Famous Paintings
By exploring and practicing color theory with well-known paintings, you can revisit color mixing and the science of color perception. Please use an online color scheme website to analyze the colors in the following paintings:
1. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
- Painted between 1503 and 1506 in Florence, Italy. It is painted using the sfumato method, a term coined by Leonardo referring to a painting technique in which translucent layers of paint are applied so subtly that there is no perceptible transition. Her enigmatic smile has been both evocative and cause of speculation as to whom she might be.
2. Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí
- Painted in 1931, the surrealistic painting has also been popularly known as Soft Watches, Droopy Watches, or Melting Clocks, and the theme of the painting was later revisited by Dali in 1954 with 'The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.
3. The Water Lily Pond by Claude Pierre Monet
- The Water Lily Pond was in the collection of the Havemeyers, who considered Monet the greatest impresssionist landscape painter. At the turn of the twentieth century, Monet became the most popular impressionist painter in the United States, as well as the one best-represented in American collections.
4. Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
- Painted in 1889 and embodies an inner, subjective expression of van Gogh's response to nature. In thick sweeping brushstrokes, a flamelike cypress unites the churning sky and the quiet village below. The village was partly invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands.
5. The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli
- The Birth of Venus depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore. It is suggested that the painting may have been created in 1483 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. The inspirations Botticelli used where of second century art and history.
6. The Scream by Edvard Munch
- Part of a seminal series of expressionist paintings by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. It is said by some to symbolize the human species taken by an attack of existential angst. The landscape in the background is Oslofjord, viewed from the hill of Ekeberg.
7. La Promenade by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- La Promenade depicts a young man helping a woman up a sloping path into the wood. In doing so, he backs into the trees and bushes and becomes a "green man." He gestures into the trees; she looks away, as if wondering whether she really wants to surrender to the trees and his green embrace, to be tumbled and cradled beneath the dress the trees, soiling her radiant white dress.