Analysis of works of Western art appreciation

The Slender Man on the Volga, Leben, oil on canvas, 1873, in the Russian Museum.

Levin (1844-1930) was one of the main representatives of Russian critical realist painting in the late 19th century, and The Slender Man on the Volga is his most famous work. When he was still a student, the heavy labor of the laborers on the Neva River in Petersburg aroused his sympathy, and from that time on, he wanted to paint a piece of work showing the laborers, in order to suggest the painful life of the lower class laborers and social injustice. 1870 summer, Leben and his classmate, Vasiliev (who later painted about the laborers) went to the Volga River to take a sketching trip, and he was unforgettable by the typical Russian scenery and the life of the laborers. The typical Russian landscapes and the life of slender men left an unforgettable impression on him. In the painting, Leben drew eleven weathered laborers, who were struggling to pull the fiber rope on the hot sandy beach of the river. The laborers have different experiences and personalities, they live at the bottom of the social scale, but this is a team of people who have developed resilience and interdependence in the midst of suffering. The colors used in the background are dim and misty, the space is empty and peculiar, giving people a sense of melancholy, loneliness and helplessness, which effectively penetrates into the depths of the slender man's mind, and is also a true portrayal of the painter's state of mind, which plays a great role in the embodiment of the purpose of the painting, and in accentuating the emotions. Therefore, the composition, lines, brushwork and other painting techniques of this painting are quite successful.

Sunrise - Impression depicts a foggy morning in the port of Le Havre, where the water under the morning sun takes on an orange or mauve color, and the sky is rendered in various color blocks, reproducing the colors of the surface formed in the strong atmospheric reflections. This exploration of the language of painting itself was embraced by many painters in later generations, leading to a major trend that had its origins in Impressionism, and art embarked on a journey into the modern era.

In 1874, a group of young painters who often met at the Café de la Guerre de Beauvoir in Paris decided to organize an exhibition of 165 works and borrowed the second floor of a building on the Rue de Douroux to hold the first exhibition of "Impressionism". The exhibition attracted a large number of visitors, some came, some deliberately come to nitpick, the most attention and controversy is Monet's "sunrise impression".

The picture shows a misty morning, with a red sun rising and orange-red light flickering on the silver-gray sea. The silhouette of the harbor pier in the distance is shadowed in the hazy and misty morning fog.

What the artist is trying to show here is the harmony of color and the fluttering of time at sunrise on the sea. Nowadays this would be no cause for reproach, but at the time the hostile, traditionalist critics were saying, "It's shoddier than embryo paste,"

The artist's work here is a reflection of a sunrise over the sea.