Herbert set out to prove the contrary – that Monet’s art was the result of as much calculation and study as a Renaissance landscape, or one by Paul Cézanne. 40įurthermore, according to this belief, Monet’s interest in color-light overwhelmed all other considerations, including choice of subject. He was so determined to seize a special moment of color-light that he abandoned his canvas when conditions altered, and turned to another, only later going back to the first when the same moment was again available. Monet planted his easel in front of his motif, we are told, and devised a method of instant response to nature, despite rain or winter frost. The belief that Monet’s art was one of improvisation is so firmly established that it dominates the 20th-century view of Impressionism. In 1979, Robert Herbert described Claude Monet’s style in a lengthy and extremely detailed analysis. 39Īn understanding of personal style also influences how historians relate an artist to his or her contemporaries. The change in taste that inevitably comes with the passage of time has made them seem awkward and even ugly. It is hard to imagine today how anyone ever associated them with Vermeer.
#Personal style trial
He painted a new fake in the courtroom during his trial to prove that he was, in fact, the one who had made the pictures. After World War II, they were revealed to be forgeries by an unsuccessful artist named Han van Meegeren. At least one senior scholar proclaimed one work to be by Vermeer, which led to others being associated with the one that had been declared authentic. Previously unknown paintings appeared in Holland during the 1930s and were attributed to him. A very famous instance of false attribution happened with the 17th-century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer. This is an important example of seeing based on expectations. Nonetheless, just knowing the name of the artist can transform what a work looks like. 38Īttribution is, for the most part, a scholarly activity. Since attribution influences the value a work has on the art market, it may matter a great deal. This collection, often called by its French name of catalogue raisonné, reflects and, over time, shapes a general consensus. Usually the person who undertakes the job of gathering all of the works associated with one particular person decides what to include and what to leave out. The history of art is filled with such changes in attribution. Sometimes another connoisseur challenges that judgment, “feeling” something else entirely and redefining the personal style. The work “feels” right, meaning that it seems to resemble other works that can be identified conclusively as being by the artist.
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After careful looking and using many other relevant examples as the basis for comparisons, the art historian making an attribution comes to a decision based not so much on research as on intuition. The traditional approach to deciding whether a particular artist painted a particular work, in the absence of documents that link them explicitly, is called connoisseurship. 37 There are many ways to conceptualize the relationship, and most art historians use a mix of qualities to define a personal style. A late 19th-century art historian named Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891) found recognizable individuality in details too insignificant for the artist to have considered consciously, such as the shape of ears. Roger Fry, for example, argued that Cézanne’s genius began with the way he applied paint.
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Works by others that look similar can be considered part of a school, or described as “in the style of.” For some art historians, style can be found in the “touch,” the viewer’s sense of the hand of the artist working the material. Personal style is limited to the production of one artist, a specific historical individual. The late or “old age” style has come to be valued as an especially interesting phenomenon, sometimes even as the culmination of an entire career. Other methods of organization may group the works of an artist by subject or medium.
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The usual way to minimize this problem is to create more divisions, perhaps a chronological ordering into early, middle, and late. Inevitably, however, any definition of style puts as much outside as remains inside its boundaries. Countless lectures, books, and exhibitions define the style found in art made by a single person. The idea of a personal style, which in the Western tradition goes back to the Greeks, seems to apply easily to the work of many artists.