As I was working on my art journal I came upon something that caught my attention and peeked my interest. The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau stood out to me because it was stated that it is post-impressionistic. Now, granted my idea of post-impressionism was/is not perfectly on target, I did not see how it could be considered to be post-impressionistic when it looked so cubist. It’s lines were smooth and it’s brush strokes were nearly invisible. It had that not quite 3D yet not quite 2D quality to it that makes cubist paintings so unique. I remember when this painting came up in class and I thought, “I like this painting but there is something off about it that I definitely don’t like. It looks too cubist.” Well at the time I didn’t take any measures to find anything else about the painting but when I ran across it again I decided that I needed to get to the bottom of this painting and it’s “miss-named style.” Well the answer was not hard to discover, fortunately. After some Googling I discovered that cubism was the next large artistic movement to follow post-impressionism. And as Henri Rousseau painted more toward the end of the post-impressionistic movement and close to the beginning of the cubist movement it makes sense that he would straddle the line between them in his work.
It was interesting for me to make this discovery because it made me feel better about my ability to recognize different styles of art. I know that we didn’t focus on the technical memorization part of History of Art or the “what makes this, this” part either, but the way that we did study, the way that we were able to research as we ourselves saw fit helped me to hone my art recognizing abilities and my want to discover the who, when, and why of various pieces of art. Thanks!!
C. L. Baker
Written by caseylee08
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