The portrait of Princesse Albert de Broglie was completed in 1853 by artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres who has portraits many celebrities in his age and once depends for

to drawing, which is in a sharp contrast to his nenemis, the Romantic school. In this painting, Ingres shows a suavity of outline to match the temperament of the princess. Instead of making recourse to the brushstroke to get shifting effects of color and light, he transcribes the material quality of objects to demonstrate beautiful color accuracy by spraying millions of ink droplets onto paper’s surface, bringing the satin, silk damask upholstery, richly embroidered scarf and the shinny jewels into life.

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.