Art Analysis: From Manet’s “Breakfast in the Grass” to Blay’s “The First Cold”

Posted on May 19, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Manet’s “Breakfast in the Grass”

Medium: Oil
Size: Large Dimensions
Support: Cloth
Figurative
Short Description: A park in Paris, a group of people conversing with each other. The men are dressed, but one woman is naked, behind another woman who seems disconnected from the group. In the foreground, the woman’s clothes and breakfast are displayed.

Drawing/Color: Color
Colors: Colors, without mixing (predominant green)
Light: No chiaroscuro, use of colors for lighting effects
Brushwork: Light and fast
Axes Composition: Slight asymmetry, disorder in the situation and positions of the characters, balance between vertical (trees) and horizontal (humans)
Line Compositions: Pyramid in the human figures
Center Painting: Naked woman or the man on the right
Vista: Vista breaks laws, women seem to float from the bottom and appear larger than the boat at the edge. The distance is not blurred.
Plans: Three levels: food remains (repoussoir effect), the main group, and the background landscape
Anatomy and Proportions: Provided, according to aesthetic canons, female anatomy is idealized.
Clothing: According to the time, like the Bourgeois
Expression: Indifferent to each other, the naked woman is holding the viewer’s eye.
Movement: Balanced and low
Time: Medium
Realism except for the naked woman causing sensationalism
Detail, Child Elements: Not much detail or child elements except for the leftover food.

Relation with other works by this author: Olympia was also a scandal at the time, a naked woman, a prostitute, looking defiantly at the viewer.
Relation with other works of the era or style: Le Moulin de la Galette by Renoir, Impression, Sunrise by Monet, and the Impressionists in general.
Features of the style (realism xuleta)
Innovations: Rupture with the usual pictorial technique. Colors, chiaroscuro rejection, unrelated figures.
Influences: Japanese painting (flat colors), Velázquez.

Gender: Customs, daily life
Sign Iconographic: Representation of a usual custom at the time, a breakfast at a park in Paris. Inspired by two paintings of mythological theme: Concerto Campestre by Titian and Judgement of Paris by Giorgione. In their representation of naked women and dressed men in the middle of it, it comes naturally to explain the history.
Sign Iconological: Manet no longer represents a history of mythology. They are men and women of Paris, so the picture shocked the society of the time. He also shocked with the pictorial technique that broke with all tradition. Manet used as models his brother, his future brother-in-law, and his favorite model.

Purpose: Aesthetics, finding new paths in painting techniques
Value of work time with the movement, leaving Paris, city and time of great change. Appear boulevards and parks where you can walk, see and be seen. The art world revolves around the rooms. Importance of marching to reach customers. Theory of Color Chevreul. Influence of Japanese art that is now in Paris.
Contributions: Start the Impressionist movement, this work had much influence on Picasso, who made several versions.

Name: The First Cold
Author: Miquel Blay
Clients: Exhibited in Madrid and was bought by the Provincial Museum
Date: 1891
Type of work: Sculpture, exempt
Style: Realism, Modernism
Original Location: National Exhibition in Madrid
Current Location: National Museum of Catalan Art
Relation with a whole: There is another small bronze of the same month by the same author (but dressed).

Material & Blogs: A block of white marble
Size: Natural
Tones: Monochrome
Technique: Size
Position: Seated
Figurative
B.description: An old man and a very young woman are sitting on a bench with obvious suffering, the old man consoles the girl.

Volume: Open as it integrates empty space as part of the figure and expands on any outside.
Proportions: Given the reality, despite its large size.
Anatomy and near.: Old man and weak (however, their shoulders, as the amplitude of the chest and the muscles of the legs, signal strength above), the girl has a very strong and very tender anatomy.
Light: Inner and diffuse (light and shadow effects created by the figure itself).
Movement: Very relaxed and measured.
Time: Long, medium.
Axles composition: Symmetry, order, and vertical lines predominate (because the girl is in a diagonal S shape and the old man is vertical and hieratic).
Expression: Producing feelings of sorrow and compassion. The girl has a furtive glance toward the old man and seeks his protection.
Clothing: They are naked to show their anatomy and the universal value.
Point of support: They are supported on a rough base, in contrast with the very polished figures.

Relation with other works by the author: A sculpture made of bronze and the same but smaller in the Palau de la Musica Catalan.
Relation with other works of the era or style: Desconsol by Josep Llimona (similar position of distress) and Oedipus at Colonna by Hugues.
Characteristics like: (xuleta)
Innovations: At the time, it was seen as a sculpture that broke with the academic and evolved towards symbolism and modernism.
Influences: His teacher Henri Chapuis, also Rodin (in the form of the old man and the anatomical detail).

Theme: Human figure
Sign.iconografica: It is a sculpture showing a girl and an old man sitting on a bench, both are anonymous. The old man with the beard, facing the viewer, displays, both for its expression as his posture, the desire to overcome his own suffering to protect the girl.
Sign.iconologica: Contrast between the realistic (old man down-to-earth) and the girl, who is more dreamy and on tiptoe.

Purpose: Cosmetic and wants to introduce modern art to Catalonia.
Relation of the work with the times: Modernism was a fully bourgeois movement. This current was trying to find a Catalan style, coinciding with a time when the national sentiment was strong, giving continuity to the Renaissance and incorporating new trends and European avant-garde.
Contributions: Breakthrough to modernism.