Your favourite painting

[Loki]

I searched a thread similar to this and as I haven't found one, so I've opened it myself.

I think it would be interesting posting our favourite paintings, the ones we like most. I'm a little interested in paintings, although I'm not an expert and I'm not to able to draw a thing!
I'll start by posting two of my favourite paintings.

This is Millet's Angelus:



And this Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott (I had to check the name of the author; see?, I'm not an expert!):



What about yours?

[beelzebubbles]

Kandinsky's Several Circles

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kandinsky/kandinsky36.JPG

Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror

http://www.thebuttercompartment.com/...lo-picasso.jpg

Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhib...rgent_lily.jpg

[lionel]

I seem to have had a similar conversation somewhere before about Pierre Michon, and this is not my favourite painting of all time, but it's one of them: Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde:



You bugger! What's this, women's revenge, or has Liam had, er, a hand in this?

(Image deleted by me, Lionel or Tony, whichever you prefer, before the whole post got deleted. If curious, ask beelzebubbles to send you a copy as she put it there, although it's not a painting. Very naughty.)

[Liam]

My favorite painter is Peter Bruegel, and I have a Hunters in the Snow print in my room.

It is impossible not to love and admire the Italians; however, I prefer the late Middle Ages to Renaissance (meaning: Giotto over Leonardo, sorry). One Venetian painter whose endless Madonna-and-Child paintings I came to admire when I was younger was Carlo Crivelli. He seemed to take the Blakean concept of "Exuberance is Beauty" to ridiculous extremes. Still, the results are quite eye-catching:

Other painters I love include Andrew Wyeth, Bosch, van Gogh, Rembrandt and the contemporary Polish absurdist Michael Sowa.



L.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by lionel

...this is not my favourite painting of all time, but it's one of them: Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde...

Jesus Christ, Tony, that thing gave me SUCH a fright. I'm afraid I need to go and take a pill now, .



[This only served to remind me how much I prefer the, ahem, phallocentric works of art, feminists be damned!]




L.

[Loki]

Liam, Hunters in the Snow is a really good painting.
Speaking of the Italians, I prefer Leonardo to Giotto.
An example of Leonardo's art:



Another Italian painter that I admire is Canaletto:

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Liam

Jesus Christ, Tony, that thing gave me SUCH a fright. I'm afraid I need to go and take a pill now, .

Oh, come on, Liam, don't be so squeamish.

Originally Posted by Liam

[This only served to remind me how much I prefer the, ahem, phallocentric works of art, feminists be damned!] L.

Ahhh, it's just a just a question of, er, taste.

Cheers

Tony

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Loki

Liam, Hunters in the Snow is a really good painting.
Speaking of the Italians, I prefer Leonardo to Giotto.
An example of Leonardo's art:

Shouldn't that be a middle rather than an index finger?

[Liam]

Originally Posted by Loki

Speaking of the Italians, I prefer Leonardo to Giotto.

Don't worry, I love Leonardo too, but being a medievalist I prefer the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, in general. In other words, this:

...as opposed to this:

Just a question of taste and professional penchant(s), as Tony (a.k.a. Lionel) suggests.

Originally Posted by lionel

Oh, come on, Liam, don't be so squeamish.

Naturally, I was only kidding. Sort of.

Originally Posted by lionel

...it's just a question of, er, taste.

Speaking of which, MadTV did a hilarious skit a couple of years back in which a made-up male singer, one Connor Lingus, performed his new smash hit A New Taste. The song went something like, "Your lips, your face,/ My tongue: A new taste!" LOL, I was rolling on the floor.

Originally Posted by lionel

Shouldn't that be a middle rather than an index finger?

Here's looking at you, kid!



L.

[kpjayan]

I like some of the paintings of this 19th century painter Raja Ravi Varma.

Raja Ravi Varma

[kanman]

Here are mine:

Amrita Sher Gill - Camels (For some reason, I find this particular painting very soothing)


Cezanne - The Cardplayers (While I really like his still life work, I absolutely love the colours in this painting)

Breugel - Proverbs

[Loki]

You all posted really interesting paintings.
I actually painted Cesanne's The Cardplayers, and if I can I'll post the picture of my work of art(!).

Being a huge Queen fan, I must post this:
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke:



Here's the song:
The Fairy Feller Master Stroke.

[lionel]

OK, I deleted a phallus. to make amends, here's one of the many phallic symbols painted by the eccentric gay artist KarlWood.

[Manuel76]

Originally Posted by Liam

Don't worry, I love Leonardo too, but being a medievalist I prefer the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, in general.

L.

It's difficult to name favourite paintings, a bit easier to name favourite painters.

But if we consider one period or one style it makes it much better.

From the middle ages, apart from frescoes which are in lots of romanesque and gothic churches (in Spain, Italy and France especially), I love some sieness painters like Simone Martini. He has a wonderful Annunciation and some wonderful frescos in Assisi. Most of his paintings are in Italy nowadays but a visit to Tuscany is more than enough (well, he worked too in Avignon). In Assisi he worked with Pietro Lorenzetti, another wonderful painter.

Anyway I love middle ages's architecture (all those wonderful romanesque and gothic cathedrals!) and Sculpture (Santiago de Compostela, Vezelay, Autun, Chartres, Reims, Siena, Pisa...) or literature, but talking about painting I usually walk quite fast through the middle-ages rooms (before International gothic art)...

[Manuel76]

Zurbaran painted this wonderful still life, somehow it's different to any other still-life (unfortunately Zurbaran painted only very few others). I've never seen it "live", only in photographs (it's one of the very few great spanish paintings it's out of Spain).


I saw this other one in the national Gallery, which obviously has something to do with the first one:

[learna]

I saw this painting in Gallery 'Alte Meister', Dresden, Germany . The glass of water is marvelous.

[Eric]

I agree with Mañuel when he says:

It's difficult to name favourite paintings, a bit easier to name favourite painters.

For my sensibilities, there is something slightly obsessive about naming your one and only favourite novel, poem, piece of music, painting, sculpture, play, essay, dessert, pub, dog, graveyard, bank branch, piglet, lupin, lilo, earthworm, anchovy, etc.

With regard to painters who have a largish œuvre, Munch is one of mine, and Breughel (e.g. Hunters in the Snow), some other Symbolists, including Gustave van de Woestyne, even Simberg, and Alma-Tadema on a good day. Botticelli, Rublov, Hopper, Kubin, Poles such as Matejko, Arrak, and many more whose names I can't remember.

[learna]

Continuing the list I'd like to mention one of the marine painters - Aivazovsky.

[Loki]

Of course it's diffficult to name just one painting. I forgot to edit the title of the thread, I should've put the plural form.

Anyway... learna, the painting you've just posted is amazing, are you sure that's not a photo??

Here's Fussli's The Nightmare: