Oil Paintings Market News

During the Spring Festival, there are many art galleries across the whole country prepare enough to welcome the “New Year” with opening doors to various guests from anywhere. Classical, modern, ethnic and Western arts are all comes to china together one after another. In order to let the audience have a happy time in the journey, they also initiated several of interactive activities at the same time; these painting begin to run into the lives of ordinary people.

2009 is the “Russian Language Year”, Sichuan Art Museum launched “Contemporary Russian oil painting exhibition” during the Spring Festival. The famous Volga River, the deep and warm wooden castles, they are all demonstrated a strong feature of the Russian geographical features.

In the exhibition hall at the entrance, the museum also details the history of Russian art and the status quo, as well as the current Russian art some relevant knowledge.

Crowds surging in the art gallery ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

The oil painting is wonderful. However, few people know the inventor of oil painting.

Using oil to paint has been tried in the Byzantine era. According to the records, this painting will not dry exposed under the sun for a few months. In 1200, the monk Francis Ross wrote a dissertation called “a variety of art forms” on the painting. In this paper, he introduced the usage of Linseed Oil and the Arab resin. At the end of the thirteen century, there were paintings similar to oil painting in the British Isles. At the end of the fourteen century, the two painters Van Eyck brothers in the Netherlands who used the oil to melt pigment created pure oil painting. Although art historians cannot conclude that the Van Eyck brothers are the inventors of oil painting, they found an ideal oil-based painting at the basis of previous experiments.

Many experts think that their greatest achievement is putting the resin into the oil so that the writing can be flowing and dry quickly. The first one who studied and mastered the techniques of oil painting painter in Italy is Antonueuo De Messina (1430-1479). It was said that he taught the usage of oil painting in Venice after he learnt the Van Eyck brothers’ painting techniques in the Netherlands. Then oil painting became popular as an independent painting in Europe.

For hundreds of years, oil painting are further developed and improved after the succession of generations and the creation of the artist. The oil painting has been the periods of the classical, modern and contemporary. The painting in different times is being affected by the domination of the different art ideological and the constraint of techniques, showing a different feature.

From the information above, we can see the long history of oil painting.

Who is the inventor of oil painting? ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

Abstract Art is a name which corresponded with representational, can also be called as non-representational. Its characteristics are lacking of description, and using emotional way to show concept and paint, which basically belonged to Expressionism, and first found in Kandinsky’s work. It was formed under the influence of a variety of anti-art, particularly improved by Fauvism and Cubism.
In Picasso’s opinion, “Abstract” art wasn’t an existing art. He thought that just someone emphasized on the style and life. While in Michelle Sevres’s opinion, abstract art was: “I call all without remind, memory that without relating to the reality – regardless whether this reality is the artist’s point of departure or not – the arts are called abstract Art.”
In fact, Fauvism and Cubism promoted the development of shape and color separately. That was Kandinsky who discovered its wonder further. In 1910 he painted the first absolute abstract watercolor, which was a non-representational, with desire, full with active overlapping color points. Kandinsky’s intentional creativity came from music and got inspiration for aesthetics, and then the Czech Kupka directly got inspiration from music for abstract art creation. People called him the originator of musician painter, later they constituted the abstract art together.

Abstract Art ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

The birth of the 19th century Romanticism is a revolution to the neo-classical and academic art.
Romanticism founded on pursuing freedom, equality, fraternity and liberation of personality. It pursues fantasy, pays attention to convey feelings, and like the passionate expression of temperament. Romantic art always use the dynamic state to confront with the static state, always use the strong subjectivity to confront with the excessive objectivity. Romantic, in subject matter, describe the unique multi-character, the exotic ambience, the tragedy of life, unusual events, and often find creative themes from a number of literary works.
Shyleaco is the pioneer of the Romantic painting, and another French Romantic painter Delacroix made it reach the peak.
Shyleaco (1781 ~ 1824) is a pioneer of French Romantic painting. He was born in Lyon, France, and at the age of 15, he came to Paris to study painting. Deeply infected by his senior masters, he created some romantic works. Though Shyleaco was short-lived, but his life was full of passion, illusion and suffering, and these were all reflected in his works. He was good at showing people’s inner feelings in the way of realism. Themes of the works are made from real life which has removed some unessential things.
“Raft of the Medusa” is the most representative works of Shyleaco. At that time, the works based on the “Medusa” ran around ocean, and crew members drifted by raft at sea for 13 days, at last they saw the rescue ship. It showed an instant passion and desire for survival.
Delacroix (1798 ~ 1863) is an important French Romantic painting artist. He was born in Paris, a lawyer family, who loved art from a young age, and at the age of 18, he came to the Academy of Arts to study. During this period he knew the man who known as the pioneer of the Romantic painting, Shyleaco, so later his initial works were inspirited by Shyleaco.
Delacroix, in the history of Western art, is an outstanding painter and has great impact on painting, especially in romantic paintings’ formation and development where he has made important contributions. Delacroix was seen as a master. He not only summed up the artistic achievements of masters from the time of Renaissance, but also had impact on a number of generations of artists. Many people got inspiration from him and learned much. Delacroix was very rich in imagination, agility, and a rare sensitivity. At that time, he opposed to drawing the kind of rigid and mediocrity paintings which belonged to the character of classicism. He claimed for the liberation of personality, and the importance of emotional expression. His paintings were good at displaying the active scenes, bright color, bold and vigorous feelings. His major works are “Dante and Virgil” “massacre of Chia Island”, “freedom of leading the people”.

Romantic paintings: "Raft of the Medusa", "Dante and Virgil" "massacre of Chia Island", "freedom of leading the people" ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

In recent years, the oil painting has gradually entered into homes of ordinary people. When people decorate walls, they often choose some watercolor painting, Chinese painting and oil painting. In particular, oil painting is more acceptable.
In China, the painting market can be divided into three categories: Chinese painting, Western painting and folk painting.
Chinese painting emphasizes on charm, ink, while Western painting does not.
Western painting includes oil painting, woodblock, copperplate, sketch, watercolor, opaque watercolor painting and etc. Among these, oil painting is the most strongly in showing, practicability and decoration.
It was only 300 years since western oil painting had been introduced into China, and when they entered people life just in early last century. After reform and opening-up, a variety of styles and schools of painting have their own position.
On the theme oil paintings can be divided into the theme painting, custom painting, landscape painting, portraits and still life, and so on. But whatever the theme are, works mainly rely on two major elements: design and color. In other words, what oil painting uses are shape, light and color these three performing methods.
Shape also means physique. This requires artist must have the ability to shape, and have strong sketch ability. Without good sketch ability and want to do well in oil painting, just like a high-rise without foundation, cannot stand up.
Light, the show of luminous effect. The rise of France Impressionism led people to make research and performance on light. Painters understanding of light trend to be scientific and rational. Thus their ability in performing light had become realistic-looking. Light and shade of light are the important elements in foiling atmosphere. This reason was similar to the effect of stage light in theater.
The most important element of oil painting is colors. The colors are different from the colors on palette. Painters never just move the colors on the color palette onto canvas without changing. These colors must be artistic modulated carefully by painters in order to achieve color’s softness, visibility, and harmonious unity between color and the color. This is just people often said the tone or hue. A painting’s color can not be making up with different colors at random, either cannot be numerous and complicated and dazzling, but should be formed to reflect a tendency of color, and changeable picture effect.
Hue is the soul of the painting. Without hue, in other words, if a painting does not create a basis tone, without harmony unified color combination, then, we can say that the painting did not meet the passing line.
In addition to the above requirements, when appreciating oil paintings we should also pay attention to composition, brushwork, rhythm and so on.

How should we appreciate the oil painting? ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

If you are a people who know nothing about oil painting, then the following suggestions will help you to be able to enjoy a oil painting exhibition.
Color
The true-life oil paintings are good quality. The top state of oil painting is not actualized. The most valuable point is the rapport between color and physique. A good work, its weak points behind picture should be filled by the color, which has a great foil effect.
Brushwork
The author should be contain good sketch ability to finish oil painting successful, and give correct sense of object’s the size, tactile impression and texture and perspective.
Author
Paintings often reflect author’s idea in some situations, even the most famous oil painters; their painting style and pen style can be different for the change of situations. Reputation can not decide everything.
Title
The title of oil painting isn’t so important relatively, normally they are very casual, or even just for the archive. There is a lot of work simply to use time as a title.
Material
There are two main types, oil painting on plate and oil painting on cloth. On-plate painting normally existed before the Renaissance, for there was no good linen. The main materials of modern oil paintings are linen.

The main elements of oil painting ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

When the Impressionistic painting just started to expand, a new branch in this group came out, that was the new impressionism. Its representative painters were Seurat and Signac, who worshiped the theory, and set the theory above the feeling.
In accordance with La Fleur’s color theory, Seurat and Signac tried to use primary color points to configurate in order to made visual images have a mixed effect of color, and used these accurate color points to composite art screen image objectively and calmly.
As a result of their using of such scientific, strict and strokes of color, taking place of the Impressionistic painters’ rich color that full of feeling and lively brushwork, , people also called it “scientific Impressionism”, so as to distinct from the “romantic Impressionism” whose representative was Monet. The name of “New impressionism “ came from the Fery Funet’s book “The Impressionists in 1886″, the book said, “the Impressionists have been instead by Seurat’s new style”, so that people named this group with Seurat being its representative as “the new Impressionism.”
The common ground of the new impression and the impression were: both of them liked change the theme into plot, described the familiar contemporary life, set landscape-oriented as subject, paid attention to the effects of screen light and color. But there were distinct differences between them: Impressionistic painter stressed the optical color mixing effect, did not against the use of mixed colors, while the new Impressionists did not emphasized mix a variety of colors on a palette, they claimed that it should be accordance with color rules strictly, put every simple single-color through a variety strokes on the screen side by side, to reach a natural reconcile through audiences’ visual effect and gave a feeling of cold and still. If what the impressionism showed were objective things had been subjected, then the New impressionism were showing purely objective targets, which restricted artists’ emotional convey. It was bound to lead to extreme changes – the birth of Post-Impressionism.

New impressionism of oil painting ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

Expressionism, which meant that the author emphasized on performing artist’s subjective feelings and self-experience in works, as a result of exaggerating, distorting and even dealing with a bizarre thought towards objective form, which aimed to give vent to his inner depression. They believed that subjective was the only truth, denied the reality of the objectivity of world, and against the purpose of art. It was the art trend in painting area which especially popular in the Nordic countries at the beginning of the 20th century, it was a reflection of social cultural crisis and spiritual confusion, which showed strongly in the time of social unrest.
There were expressionism factors that existed in the traditional arts in the Nordic countries: in the early Germanic barbarian’s art, Gothic art of the middle Ages, the Renaissance Bauc, Bolugaier and etc. We can find the exaggerated image, absurd effect of the arts in their works, which all revealed a strong tendency of expressionism.
At the end of the 19th century, there had come out the fist Impressionism movement that mixed with the influence of the Impressionism and modern style, whose pioneer were the Dutch painter Van Gogh, French Lautrec, Austrian Klimt, Swiss Hodler and Norwegian Monk. They expressed their subjectivism through some love stories and tragic subjects.
The main base of Expressionism in the 20th century was Germany, which decided by Germany’s social reality, at the same time influenced by the subjective idealist philosophy of Nietzsche, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and Steiner’s mysticism.

Expressionism of oil painting ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

The so-called post-Impressionism meant the art concept and art creation of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. At first all of them studied Impressionism. Cezanne and Gauguin also participated in Impressionism paintings exhibition, while Van Gogh hadn’t participated in the Impressionism exhibitions, but he had always claimed himself to be impressionist. Later, all three of them believed that it could not just like impressionists to imitate the objective world, it should be focus more on expressing painter’s subjective feeling toward objective matters. Although they had common creative tendency, they had distinctive artistic styles separately: the whole life creative activities of Cezanne were aimed at the pursuit of eternal body and solid structure in his heart, in order to create the sense of weight, stability and great of the image, at last to reach the final effect of simplified and geometrized, all these made him be the ancestor of the later cubism and abstract art. Gauguin suggested to draw with memory but without facing definite objects, and advocated integrated and symbol artistic principle. The new painting style of Van Gogh can be said to be impressionism and new Impressionism, the product that integrated Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and his personal qualities, and the result of compounding East and West painting. One prominent feature of Van Gogh’s paintings was that he expressed own personality strongly. Some said his paintings were his self-portrait.
The three artists all got social recognition after died for a long time; they opened the door of modern art together. Under their creative thinking, concept of art there came out Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Abstract Art and so on. It was them who changed western painting completely, made objective move to subjective and the modern trend, so they hailed as the father of modern art.
In a strict sense Impressionism was not a painting school, they were not in a group, nor held a joint exhibition, even no declaration, only three of them got separation from Impressionists and also shared a common tendency of creation. The later artists found that they had some contact with the Impressionism but also differed form impression, so they called them “post-Impressionist”.

Post-impressionism of oil painting ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News

Beihong Xu (1895-1953), modern painting masters, who came from Yixing, Jiangsu province. He entered a private school when he was four-year-old, and learned painting from his father. He went to Japan at his 20, then in the following year he went to France, learned from Dayoung and entered Xuliang college and Paris National Art School. In 1921 he traveled and studied in Germany and returned in 1927 to work as a professor in the Art College, Chinese University. In 1933 the Exhibition in Paris, French government bought 12 of his works and displayed them in a special display room. Later he went through the Europe, and held exhibition in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. After the Anti-Japanese War, he held repeated exhibitions at home in Guangzhou, Changsha and Hong Kong, India, Singapore and so on in order to help refugees of the motherland. He had been as art professor in Beijing University, Guilin Academy College. Later, he was pointed as the schoolmaster of Beijing Art School. After the liberation, he served as president of the Central Academy of Art and the All-China Art Workers Association. In his painting creation he opposed the formalism and adhered to the style of realism, and insisted that “observe the best ways, follow those who never down, improve those poor ones, add on those not enough ones, use those western painting that can be adopted”. He inherited the good traditions of China’s painting, adopted the advantages of Western painting to create his own unique style. He was good at the traditional Chinese painting, oil painting, especially good at drawing. With deep knowledge he could express freely. His well-known oil paintings “after” and “Tian Heng 500 people,” Chinese painting “Jiu Gao Fang,” “Yu gong yi shan”, “Tokyo realignment”, were the most famous. His good at painting horse were famous world wild, strong power in pen, great enterprising outlook, all showed new. In 1952, he got sick, and devoted all creations and collections during the whole life to country. During his life, he is active in the art teaching education, and contributed his entire lie to Chinese art development and brought up a lot of nurturing talents. Beihong Xu died in Beijing in 1953 at his age of 59 years old. The government set his house as Beihong Xu Memorial Hall. His representative the “gallop map”,
were the most acceptable. Intercropping with flowers and birds and cats and gave a real feeling to customers. His works include “Pu Lv Dong” and “the beginning of Lunjie”, “Beihong-Sketch,” “Beihong painting set,” “Ink and color Beihong Estampes”
Beihong Xu was the foundation of Chinese modern art, he was also an outstanding artist and art educationist.
In the last century, people learned about him through two books:《Memoir of Biwei Jiang—Beihong Xu and I》from Biwei Jiang, and《My Life—the memory of Beihong Xu》from Jingwen Liao. Through their depictions, we can find that the former devaluated him, and the latter praised; the former suppressed, and the latter complimented. The former was popular in Taiwan, and the latter was widely accepted by main land China.

Painter Beihong Xu ©2010 Oil Paintings Market News