Classic Paintings with added Panache
If you’ve ever considered classic fine art to be a bit stuffy and perhaps lacking colour, we have a remedy. After a recent visit to the International Floriculture Trade Fair in Holland, we’ve found some art with added extras. We can now see some classic masterpieces with some lovely floral ingredients added. With artists ranging from Monet, Manet through to De Vinci, we’re going to give you a rundown of our favourites and a little background to each piece.
This classic painting by Leonardo Da Vinci has had many people wondering; just what is she smiling at as well her relationship to the artist. Theories have been researched and conjectured upon but no one shall ever truly know (unless Da Vinci kept a secret journal of course).
However the image is a bit bland. Granted, you could say that the detail is in the background and in the encapsulating smile, but doesn’t it look so much more colourful with Roses? We think it does so we’ve posted the picture here for you.
2) A Bar at the Folies-Bergére
Manet is the next artist we’re about to brighten up. Created in 1882 this was the last major work by the French maestro. Showing a scene from a bar in Paris the original painting had an assortment of champagne bottles, glasses and fruit but little in the way of floral design except a small Rose in a glass. Well as you can see the image has been accentuated here to have a full blown Rose in the foreground to bring some much needed colour to the scene. Who doesn’t like pink Roses!?
3) The Milkmaid
Johannes Vermeer is the creator of this masterpiece; you may recognise his style from the more famous piece ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ about which a movie was recently made. In the original composition there is a rather drab table with some loaves of bread and a few pitchers. Nothing really stands out although it has to be said that there are some striking blue tones for which Vermeer was well known to produce. If we wanted to add a little something extra then what better way to offset the yellow top that the maid is wearing by introducing a yellow bouquet of Roses which makes it even more stunning. No matter what daily chore the servant is instructed to do, we’re sure that every task would be made that little bit easier if you had a bit of extra colour and this is beautifully demonstrated here with yellow Roses.
4) Café Terrace at Night
This painting of a Café in Arles, France was made by the great Vincent Van Gogh in 1888. Van Gogh was an inspiration to the great impressionists such as Monet, who were to come later, it is a tragedy that he was never recognised in his time as being the great artist he was.
This painting is of a scene that is still visible today, with Van Gogh’s unmistakable style of sky and foreground with large brush strokes clearly visible. However, in the original the table is a little drab. The recreation has added a little colour with some delightful orange and pink Roses which combine with the colour of the wall and floor perfectly. They may be a little out of proportion to the rest of the painting but Van Gogh was never a stickler for perspective himself, so I’m sure he’d understand.
5) Luncheon of the Boating Party
One of France’s truly great artists and an early impressionist, Pierre Renoir mastered his technique with beautiful and subtle brush strokes with an excellent use of light. Still very much an impressionist but with perhaps a more realistic approach than compared to his contemporaries such as Monet, Renoir’s scenes are often associated with dignified glimpses into everyday life. Indeed, one part of the manifesto of the impressionist movement was to capture what was before them, rather than creating a false impression or composition.
In this piece we find a group of what we can presume to be well to do friends enjoying a summers’ day. There are plenty of things to keep the eye occupied across the piece as your eye follows the various gazes of the main characters. What you may notice is that in the original there are no flowers on the table. Instead, the flowers are in the hats of the women sitting at the tables. Something is wrong here, so in this recreation there’s been a bit of a reworking of the table decoration with some beautiful pink Roses to give the scene a bit of added sparkle. I’m sure you’ll agree that the scene is now set beautifully and this masterpiece is now perfect, though in fairness to Renoir it was pretty good originally.
These paintings are masterpieces but I think it’s fair to say that the additional flowers make the scenes look more striking. If you’re searching for a bit of extra colour you can’t go wrong with a Rose to brighten up the situation. Although we believe these paintings do look better for having flowers in them, we don’t condone or encourage anyone to start defacing pieces of fine art, you’ll get arrested and we’d get in trouble.
Filed under: Flowers, General on November 28th, 2011
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