Comparative analysis of artistic works across styles, aesthetics, and symbolic significance

Art

Impressionism in art developed in the 19th century. Impressionist paintings were characterized by visible brush strokes, and subject was drawn from ordinary life and outdoors, rather than being confined to still life, or portraits and landscapes drawn in studios. Emphasis was laid on the effect of light changing its qualities as well as movement. These characteristics of impression can be well observed in the works of art by Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet in their paintings Paris: A Rainy Day, The Absinthe Drinker and The Bar at the Folies Bergere respectively.

Paris: A Rainy Day is an oil painting drawn in 1877 encompasses the Impressionist use of landscape scene. The curator of the Art Institute of Chicago was quoted describing the painting by Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times (December 12, 1995) as "the great picture of urban life in the late 19th century." The masterpiece gives of view of the bourgeois life, on a rain-drenched sidewalk on an intersection near Gare Saint- Lazare. At the right foreground are a fashionably dressed couple with a black umbrella and a half-drawn man, again with an umbrella walking towards the couple. Created six years after the repression of the commune, the painting depicts bourgeois conformity. In the background are identically dressed people with the same black umbrellas and identical buildings, the products of industrial capitalism. However, a closer examination reveals the presence of worker, umbrella-less and exposed to the elements of weather. Their forms are inconspicuous, and hidden behind the bourgeois.

Edgar Degas's The Absinthe Drinker (also known as L'Absinthe), depicts a scene at a Parisian cafe in Paris. This oil painting makes use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes and effect of light, characteristics of the Impressionist technique. In the painting, a woman sits off the centre, slightly to the right, looking dully at the glass of absinthe in front of her. Beside her, to the right of the painting sits a man staring to the right. Ellen Andree, an actress is the woman in the painting, while the man is Marcellin Desboutin, an artist as well as bohemian character. In the later half of 19th century, absinthe became popular in France and was held responsible for alcoholism, social instability and degradation. L'Absinthe has often by viewed by English critics as a lesson against absinthe. The painting also gives a glimpse of the social segregation in Paris during its years of rapid development.