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Col. Tarleton_ Da Vinci_____ Lady of Shalott Madame______ Mr. Darcy?___ Mrs. Siddons__ |
One of my favorite parts of our trip to Europe was the time we spent in the art museums of London. While there I was able to spend several hours in the National Gallery(a few of my favorite pictures are listed here) and the Tate Gallery. It was exciting for me to see many of the pictures I had seen in books and learned about in school, up close and in person. I was even able to see pictures by my favorite painters, Thomans Gainsborough, Hans Holbein and Jan Vermeer.The painting displayed here: Boating on the Seine, was painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919). The exact setting for this picture has not been identified, but it probably shows the River Seine at Chatou, to the west of Paris. Renoir painted a number of 'open air' boating scenes on the Seine during the 1870s. In this example, the orange hue of the skiff against the blue of the river exploits the use of complementary colours. Since blue and orange are opposites on the colour scale, they become more intense when they are juxtaposed. |