Portrait of an Unknown Woman is an 1883 oil painting by a great Russian painter Ivan Kramskoi, who was an excellent leader of the Russian democratic art movement.

This is a portrait of considerable high aesthetic value. The painter created a perfect image of the woman in 19th-century Russia with Realistic thoughts and showed the character’s spirit and temperament with consummate skills. The unknown woman in the painting is arrogant and proud, dressed in luxurious costumes of Russian high society. The background is the famous Alexander Theatre in St. Petersburg.

However, the identity of the model is still unknown. Because this oil painting was created in the same time as “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy, some people believed that she was just the Anna Karenina. It was also said that she was an actress. No matter who she was, her quiet strength and forthright gaze impressed most people. The painter created p a new expression style in portraits that is use thematic plot to depict the portrait demonstrating a resolute, decisive and youthful Russian women intellectuals. It was quite successful and became one of Russia’s best-known art works.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman combines elements of the genre and portrait traditions in art. We can feel her personality through her sensuous lips, lazy eyes and thick eyebrows. She was sitting sideways, turned her head overlooking the cold and heartless world, seemed arrogant and proud. This posture revealed her incompatible with the world .this implied a part of the democratic attitude of the intellectuals to the society.

Though this work now gain a great popularity, when it first exhibited many critics I were angry they thought the woman in the painting was a haughty and immoral woman which was not accepted by the contemporary social taste. The title of the painting is unknown and there was no evidence showing any information of her identity, so this aroused much guess and became enigmatic.

Bacchanal depicts the story about the god of wine in Greek mythology, Dinysus (Bacchus in Roman mythology). Bucchus buried his friend, who died in a duel. Then grapes grew in the cemetery. He pressed the grapes to extract the juice and put it into horned cups. This is what we call it wine now. Afterwards, he consecrated the sweet and delicate wine to the Olympic gods. Therefore, Bucchus became the god of wine. At the grape harvest time, Greek people would hold Bacchanal.

Many painters expressed human passions by depicting the carnival scene that gods were drinking and dancing. Therefore, Bacchanal is not so much a gods carvinal as a real portray of young people rejoicing with wild excitement.

In this oil painting Bacchanal, figures are bold, dissipated and passionate, which perfectly illustrates the warm and festive atmosphere. Some figures who are guzzling wine clearly reflect the impact of classical art on Titian. However, Titian’s attitude towards classical art is greatly different from Raphal’s. He considered classical mythology was a part of nature. People were not life-like sculptures, but are fresh-and-blood humans. Titian slightly idealized figures in this painting in order to make them transcend the reality of life, which convinced us that they belonged to a last golden age.

In the lower right corner, a naked beautiful woman was lying on her back, which not only adapted to

between cold and warm color makes this painting more poetic. Some figures are far while some are near, which creates an implicit and poetic effect and emphasizes the vivid scene of high jinks.

Titian’s techniques in use of color and his priory on warm color shows he perfectly mastered oil painting skills. This new approach was consistent with his painting style, which enables him to create a series of art models which were highly harmonious between form and content.

A Field of Tulips in Holland is one of the masterworks of French impressionist Claude Monet. When he stayed in Hague, Netherlands in 1886, Monet found the tulip fields closed to Sassenheim between Leiden and Lisse and enchanted by the vibrancy of the fields then he painted the A Field of Tulips in Holland. It took him a lot of time to render and the use of color achieve perfect in this painting.

As the founder of impressionism painting, Claude Monet dedicates himself to the development of impressionism and consistently practices the movement’s philosophy from beginning to the end. Different from the dominant official art in the 19^th century, Monet is so preoccupied with light and color that he always uses color to distinguish objects instead of clear outline, resulting
the L-shaped strip of hyathinthus adding melancholy to the scene can be seen as a balance to the ardent tulips. In addition, Monet dots patches of white and pure daffodils in the field which make the field more vivid. The wave of flowers in bloom stretches to the horizon. A polder windmill stands among the tulips with several houselets.

Vincent van Gogh is a world-famous artist, he belonged to post-Impressionist painter. So many excellent works he had created, such as The Starry Night, Sunflowers and cafe terrace at night, etc. His paintings were famous for its bold color and rough beauty. van Gogh’s painting had a great influence on the art 20 century . However, though he is considered as one of the history’s greatest artists all over the world, his received little appreciation when he was alive.. Then after his death, most of his works were accepted and gained a lot of fame. Totally, he produced a large number of more than 2,000 artworks.

Many of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings had attracted much attention and now shall we keep our eyes on one of his paintings — A Pair of Shoes. What Van Gogh painted is a pair of peasant’s shoes. In his mind, the shoes are not a pair of physical shoes in real life, nor being used as instrument, but a complete perceptual world which is full of implication. From broken hole inside the shoes, we can feel the burdens of labor work.

When we are looking at these hard and heavy old shoes, we are able to be aware of the repeating and dull work in the fields. The peasants are slowly working with constancy of patience. Their shoes are covered in wet and fertile earth. After the night falls the peasant wearing this pair of shoes moves slowly on the path. In his pair of shoes, the wordless call of the earth echoes, revealing the earth’s silent praise to the ripe grain and symbolizing the earth’s meditation about the deserted fields during the winter time. The shoes are imbued with stable anxiety on the bread and wordless joy from getting rid of poverty or trembling either when giving the birth or the death approaching.

The content of A pair of shoes is in accordance with its title. It does depict a pair of ragged shoes laying quietly on the field, just like two brothers stay together closely, suggesting that the painter’s deep feelings about it. In fact, most of Vincent’s late paintings are somber, but somehow they reflect some sort of optimistic.

Life and death is an eternal theme of art. In retrospect to 1600s, the Dutch produce a lot of paintings to demonstrate the fleeting nature of life and discuss the meaning of life, which is called “vanities” by art historians. Juxtaposing wealth and riches of life with the temporal things like food and flowers characterize this kind of painting. Juan de Valdés Leal, a Spanish painter and etcher of the Baroque era, also had a preoccupation with it.

From a panoramic perspective, Juan de Valdés Leal’s Vanitas is full of a jumble of objects with a cherub looking over them and a man hiding behind curtain. In the foreground to left, a skull crowned with a laurel wreath, which is usually crowns those who have achieve great success. Whatever a man gained during his life, he has to face death like any other people. Then come two flowers: one in full bloom whilst the other already dying, reflecting the flourishing and dying of life. It is the end of life. Let us retrospect the time before death according to the oil  painting. These objects can be divided into three groups: Firstly, dice and playing cards, suggesting a luxurious life wallow in games of chances. Secondly, a cascade of medal, money and jewelry leads up to an elaborate crown, indicating honors, wealth and power. Finally, books and scientific instruments demonstrating pursue for knowledge, which can also be regarded as means to achieve these honor.

A cherub sit to the left and blow a bubble, whose existence is even shorter than a second although iridescent beautiful. Life just resembles a bubble, always come to an end nevertheless how beautiful it used to be. In the background, a man drew back a heavy curtain with one hand and is pointing at a painting depicting the last judgement, when Christ will appear again to judge who would be accepted into paradise and condemned into Hell. The universe will end, and with it time itself. Life is fleeting, and everything that we cherish and strive for is ultimately died away with us.

As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso is not only a painter but also a prolific dramatist and sculptor. The most important contribution by him is co-founding of the Cubist movement, which is a kind of painting that divide object into different parts then stack them together in one plane. As a result, the objects totally change the original shape, but the transformed figures evoke the view’s interest to probe into the meaning of painting. Furthermore, Picasso is good at making use of symbol. Just as dragon means power in China, images in Picasso’s painting always have symbolic meaning. Guernica is a masterpiece of this kind.

Guernica depict the panic after the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937, which was an aerial attack on the unarmed civilian in Basque town of Guernica, Spain, leading to widespread destruction and large civilian mortality during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso said that he paint the cow to stand for the fascist and the horse to be the symbol of the painful civilians. He also painted several figures around the horse to present destruction and desperate. To the left, a mother howls up into the sky holding her dead child, a soldier lying on the ground with a broken sword, to the right, a woman stretch her arm to light the dark with an oil lamp, a figure watch all this desperately. No bomb, no tank, no airplane. However, these impressive figures bring us into an ambiance filled with horror and misery. Picasso relied only on three colors, white, black and grey to adding to this horrific atmosphere.

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth” says Pablo Picasso. Although Picasso did not participate in the war by himself, he demonstrated his anger and hate for war by his own means.

The Theater Box (French: La loge) is one of the masterpieces of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who was a well-known French artist of the Impressionist style. In Renoir’s paintings, he always shows his appreciation for the beauty and the feminine sensuality. This painting, The Theater Box, has not actually achieved the “non-black” assertion of Impressionist. It brings about the sharp contrast with black stripes. It is the only work that had not been received too much criticism in the Impressionists art exhibition.

The painter created well-dressed woman in the theater box according to his impression gained from the theater. And then he went back to his studio beginning making his work. It is interesting to note that it is an Impressionist painting done indoors. The painter successfully showed us the real atmosphere in the box of the theater, especially the expression of the two characters. Their faces were so natural and seemed concentrating themselves on the show.

Though there are only two people appeared in the painting, the painter was able to clearly highlight the image of that dressed up lady who was in stark contrast with the gentleman behind. The woman was acted by a modal named Nini and the gentleman holding a telescope was acted by one of Renoir’s brothers. The tone of the box is warm, being composed of rosy, black, white colors. The black stripes in the woman’s clothes made her very eye-catching and the black bars together with white color also made her look glamorous. Renoir uses small strokes to reflect black so as to produce a rich and deep level and finally enhance aesthetics.

Portrait was quite flourishing for a long time in the history of European painting, and the impressionist portraits were more vigorous. Renoir’s portraits were highly appreciated won scholars later. Renoir was famous for painting nude female. He became interested in the female body after the Franco-Prussian War. During the war, he joined the cavalry. Once the war was over, he immediately dropped the carbine, went back to Paris drawing his paintings again.

Wheatfield with Crows was painted by Vincent van Gogh in the last few weeks of his life in 1890. As a result, it was considered as van Gogh’s last painting though there was no evidence. How to interpret this painting? There is a common comprehension: this painting reveals Van Gogh’s psychological distress through a dark, grim sky, three pathways leading to different directions and the black crows which symbolize death.

The composition of Wheatfield with Crows expands from three forks road to wide wheatfield. There is almost no central viewpoint, while the scattered crows make the picture vaster. All the objects are made on a double-square canvas showing a cloudy sky filled with crows flying over a wheat field. Van Gogh uses three-primary colors and green to present a simple and concise imagery. From this painting we can see his peculiar golden color that people are familiar

day, he came to this wheat field again and killed himself by a gun. This painting gets another name Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.

The painting Where do we come from? Who are and where are we going to  is the largest work of Paul Gauguin’s painting career. The significance of it is far more than all the previous works. Gauguin said he could not paint a better painting like this and also had the same value. Before his death, he devoted all his energies and efforts to this work.

There are various feelings of sadness that many painters experienced in numerous terrible environments. The eyes of Paul Gauguin were so bright and saw so truly and uncorrected. Therefore, all the traces of rashes and hasty were gone, what they saw was the life itself.

The entire landscape in the oil-painting is filled with stable blue and the Veronese’s green. All the nudes are prominent in front of the landscape with bright orange – yellow.

This large painting was completed by Gauguin in Tahiti in the South Pacific in 1897. According to the memory of Gauguin, he expected that through depicting the mirage what he saw when he was thinking to express the blend with him and the nature and his inapprehension of the mystery about the riddle of human come and go. So he put his heart and soul into creation and worked day and night for a month.

This is allegorical painting is commenced in a tropical jungle. There is a Tahitian picking wild fruits in the center which implies Adam picking the fruit of wisdom. Several women with babies are sitting to his right hand and two women in robe are having a heated conversation in the distance. The little girl, young woman and the old woman may symbolize the three different stages of life. There is a mysterious and eccentric statue in the background with some certain features of the Hindu gods. There are small cats, black goats, birds and lizards on the ground and it seems that they all have their own implications. Deep in the jungle is the sea, it makes people feel like it’s the ancient primitive legend from the colors and composition and has more mystique with such a title.

What is the value of human in the eternity between life and death, space and time? What is the meaning of life? Plain primitive life really can bring carefree joys of spirits? Paul Gauguin speculated those puzzles painfully, but in this painting, he represented his thoughts with visual images.

Gentile da Fabriano is an Italian painter active in Florence in the same period as Masaccio. The altarpiece Adoration of the Magi he created in 1423 is recognized as one of the masterpieces of the International Gothic painting style. And it is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The painter aims at rendering gorgeous and brilliant atmosphere and decorative artistic effect. He has tried perspective space drawing and the picture shows vision, the middle ground and close range. The figures portrayed are the well-dressed king, courtiers and attendants as well as animals like horses, cattle and sheep. The colors of the entire painting including people, animals and environment are resplendent and magnificent. This actually depicts the luxury scene of knight etiquette in middle ages so as to beautify and eulogize the pious feelings of the nobility to the Virgin Mary and the Jesus.

Adoration of the Magi shows the impacts that international and Sienese schools make on Gentile’s art. Fabriano combines his painting style with the Renaissance new styles. This work describes the three Magi are on their way to the large meeting with the Virgin Mary and the Jesus. As we can see from this painting, all the figures are in splendid and delightful costumes. Adoration of the Magi is the most common themes in the paintings of the Renaissance.

According to the Bible, Magi are informed that the new king of the Jews will be born through observing the stars at night, so they rush to Jerusalem for pilgrimage. King Herod the Great hears about it, and he orders three Magi to inform him the child’s whereabouts after they know it and then he wants to go for a visit himself. Lead by the constellation, three Magi finally finds the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, The Magi offer the Virgin and the Child gold, frankincense and myrrh as gifts, which are particularly valuable at that time. Gold represents valuable confidence; frankincense represents devout prayer; myrrh represents suffering mind.