Paintings
Since its founding in 2023, The E-Museum has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the museum's gallery through its exhibition, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.
Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890.
For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression. Accordingly, there was a tonal shift in his work. He returned to incorporating the darker colors from the beginning of his career and Starry Night is an example of that shift. Blue dominates the painting, blending hills into the sky. The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting.
“No more kings, no more priests, no more noble lords, no more almighty church, no more taxes without the people’s consent!”
— Anonymous, The French Revolution (1789—1799)
The Death of Marat
Jean-Paul Marat (1743 –1793) was best known for his role as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. He was passionate about the rights of the poorer classes and they, in turn, regarded him as a hero. But Marat’s uncompromising and often violent views also led him to have many enemies. One of these was Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the Girondin political group. On 13 July 1793, Charlotte stabbed Marat to death in his bath.
Jean-Jacques David, a close friend of Marat’s, was invited to paint Marat. It was revolutionary in its subject matter but also in its design, which pushed the boundaries of conventional practice, as in the use of empty space and light to give a sacred feel to the bloody event.
The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus is undoubtedly one of the world’s most famous and appreciated works of art. Painted by Sandro Botticelli between 1482 and 1485, it has become a landmark of XV century Italian painting, so rich in meaning and allegorical references to antiquity. The theme comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Venus is portrayed naked on a shell on the seashore; on her left the winds blow gently caressing her hair with a shower of roses, on her right a handmaid (Ora) waits for the goddess to go closer to dress her shy body. The meadow is sprinkled with violets, symbol of modesty but often used for love potions.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way—things I had no words for.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
La Clairvoyance
René Magritte, from 1932 on, had set out to apply a new method of working that involved revealing the unexpected connections between things. It's about the limits of vision, the secret life of objects, the fact that there's no visual relationship between the shape of that egg and the form of the bird he is depicting. Yet the two are indelibly connected. It's making you stare harder at the things around you and think about not so much what they show you, but what they conceal or about their hidden potential.