Understanding Painters’ Background by Contrasting and Comparing Subject Matter, Color, and Brushwork
J. M. W. Turner, Going to the Ball (San Martino) and Claude Monet, Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat Comparison
The way painters paint their impression about a subject can reveal a lot about the past. While painting is commonly used to serve as a platform to depict a biblical story, it has evolved into a platform to convey the artist’s impression. The story depiction that the painters aim to express has grown more explorable since the advent of impressionism in the 19th century. Two paintings that depict this exploration are J. M. W. Turner Going to The Ball (San Martino) (1846) and Claude Monet’s Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat (1874). Despite being the same works of art of a landscape that portrays a condition of what the painters saw at that time, both paintings offer vastly different aspects in depicting their impressions. The contrasting aspects are the subject matter, colour, and stroke techniques; through these aspects, other crucial details regarding the painters may also be explained. Their chosen subjects may explain the artist’s background in nature painting. Furthermore, understanding the contrasting colour choices and stroke techniques could explain the existence of landscape and impressionist painting in the past.
Both paintings feature the landscape of similar scenery but through different places and different subject matter. However, despite having similar scenery and intention, they differ in the choice of subject matter that could tell about the painter’s back story regarding nature painting. Going to the Ball (San Martino) depicts the landscape of Venice City through the featuring of canals, boats, and people. It denotes a story about people going by boat from an important event at that time, the Masquerade at San Martino Ball.
On the other hand, Monet’s Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat centre around the scenery by illustrating the Argenteuil Basin using subjects of a river, a sail, an autumn tree and the village landscape as the background. By choosing to depict a natural landscape differently, the painter reveals something about their background in nature painting. Monet’s paintings are predominantly about nature as he preferred to work outside. “As Monet always worked directly from nature, he had fitted up a boat while he was living at Argenteuil in order that he could paint his views of the Seine at his ease.” (Duret, 1910). While Monet has the background of nature interest, Turner rarely paints about nature. “Turner’s abiding interest lay in the universal of nature, not the particulars.” (Rees, 1982). The painting Going to the Ball (San Martino) supports the fact that he seldom paints about nature, which contrasts with Monet’s preference. However, although Turner seldom painted nature, this cannot conclude that it was something he was not interested in. “The natural forms with the most appeal to Turner were the fundamental ones: mountains, seas, and atmosphere that he preferred to see in violent motion.” (Rees, 1982). This was evident in his other works such as the Waves Breaking Against the Wind painting, which depicts a scene of the sea from the shore, and the View in Wales: Mountain Scene with Village and Castle — Evening painting, which depicts a scene of a mountain range.
Through the subject matter, these paintings also explained the development of transportation in the 19th century. The portrayal of boats in the paintings serves as a form of transportation for people to mobilise, although depicting a different story. The Going to the Ball (San Martino) portrays boats as daily transportation to go back and forth from place to place from the way he painted the pier with people in it. In contrast, the Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat portrays the boat as transportation used for leisure. This sense of leisure could be seen in the placement of the sailboat, where Monet placed it as a single attraction in the middle without an explanation of the boat’s direction, unlike what Turner portrayed.
In conveying the artwork’s story, both painters use distinct techniques. Going to the Ball (San Martino) and the Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat painting differ in how the painters choose the colours. Turner uses a monochromatic colour scheme, which is yellow. The yellow serves as the foundation for all tints and hues in the painting, and Turner extended it to the saturation or brightness of the base colour, which produced light brown, dark yellow and golden brown shades and hues. Turner chose this scheme of colour to emphasise the narrative of people returning from the ball while also attempting to capture the ambience of dawn in the Argenteuil basin. In addition, he also adds blue colour to the sky. However, because he tries to represent the dawn atmosphere, he intends to avoid capturing the bright ambience of the sky with blue, so it is almost visually hidden. On the other hand, Monet paints nearly every object he depicts using a variety of vibrant colours, such as blue, orange, and white mixtures. With these vibrant and entrancing colours, Monet attempted to capture the festive and touristic atmosphere. The idea might be illustrated by how people at the time viewed the Seine River in Argenteuil as a place to unwind.
The contrast of colours influences the amount of detail shown in the painting. In Going to the Ball (San Martino), in which yellow and brown is the overall tone of the painting, it might seem limited in terms of colour play. All the subjects, such as the boats, people, water, and the city background, are painted with the same tone, which makes it difficult to differentiate the lines between subjects in the painting. Nevertheless, although he only uses limited colour, he adds details to each subject using shades. For example, he paints the figures of people on boats and people on the pier with far darker shades to give a sense of focus. This detail lets the viewer differentiate each subject, although the painting lacks specificity. While Turner lacks specificity, Monet adds a more detailed effect to the Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat painting through the assertiveness of colour. For example, Monet paints the autumn trees at the far right with colours of orange and blue that contrast the branches and the leaves. However, in terms of using several shades of colour, Monet did not use a blend of shades to contrast each subject as Turner did. Otherwise, he uses it to add texture.
This technique of adding texture can be accomplished by using brush strokes. Both paintings use different kinds of brush strokes to process their choice of colour. Turner, in Going to the Ball (San Martino), uses thick strokes on his canvas as Turner often left visible brush strokes. Turner also applies thick paint with tiny strokes to the canvas to create highlights in the water and shadow in the background. It can also be seen that he paints the sky using a palette knife as the shades blend and leaves with a rough and scattered surface. Through these techniques, the colour of the painting blends well and gives a smooth transition. On the other hand, Monet, in painting Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat, uses short and thick strokes. He often uses short strokes of colour to implicate highlights and thick strokes to implicate texture. The feature of the sky reflection depicted in the water, where short strokes of bright blue and dark blue appear as a light reflection from the sky above it, is an exquisite illustration of this method. This stroking technique brings the water presentation to life as he attempts to depict his impression of the landscape that changed throughout the day during his painting session.
Through the explanation of colour and brush strokes above, the painting style between Turner and Monet could also be analyzed. Although both share the same objective of depicting the landscape as it is, as a romanticist, Turner is more likely to give an emphasized response to nature and the depiction of sublime sensation through sublime colour and heavy strokes. Despite existing before the emergence of impressionism, Going to the Ball (San Martino) might still be considered an impressionist painting as he, like Monet, intends to accomplish the closest form of the painting to the first impression of the subject’s appearance. From this, it can be concluded that he also impacted impressionism because Monet, an impressionist, examined his method and was inspired by it. This makes Turner and Monet such a significant influence on impressionism emergence. The main contrast in both paintings from this discussion is that Monet attempts to achieve impressionism by emphasizing the effect of light on the subject, which is the aim of impressionist painting. In this case, although Going to the Ball (San Martino) did not fulfil the aim of impressionism, the painting is still a piece of art that intentionally depicts what landscape is portrayed at that time and place.
Through the rapid composition and brushwork, it could also be seen that both Turner and Monet painted these paintings outside in the open air. This also serves as evidence of impressionism, where paintings are usually painted outdoors or known as plen-air painting. In addition, this plen-air technique also represents the fact that the development of ease of transportation at that time could produce more landscape paintings. As a painter of Venice who is not from the city, Turner is known as someone that repeatedly traveled through continents to find more dramatic scenes as he genuinely appreciates landscapes. In contrast, Monet “always lived on the banks of the Seine, in order to be near the water.” (Duret, 1910). Monet lived in Argenteuil after he left Paris in an early period and painted the Seine River and its banks, known as the Argenteuil Basin, with a Single Sailboat painting. Nevertheless, despite their background differences in travel reference, both are still fond of painting a landscape as it is, through their impression by painting plen-air.
Despite not having the intention to depict a particular story, going to the Ball (San Martino) and Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat could narrate a moment in the past that links to other information, such as the painter’s artistic background and the existence of landscape and impressionist painting. Both paintings have distinct features that the painters use to explain those contexts unintentionally. Through the subject matter, it can be concluded that Turner and Monet differ in their preference for nature painting. While Turner’s choice to depict nature is more fundamental, Monet was interested in painting a more complex nature. In addition, the explanation of the distinct choice of colour and brush strokes could be a reflection of both being impressionist paintings. Through the example of how these paintings represent impressionism, it can be concluded that impressionism is achieved when the painting’s form closely resembles the subject’s initial appearance. In evidence of that, both Going to the Ball (San Martino) and Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat successfully illustrate it through their subject matter and technique choices.
Bibliography
Duret, Théodore. Manet and The French Impressionist: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Moriset, Cézanne, Guillaumin. Translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch. Toronto: London G. Richards, 1910, 141. Accessed Nov 26, 2022. https://archive.org/details/manetfrenchimpre00dureuoft.
Rees, Ronald. “Constable, Turner, and Views of Nature in the Nineteenth Century.” Geographical Review 72, no. 3 (July, 1982), 263. Accessed Nov 27, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2307/214526
