Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Courbet flowers

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, Gustave Courbet
Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, Gustave Courbet

On Google Art Project. Original is in the Getty Museum, which offers a 13mb high-resolution file.

The version of the Google Art Project file available on Wikimedia Commons is almost absurdly gigantic, at 7,000×9,500 pixels and 30mb in file size — just in case you want to examine every brush stroke (above, bottom detail).

It is worth studying how Courbet manages to create convincing realism out of what are largely flat areas of carefully chosen color with little modeling. You can see where Manet got some of his chops, as well as inspiration for still life paintings by Monet and Fantin-Latour.

The Google Art/Wikimedia files are a bit brighter then the Getty file, and I think, in this case, likely truer to Courbet’s original intentions. The Getty page has good information on Courbet’s period of painting floral still life subjects.

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, Google Art Project

Comments

One response to “Eye Candy for Today: Courbet flowers”

  1. Gorgeous post as always! I am glad to see your page back up. For a while, I got a generic white page and I was afraid that you had been hijacked!