European Masters, the Stadel Gallery, Germany

Thursday 2nd September 2010 we visited the NGV International on St Kilda Rd to see the European Masters art collection. I expected it to be mostly german artwork, but there was artwork from different artists around Europe such as Switzerland and particularly France (Degas, Cezanne, Monet, etc).

Rosemary was our guide, she began a short speech about the Frankfurt museum. Where the ideas and styles were easy to swap around and showed us a map of Germany then and now and that Mainehattan/Bankfurt is in the heart of Europe.
She explained about Johann Tischbein Frerick Stabel, who was the main artist for the museum in Germany that is called the Stabel Gallery.

We learnt about the real history of Art, the different periods of time from (in no particular order) of:
Early 19th century German Art, Impressionism, Classicalism, Romanticism, Symbolism to Modernity of Surrealism and Expressionism. There was a slideshow representing each area of the movements, with paintings from that era.

Some of the notes i jotted down as Rosemary explained some pieces include:


* Jacques Louis David: The Oath of Horatii has a bit of symmetry work in the piece.
* ROMANTICISM: (1820s) the pictures are all mainly landscapes of the natural world, the contrasts and sceneries are captivating.
* Monet: Painted with light, tones and colours. The Luncheon 1868 – is an ordinary subject matter for the panel of judges – Les Jury de Peintur– so when he didn't get chosen, he chose to join the Impressionists.
* Caspar David Friedrich: Rising Mountain of Fog – There was a scenery that included 3 mountains which looked like it represented the Holy Trinity. There was a real spiritual feeling about this painting.
* Eugene Delacroix painted against the 'rules' of french painting.
* Auguste Rodin portrayed human emotions – statue of Eve 1881.
* Arnold Bocklin (Swiss) – symbolism of myths and fairytales.
* Franz Marc was interesting for Cubism, he painted religious and nobility artworks. a popular piece in the museum was the Dog lying in the snow, c. 1911.
* Cezanne was the "Father of Modern art" 

It was good learning about the history of art itself before we entered into the gallery and looked at the pieces, it was a bit hard to grasp all the areas of history properly within that hour talk Rosemary gave us but it was a good insight into why the judges chose particular pieces, all with different subject matters and reasons.