A Winter Wonderland

What an appropriate name for a presentation by Dr. David Stark of the Art Institute of Chicago.  This time the Art Institute came to us in a suburb of Chicago to a wonderful century old golf club on picturesque snowy grounds.

Dr. Stark presented each area of art by its style and century the piece was excuted.  We were first introduced to Bruegel, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Friedrich, Graveyard Under Snow, 1827

Renaissance to Rococo Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century

Limbourg Brothers, Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry (February) 1413-1416

Goya, Winter Scene, 1786 (Sometimes these scenes were painted for weavers who wove them into tapestries to be hung on wall).  A simplier version of this painting was first done for a tapestry.

Boucher, Winter, (Four Seasons Series) 1765 - All of them of loving couples.  Don't you love this sleigh?

Avercamp, Scene on Ice, 1625

Romanticism

Friedrich, Winter Landscape, 1811 - If you enlarge this painting you will see a man sitting by the large evergreen with his crutches thrown in the snow looking at a religious cross.  It is debatable if he has been cured or if he has come to die.

Turner, Snowstorm, 1837

Realism

Courbet, Fox in the Snow, 1860

Impressionism and Post Impressionism

Monet, Sandvika, Norway, 1895

Pissarro, Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow 1879

Monet, Ice Floes, 1880 (painted after his wife Camille (32) died of cancer), symbolizes the breaking apart of his life.

Ashcan School, early twentieth century, realism, depicting people the way they lived

Henri, Snow in New York, 1902

Bellows, Morning Snow - Hudson River, 1910

Twentieth Century

Burchfield, Orion in Winter, 1962

Richter, Ice, 1989

I think I have changed my mind about winter, it is certainly art!  I still do not like the shoveling and the driving in the snow, but it is a fascinating happening each year in many parts of the world and to the artist has very life cyclical meaning.  If you would like to see Dr. Stark's complete visual presentation you can access it at

http://mdid.artic.edu/ , log in is public, password is public. left menu bar select Slide show, under Slide show select author Stark, David, select Slide show Winter Wonderland.