Millet's "Starry Night"

Jean-François Millet, Nuit Étoilée (Starry Night), c. 1851. Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm. Yale University Art Gallery - via Art History tumblr

Nikolai Nikanorovich Dubovskoy, Silence, 1890 (via)

The Overlove of Knowing

George Inness, "October Noon" (source)

"The overlove of knowing is a chronic trouble of artists...this abominable tendency to believe only in what can be defined, this desire to realize all things of life sensuously, is the cause of human misery."

~Geoge Inness

W. Graham Robertson

John Singer Sargent, W. Graham Robertson, 1894, Oil on canvas, 90-3/4 x 46-3/4 in. source.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Head of A Woman, 1844, Oil on Canvas, 17.5x14.5"- source. I saw this work at the Cleveland Museum of Art and I've kept the postcard ever since. The blue background on this work was absolutely radiant in person.

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Duel After a Masquerade Ball.jpg

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Duel After a Masquerade Ball, 1857- source.

Gérôme - Quaerens Quem Devoret.jpg

Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Quaerens Quem Devoret" - source.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Summer Afternoon on a Lake, 36.22 inch wide x 23.62 inch high -source.

Joseph-Désiré Court

Joseph-Désiré Court, Woman Lying on a Divan, 1829, oil on canvas

found at iheartmyart

"Relief, Nay, Liberation"

"How often was I able, even in the later years, to cleanse my innermost soul of dark depression by painting dark fog-shrouded landscapes, snow-covered graveyards, and similar things. Perhaps these pictures appealed to other souls as much in darkness as my own. As for me, they always brought me relief, nay, liberation." - Carl Gustav Carus

Carl Gustav Carus, "Das Kolosseum in einer Mondnacht" (The Colosseum at Midnight"), Oil on Canvas, 1828, 47.5 × 37 cm
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Carl Gustav Carus, "Morning Fog", Watercolor on Paper mounted on Board, 1825, 20x26 cm
Source: Web Gallery of Art


Carl Gustav Carus, "Blick auf Dresden von der Brühlschen Terrasse", Oil on Canvas, 1830-1831, 28.5 × 21.7 cm
Source: Wikimedia Commons

I've been enjoying German Romantic painting lately. I ran across Carl Gustav Carus today while making a brief library visit. He studied under one of my favorite landscape painters - Caspar David Friedrich, so it's no surprise that I enjoy his work as well. Carus wrote that "The chief aim of landscape painting is to present a certain mood of the soul (meaning) by showing a corresponding mood in nature (truth)."

Quotes from German Romantic Painting by Hubert Schrade, 1967