Museum Essay

 

 

 

On the trip to the Metropolitan Museum I wasn’t sure about which paintings or sculptures select to talk about, because all of them are really nice painting and sculptures. I ended up choosing these two paintings the first one is called “Washington Crossing the Delaware” it is oil on Canvas and it was painted in 1851 by Emanuel Leutze. It attracted my attention because it is one of the biggest paintings that I saw at the museum. The second one is Called “The Gulf Stream” it is also Oil on canvas and was painted on 1899 by Winslow Homer. I chose this two painting because they have a lot of similarity and differences in some points. If you analyze them deeply you are going to realize that in both of them there is a boat and in both of them people are struggling to survive obviously on the first painting there are more people than in the second one.  The first painting is a 2D painting where the focal point is the boat with people that is in front. We can appreciate that there is negative space that is the rest of the ocean and the sky. Leutze used cool colors on this painting such as the blue from the water and the sky and he also used primary color to highlight the people on the ship.

Similarly the second painting is a 2D painting as well and we can see that the artist used warm colors too, and in both painting the focal point are the people on the boat. Homer’s painting also has negative space that is almost at the same position that is in the Leutze’s painting. Leutze used asymmetrical balance because the two boats that are behind the first boat are smaller than the first boat that is the focal point. Both works are representational because you can infer by seeing them what they are, and what they are doing in the painting. We can say that they are realistic because they make reference to human forms. They also have geometric forms in the first painting we can see that there are triangles, lines and circles and the second painting there are squares circles triangles and rectangle. So we can conclude by saying that this two pieces of art have a lot in similar and there are also some different things for example that in the first painting Leutze used many people to be the focal point, and in the second painting Homer used just a boat with a man to be the focal point. Leutze used more details in his painting that Homer. Another thing that they have in common is that both artists used asymmetrical balance because if we fold those painting both half are going to be differences they don’t have the same visual weight of elements.