Art Institute of Chicago Building, Chicago Archives - The Artist

On the Threshold of Liberty

Afzal Ibrahim — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:20:41 +0000

On the Threshold of Liberty is an oil painting produced in 1937 by Belgian painter Rene Magritte.

American composer and trumpeter Mark Isham composed On the Threshold of Liberty music dedicated to this painting in 1983.

On the Threshold of Liberty painting depicts a very large room containing four walls all paneled with different windows or scenes. Each panel scene depicts a different scene or subject some include fire, sky, forest, wood, house of windows, a female torso, and some spherical bells. A canon is present on the right-hand side of the painting, inside this large room. This painting was the second version which was painted in 1937 by Rene Magritte and the changes made were with the horizontal lines which were changed to vertical thus leading to a change and increased in the area of the room while the original version was painted and completed in 1929. The original painting is currently viewed at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

On the Threshold of Liberty is an oil painting produced in 1937 by Belgian painter Rene Magritte.

The individual panels or windows in the room represent or gave individual meaning to themselves. On the left-hand side wall are present two panels one representing a busk of woman torso and other a dense forest. In the front wall are present four other panels featuring a wooden panel, a sky filled with partial clouds, windows from a high rising building and a wall made up of bricks. On the right-hand side are two other panels depicting fire and the other with some spherical bells.

In the room, there were a total of eight paintings all multiple panels or windows directly in front of the viewer. The auxiliary canon present on the right-hand side of the painting was being pointed towards the left-hand side of the painting and it was the only tangible item present in the painting. The canon looks very realistic indeed. The painting was made on canvas and it was a very large painting. The dimensions of the painting were 238.8 cm × 185.4 cm or 94 in × 73 in

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The Basket of Apples

Afzal Ibrahim — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:20:28 +0000

The Basket of Apples is an oil painting produced in 1895 by French painter Paul Cezanne.

This painting by Paul Cezanne was noticed widely for its disjoint perspectives.

The Basket of Apples due to its unbalanced parts was regarded as a balanced composition. Many unbalanced parts include the titled bottle, cookies shortened lines, inclined basket and the right side of the painting containing the table cloth does not matches with the same plane as the left side giving a view that there are two different viewpoints. This type of painting helped to form a bridge from Cubism to impressionism. The canvas at the top shows a wine bottle, table cloth, a plate containing some cookies or rolls and a tipped up basket exposing fruits inside. Everything seems satisfactory unless someone notices the error in the drawing as showing from the lines of the table that represents close and far edges.

Many other errors include the table which was drawn too steeply tipped towards the left that viewers get a feeling about the fruit that it would roll and fall down the table. The bottle looks tipsy and the cookies are very odd indeed. The drawing of cookies was regarded as very odd and some thought that they were viewed from the side rather than the front. The two cookies on the top seem upward as someone was looking down at them.

Cezanne reasoned this because of the distinction between the human eye and the vision of the camera. He reasoned again by detailing about the same issues which were applied to the illusionism of the old masters Leonardo, Raphael, and Caravaggio. In the Neo-Classical era still, life portraits were considered as the least important subject at that time. Minor artist bothered to portrait still life imaginary in their canvas.

The work can be viewed at Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

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Woman Reading

Afzal Ibrahim — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:20:28 +0000

Woman Reading is an oil painting produced in 1879 by French painter Edouard Manet.

This painting was reserved by the Art Institute of Chicago, USA in 2000 and is currently located there.

The picture Woman Reading depicts a young woman seated on a cafe who was fashionably dressed, the cafe seems to be outside yet she remains bundled up. The woman is holding the journal in both of her hands. From the figure, it was not clear that she was reading the journal or using large pages of the journal as to screen surreptitious looks coming from her right depicted by her looks. In an event, the landscape behind her was thought to be an adjacent garden that was painted in colors of green, blue and red or could be a decorative mural looking closely to the blue waterfall-like pattern to the left of the picture over her shoulder. The dimensions of the picture painted with oil on canvas were 50.7 x 61.2 cm.

The work can be viewed at Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

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Paris Street Rainy Day

Afzal Ibrahim — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:20:21 +0000

Paris Street Rainy Day is an oil painting produced in 1877 by the French painter Gustave Caillebotte.

This painting was regarded as one of the best-known works of Gustave Caillebotte.

The picture Paris Street Rainy Day was painted showing Rue de Turin’s eastern side located north toward the Place de Dublin. Baron Haussmann worked really hard on the construction of the neoclassical buildings. The painting details various streets of Rue de Turin. At that time, the ashlar facades of the buildings were seen as modern and fresh but today it’s uniform. There were three roads on the northern side of the square visible on the painting namely, the rue de Moscou looking on the left, the rue Clapeyron at the center of the painting, and a continuation of the rue de Turin on the right. This painting depicts an interesting figure of a line from a building to the left and then breaks in the line to the right. It portrays that the square was crossed by rue de Saint-Pétersbourg.

The work can be viewed at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Paris Street Rainy Day is an oil painting produced in 1877 by the French painter Gustave Caillebotte.

The picture Paris Street Rainy Day was painted showing Rue de Turin’s eastern side located north toward the Place de Dublin. Baron Haussmann worked really hard on the construction
The picture depicts that two men were walking around the street under an umbrella; the color used was indicating that the season was winter afternoon. They were dressed according to the Paris fashion of that time. One is female and she was wearing a veil, hat, diamond earrings, and a fur-lined coat. The man wears a topcoat, coat, frock, a tie, a hat, a white shirt. Some other people were depicted in the background as from the working middle-class figures.

Gustave Caillebotte used a two-point perspective because the view angle of the roads and buildings portrayed the same. Gustave Caillebotte was 29 years old when his masterpiece Paris Street Rainy Day was shown in an exhibition which was held in 1877. He was the youngest and one of the most active members of the group. Paris Street Rainy Day is a large oil painting with dimensions 212.2 cm × 276.2 cm.

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