It's a Classical Life

  Although my love for art has predominantly been early Italian Renaissance art, I have developed a deep appreciation recently for the Dutch classics. Today I want to share with you one particular artist, and in fact, one particular paintings of his - The Night School (sometimes called An Evening School) by Gerard Dou.  Source This painting is on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The information I am going to share with you about Dou also comes from the Rijksmuseum website. Dou was born in 1613 in a family of glass engravers. However, when he was only fifteen years old he was apprenticed to Rembrandt where he learnt the technique of chiaroscuro   for which he is renowned.  The reason I chose this painting to share with you was because of that technique. This painting spoke to me with its darkness and four points of light. Our family has been going through a dark time this last week and I have been trying hard to keep some points of light in my thoughts and my ...

  It has been a while since we have done an artist spotlight here on It's a Classical Life , and as I was admiring the work of Grace Cossington Smith on several different occasions lately, I thought she would fit in perfectly here. Her biography and the quotes here come from the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ANU) and the photos are courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia .  Grace Smith was born in Sydney in 1892 into a large Anglican family, with ties to royalty (her uncle  was private chaplain to Queen Victoria at Osborne, Isle of Wight) and a love for art. She studied art in Sydney as a young woman, and when she was twenty she travelled to England for two years with her sister. Here she continued to sketch and study art, and even travelled to Germany where she was inspired by the paintings of Watteau. You can see how his use of colour has inspired Cossington's own paintings.   Smith returned to Sydney in 1915 and once more resumed her art classes....

When we look at fine art, we are given a number of opportunities. We can simply appreciate the work, its lines and colours, the way it makes us feel. When I write an Artist Spotlight post, however I like to look for artists that inspire me and my values. How can I look at art and recreate the images, or the feelings, the actions, in my own life? What is it about a piece that inspires me, or that speaks to my soul?  Last week, I was looking through some of my favourite artists, wondering which one to use for this week's spotlight, but I decided to use French impressionist artist, Victor Gilbert - someone I don't actually know anything about. HIs paintings, though, were so appealing to me that I wanted to learn more. That's what I love about what I do here, I get to learn right along with you! The images have come from a variety of sources (listed at the end of this post).  Victor Gabriel Gilbert was a French painter belonging to the Impressionist movement. M...

  Have you heard of the Australian artist Margaret Olley? Don't worry if you haven't as we are going to be discussing her life and designs here on the blog today. Photos and biography details are courtesy of the Art Gallery of NSW. The reason that I chose Olley to be the first Artist in Spotlight here on It's a Classical Life  is because I have long admired her work and the beautiful and warm simplicity depicted in her paintings. Predominantly her work consists of still-life and interior paintings, from the late 1940s all the way to the early 2000s. And honestly, they remind me of my grandmother's place (and perhaps your grandmother's too!) They exude a feeling of welcome and love and are, to me, what home should be. She focuses on simple pleasures in her painting, flowers, fresh fruit and vegetables, well-worn furniture and china crockery that is treasured yet still used on an everyday basis.  Biography Born in 1923 in Lismore, New South Wales, Olley studied art a...