Umm Kulthum is perhaps the most famous of those who sang about the night, its sky, its stars and its moon. But it is certainly not the only one. Others have done so repeatedly throughout the ages; Writers, painters, writers and poets all fascinated him and recorded his magic, each in his own way. Visual images and written texts made their way into the memory of art.
Perhaps the most prominent of those who painted the night, and his paintings received an international acclaim, and are still celebrated today in international art fairs, is the impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. Read also Priceless documentary records.. Eid paintings in the nineteenth century From paintings to graffiti… The arts of peaceful protest in Palestine Paintings on the rubble of destroyed buildings in the last war on Gaza She converted to Islam.. A Russian artist who reflects the Ottoman culture in her paintings
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Blue dominates the painting, the hills in the sky are intertwined, while the small village is located at the bottom of the painting in brown, gray and blue. Although each building is clearly identified in black; However, the yellow and white colors of the stars and the moon stand out and draw the eye to the sky.
The painting belongs to the Impressionist school, which dominated the current of plastic art in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French artist Claude Monet is considered the founder of this school and its largest pioneer. The school also adopts drawing by expressing the painter’s subjective impressions of what he sees, and the image does not have to be an exact copy in general.
“I know nothing for sure,” says Van Gogh, “but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
In the same flock, the German painter Carl Gustav Karus (1789-1869), who was both a physiologist and a painter, tweeted in his famous painting “House in Bielentes”, which he painted in 1852, and is one of the famous paintings of the night.
In the painting, we see a house consisting of several floors shining under the moonlight at the last moments of sunset, and around it plants and trees have taken on the color of dusk. Carus successfully paints the shades of dusk and interacts with the elements in a very subtle and natural way without pretentiousness.
The painting belongs to the realist school, which is concerned with conveying scenes and events in a realistic way, devoid of any symbolic meanings or allegorical forms. Most of the school’s paintings depicted the daily lives of workers and peasants, landscapes, and everything that takes place in the open air with simplicity, realism, and honesty, even if the scenes were unpleasant or ugly after the industrial revolution took hold.
Every Sheikh has a way
Going back in time, we find that plastic art in general tended to have an epic tendency to present subjects. As a century goes back, we find paintings and subjects more inclined to express the spirit of the Middle Ages, romantic ideas about nature, the creation of the universe, God and the prophets.
Among those who introduced this epic tendency was the famous English landscape painter Sebastian Bether (1790-1844), who was known for his fondness for the night and the moon, and painted many paintings of night, dusk, sunrise, and sunset. The main theme of his works is the sharp contrast between darkness and light, and how the elements change shape in their shadow.
We see in his famous painting “Scene of the River” – which he painted in 1840 – a clear embodiment of his concepts of perspective, shadows and light, where the river water appears shimmering under the moonlight, which gives a special charm to the fisherman’s huts and the trees around them.
The painting also belongs to the realist school; Which means that all the details of the painting were present as they were when the painter transferred them on the canvas. In his day, Bether was a realist; However, he focused on conveying landscapes rather than any other realistic scenes.
If we go back a century, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and before its complete control, we find that the epic in the transmission of scenes was greater due to the influence of the Renaissance. We see in the painting of the French painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789); “Ship Crash”, painted in 1772, is a clear trace of not only the epic tendency to represent the landscape; but also philosophical tendency.
This period in Europe, at the end of the 18th century, witnessed the beginning of existential turmoil due to the entry of the machine age and the Enlightenment, and the subsequent modernity. Where these huge leaps left their existential impact on the human psyche, which by nature tends to express its anxiety and doubts in the form of works of art.
Art critic Philip Connesby, who wrote “Art for the Nation”, believes that the shipwreck provokes a kind of terror in the soul of the spectator, who does not cease to project the scene on the nature of his existence in life as a whole, which has always been symbolized by the raging sea, and the presence in it of the ship that Looking for a port.
Vernet portrayed the shipwreck in a dramatic, poignant and sad way, as Consepe described it. We see the ship in a position that tends to fall completely towards the rocks, as if it will complete its crash in the few minutes, when the viewer looks towards the painting. Crash survivors are scattered here and there on the beach, some barely standing. The whole scene is painted with a lively brushstroke that matches the different effects of clouds, waves and people.
From the epic of Crash to the epic of the night, Vernet presents the night with a raging eye, as lightning strikes other stretches of sea water all the way to a remote port on the coast. Dark gray clouds rippled around the lightning in a successful indication from the painter of the force of the storm, which sent the ship crashing ashore. However, the coast is moonlit, while other parts of the sea and rocks lie in the shadows of storm clouds.