Word: brushworks
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...continues upstairs in Gallery XVII, which it shares with works from the Fogg's 19th century collection. Up here, the range and quality of the works is extremely impressive. Van Gogh's famous Tarascon Diligence is still a fresh visual experience upon its first encounter; its use of heavy brushwork, vividly dominant colors and incised outlines are Van Gogh at his best. Only an awkwardly distorted ladder disturbs this great masterpiece. Next to this work are a small and good Renoir Nude and a very fine Woman in a Round Hat by Manet...
...future owners have complemented the collection's brilliance with a well-balanced, elegantly proportioned, and grandly spaced installation--which looks good from any spot. The 19th century gallery is particularly impressive with Van Gogh's Self Portrait, the primus inter pares of the lot. The brilliant lime-green brushwork which forms a halo around the artist's head is both economical and expressive and the demonic eyes with yellow pupils, the red defining lines of the nose and mouth, and the curious (and heavily painted) medallion all contribute to this great self-portrait's emotional intensity. My next favorite...
...dynasty (1392-1910) was more concerned with painting. Strict, conservative and Confucian in outlook, the court looked for its models to the Chinese masters. One of the best, Yi In-mun (1745-1821), combined fantasy and perspective with superb brushwork and a cautious use of color that in many ways surpass his Chinese models. No such inhibitions bothered Sin Yun-pok (see overleaf), whose sumptuous scenes were often shocking to his contemporaries. One such scene of a kisaeng (geisha) party, with dancing girls performing on mats out of doors to the music of the hatted orchestra, is something no Korean...
...Yokohama hospital a Navyman with the mumps stared blearily at a Japanese magazine and started seeing things. To Lieut. Commander Bryant W. Line, who does not read Japanese, the stylized dabs and curlicues of the brushwork characters, known as Kanji, conjured up all manner of fanciful situations: poker players in a pup tent, an irate baseball umpire, a boy peering wistfully into a saloon...
...each collector adding his own red seal of ownership and often adding a poem of comment in his own hand. For the Chinese art lover, the pleasure of viewing a painting includes enjoying the calligraphy of the written words as an art in itself, deciphering the seals, analyzing the brushwork and drawing. But, essentially, each work reflects one great central theme. For well over a thousand years Chinese painters have been primarily concerned not with the works of man but with nature; their most triumphant subject has been landscape...