Fine Art Paintings are artworks crafted for purely beauty, aesthetic, and intellectual stimulation rather than functional use. The centuries have been kind to us by bestowing upon us such wonderful artists who flooded the world with such fine art.
There is an abundance of magnificent fine art paintings in the world, each humming a serenade of its own. But, if you go on in and look closely, all masterpieces have common notions attached to them, which contribute to their grandeur.
Today, we set out on a quest to scrounge the commonality that binds fine art paintings together in greatness. While some have unabashed color palettes that have an instant impact, others have powerful symbolism down in them, so let’s discover these common traits in the next section.
A Focal Point
No painting has ever existed without a focal point intended to immediately rob the onlooker of his attention. It can be anything an artist would emphasize or bring attention to. It can be a strikingly odd color palette that makes you curious or a unique artistic technique employed to grab some eyeballs.
If we look at this painting, ‘The Ninth Wave,’ one can deduce the focal point without a doubt. At first glance only, one’s attention is captured by this divine sunrise and the orange-yellow hues that birthed it. The yellow light that travels from the sky to the water, which is now reflecting it to last, the passengers of the boat is absolutely unmissable.
Similarly, in Johannes Vermeer’s painting Woman Holding A Balance, the point of focus is a glance staring into you and a dainty hand position of the woman in the painting.
Powerful Symbols and Meanings
Art is designed to broaden the horizon of the commoners and take us into a meaningful world, sugarcoated with the beauties of art. Most fine art paintings hide behind a symbol or embedded meanings in objects to convey a strong and revolutionary message to the audience.
Picasso’s Guernica is a painting with critical worldwide acclaim for being a politically charged piece. This artwork is a depiction of the casual bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, highlighting the trials and tribulations of the commenters amongst a war. This gained a lot of traction for being an anti-war symbol, promulgating peace in troubled times.
Visible Brushstrokes
Merely gawking at a painting will tell you the way of the painting and the way it’s moving. The brushstrokes rendered by the artist always stand out in the painting vividly as it outshines the craft of the master artist. The brushstrokes have the ability to make a powerful statement in favor of the aesthetic and tone of the artwork.
Van Gogh was the exhilaratingly magnificent artist who gave birth to the technique of impasto, layering thick swatches of paint over the canvas. In this particular painting, ‘The Starry Night’, look at the swirly pattern in which the brushstrokes seem to be moving, which lends the painting an ethereal quality. Then, also go on to think about the gorgeous movement of paintbrushes and the way in which paint application was done by Jan van Eyck.
Layers of Colors
One of the most integral parts of artworks is the color palette which it is crafted out of. Vibrant, dull, muted, loud or subtle, colors not just give a painting its defining factor but also radiate strong emotions and throw it to the audience. Like a painting stained with tones of red can either arouse anger or love, whereas the yellow shades imbibed into a sunrise landscape can lend you a tranquilizing and serene mood.
If you look at this painting ‘Argenteuil’ by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, you’ll come to realize the impact it intends to create with its scheme of colors. Firstly, very evidently, one can see that there are multiple shades of blue that are being used here aside from showing the water lends us the refreshing and calming presence of being around water as well.
The pop of color provided by the red boat is the focal point in this image, making it an idyllic boat scenescape. Similarly, in Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein, the tones are highly muted but abundant in variation, which clearly conveys a quiet mood to the onlooker.
The Bottom Line
Many a fine art paintings like present here https://www.1st-art-gallery.com have come across the world–to stun, to make us think and go into an introspective mood, to balm our eyes in the most beautiful way, and narrate raw, personal stories of artists. Artists, while trying to eke out a living, give the world legacies to carry on for centuries. While each artist has a way of one’s own, disparate artistic techniques, and the purpose of birth, all paintings invoke an unforgettable feeling that lives on.
