Showing posts with label matisse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label matisse. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Lola Likes Red


Lola Likes Red
8" x 5 3/4", oil on linen, 2016

In this painting, I tried to push the different reds as close together in value and hue as possible. I also tried to create energy without the overt use of a complimentary green color, though there is a faint green tint in her hair and in some of the shadows.

As usual, the face was painted first:

Lola Likes Red, in progress


One of the most famous painting using a harmony of analogous reds is Red Room (Harmony in Red) by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Some critics consider it his greatest masterpiece. 


Red Room (Harmony in Red)
Henri Matisse
71" x 87". oil on canvas, 1908
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia


Apparently the painting went through three stages - green, then blue, and finally red - before it was delivered to the Russian collector Sergey Shchukin where it was hung in his dining room.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has another Matisse, painted three years later, that is also a good example of an analogous harmony in red: Red Studio.


The Red Studio
Henri Matisse
71
1/4" x 86 1/4", oil on canvas, 1911
Museum of Modern Art, New York City

quotes

"There is more power in telling little than in telling all."
- Mark Rothko

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meanings are unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”
- Magritte

"Now, the idea is to get everything right -- it's not just color or form or space or line -- it's everything all at once."
- Richard Diebenkorn