Erickson's Blog

Post-Impressionism and Realism; Realism had developed as a strong reaction opposed to romanticism, showing the nitty-gritty truths of the real world without covering up the hardships that truths untold. The world is and can be a bleak place where people can fall through the social cracks and slip into obscurity or be ignored, it is these kinds of people, places, and things that realism seeks to depict and explore. The subject matters which are shown in these kinds of paintings are the unfiltered and non-idealized truth of what happens on a farmstead with farmers tending to their crops or workers in an iron smelting plant, or just regular people sitting down at night resting.  Contrasted by Post-Impressionism which also depicts aspects and features of the real world, however it instead embraces how these things could or would make a person feel as opposed to an outright rejection of emotion for an unfiltered and gritty depiction of actual working life. Going back to the iron plant analo

 During 18th and early 19th century, two styles of art became greatly popular in Europe and the United States. These styles became known as Rococo and Neo-Classical, rococo tended to focus on people at play or relaxing using soft, pastel colors and people depicted typically in elegant clothing. Rococo tended to reflect the tastes and interests of the nobility of the era, often with an emphasis on pleasure and the joys of life. Contrasted by Neo-Classical, which tended to reflect more mature and somber subject matters with topics such as morals, virtue, idealism, with great inspiration from classical things such as the Romans or Greeks of the ancient world.  Napoleon Crossing the Alps - Jacques Louis David      Napoleon on his horse standing on top of the Alps has been an image ingrained in my head for the longest time, definitely one of the most famous paintings of its time at the height of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, something that is intrinsic to what people ass

Background: The Palace of Versailles is a stable of Baroque architecture and a cultural icon of France. Construction started in 1624 at the height of the 30 Years' War initially as the personal hunting lodge for King Louis XIII, as the years went by the palace would be enlarged by the chief architect and engineer Philibert Le Roy. It would be during this era of European history were France would become the dominant power as the Germanic powers of Central Europe under the Hapsburg were routed, this shifted the balance of power greatly.     Eventually more and more attention would grow onto the Palace, becoming the royal residence and home of the French royal family. They would even go as far as relocating to the town of Versailles along with the government, replacing Paris as the capital city for a time.