The gulf of Marseille seen from L’Estaque by Paul Cezanne
Claude Monet was the founder of the art movement: impressionism. He was interested in the effect of light, weather, atmosphere and time on his subject matters. This painting is one of the ‘Morning on the Seline’ series. In order to study the effect of light on the nature, Monet would just paint the same site again and again, recording how its appearance changed with the time of day.
Branch of the Seline near Giverny by Claude Monet
Even in his figure painting, he emphasised more on the landscape than the figure. By using foreshortening, Monet heightened the impression of movement in the painting. The features of the figure are neglected and the figure is enveloped in light and air.
‘Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.’ – Claude Monet
Study of figure outdoors: women with a parasol looking to the right by Claude Monet
Other paintings in the exhibition:
The end of autumn by Eugene Laermans
Sailing boats and estuary by Theo Van Rysselberghe
The hunted Roe-deer on the Alert, spring, by Gustave Courbet
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