Compare and Contrast Countess Lamsdorf to La Berceuse
During the nineteenth century, a wide arrange of differences began to emerge in the arts as artists either retained more traditional styles or broke away and explored new styles. These new styles contributed to the artist’s way of communicating specific messages through their paintings. Both Winterhalter’s Countess Lamsdorf, created in 1859, and Van Gogh’s La Berceuse, created in 1889, are of female portraits; but Winterhalter, painting in the academic style, displays an idealized image, uplifting a high woman in society while Van Gogh, painting in the post-impressionistic style, captures the maternal essence of the cradle rocker. Each artist illustrates the women’s roles in society, but convey the women’s positions in individual ways through brushwork, color, and composition.
The artists skillfully utilize brushwork to emphasize personal qualities of the women. Winterhalter confines himself to the methods of academicism, concealing any visible evidence of brush strokes. The delicate process of how Winterhalter applies his paint to the canvas is easily seen through the wrinkles in Count Lamsdorf’s dress and the lace material in her sleeve. The audience cannot help but be overwhelmed by her beauty and wealth as the invisible brush strokes lead the viewer to solely focus on the woman and her image rather than the way she was created. In contrast, Van Gogh, loosens up his brush work and outlines his figure in a strong contour line. However, the harsh outline is softened by the tashes of paint that flow with its movement, as the slightly angled vertical of her arm is mimicked with shorter vertical brush strokes and the roundness of her lower body is mimicked with shorter curvilinear bush strokes. The collection of brushstrokes become a texture themselves against the patterned floral wallpaper, making the woman and her environment one, unlike Countess Lamsdorf who clearly looks set apart from an artificial backdrop. Consistent in technique, Van Gogh uses strokes that fit within the outlined frame of the face that lead into the lines of her hair. All the strokes in the painting bring volume and weight to her figure and a bumpy texture to her face, showing the woman as she truly is, round and blemished, but undoubtedly genuine in portrayal. His animated brush strokes add to the calm figure as they bring life and energy to the still woman and almost vibrate to the movement of the soft rocking; thus though her image does not meet the standards of ideal beauty, the viewer can connect to the actual life of her presence and see the woman in her setting as a cradle rocker. This stylized nature that ironically demonstrates the woman’s authentic character is reversed in Winterhalter’s work. While Winterhalter’s technique achieves a realistic touch, its perfect conditions reflect an idealized figure, as the sophisticated woman looks like a polished statue. This sets a stark difference in class between the subject and viewer, as the woman is almost too perfect for such commoners. He effectively communicates Countess Lamsdorf’s luxurious life as a high-class female, making the viewers idolize her rather than identify with her. With such precision and close attention to every detail, he mimics the reflective quality in her dress and hair, the light quality of the meshed lace, and creamy quality of her skin. Winterhalter masterfully achieves the look of opulence, appealing to multiple senses, as the audience can visually touch and feel the dainty fabrics and soft complexion. With the brushwork, the painters show not only their individualized styles, but also textures that help the audience understand the central characters.
Moreover, the artists use colors in very distinct ways to describe the women in their social settings and placements in the pieces. In Winterhalter’s piece, the artist’s color palette is filled with almost every hue, but appears limited, as most of his colors are lowly saturated and collectively lean towards a warmer temperature, making the picture feel glazed with a yellow tint. He does, however, create a dynamic relationship with foreground and background through the color’s contrasts in value. Countess Lamsdorf’s overall lit appearance in her very light pink skin and off white gown makes it apparent that she is spatially closer to the front, establishing her importance; while the backdrop, filled with dark specks of red that are close to black, falls behind her. Yet, this is not the case in La Berceuse as Van Gogh limits his color palette to the red and green complementary pair but play off its many variants. Van Gogh emphasizes the woman’s presence by setting off her green outfit from the red-brown chair and highly chromatic red carpet. He uses color to expose this anonymous woman’s maternal aura, as she is clothed completely in green, the color commonly being associated with life. With green’s suggestive peace inducing effect, her outfit perfectly fits her role as one who lulls a child to sleep. Like Van Gogh, Winterhalter, too, takes into consideration the color relationship on the woman’s clothes. The purple fabric detail in Countess Lamsdorf greatly contrasts with the ivory dress and pale peach flesh, catching the viewer’s attention and leading the viewer to look at the woman first before noticing her backdrop. Winterhalter does this to get the intention of his piece across – to elevate her status and show the audience and the world that Countess Lamsdorf is admirable and of great importance. Because the backdrop is meant to look painted and flat instead of appearing as an actual garden, it is comprised mostly of dark hues. The green leaves and red flowers, though completely opposite, work differently from Van Gogh’s piece, as they blend together to neutralize the other’s hue. The murky result is a mixture of red, brown, and green that fades away to the back and pushes the figure to the front. With extreme contrasts in values and hue dispersed evenly throughout, Van Gogh almost merges the background and foreground space together. The light orange face of the woman in La Berceuse sparkles in the similar manner that the red-outlined pink flowers do in the dark green wallpaper, as her head pops from the surrounding green of the background and her shirt. This motif, most strongly identified by the color placement, builds upon the idea that the woman is very much tied to her setting. She does not stick out as an individual source of significance like the Countess, but rather flows in with her surroundings. The general public can immediately empathize with the woman, feeling and understanding her motherly quality, which confirms her ordinary status in society – she is no better or worse than anyone in the audience. The lack of spatial depth and unification of woman to environment emits a serene energy, giving the viewer an easy entrance to the painting to feel close to her – much different from the insecurity the viewer feels looking at the countess. Van Gogh successfully channels the whimsical concept of a lullaby in the rhythm of the bopping flowers and head and consolidated space through the manipulation of his reds and greens. The artists powerfully manipulate their colors to show the viewers what they want the audience to perceive of the women.
In addition, the artists work with a particular composition to create a relationship between the women in the paintings and the viewers looking at them. In Countess Lamsdorf, Winterhalter places the woman in the center with her head turned to the front, having her confront the viewer. Her poise and direct gaze are proof of her aristocratic background and unarguable significance as her privileged life allows her to face front without controversy, despite being a woman of the nineteenth century. She appears confident, proper, and well educated, sitting elegantly with book in hand; this entire portrait works in one direction to underline her status as a high societal female. The audience looks to her and apperciates her, feeling a sense of awe being in her presence. This differs greatly from Van Gogh’s intent as the artist appropriates the worm’s eye view from Japanese woodblock prints in his post-impressionistic painting. It is almost as if the audience is the invisible complement to the painting as the tipped perspective places the visitor in a baby-like position looking up at the motherly lady. As the post-impressionists painted what they saw, Van Gogh does not incorporate rigidly planned linear perspective and instead emulates the feeling of being a child in bed or a short toddler tilting their head to look up. This idea is also supported by the way Van Gogh cuts off his composition so that the rope, which rocks the cradle, falls beyond the bottom edge of the canvas. The wide lower body and small head creates a major triangular composition that leads upwards, also adding to the feeling of being a child looking up. Furthermore, the artists work with the figures’ relationship to the space around them. With Countess Lamsdorf taking up an equal amount of space as her background, the painting holds a size balance that shows the stability of the academic style and also stops the viewer from being distracted by anything but her prominence. Van Gogh uses the woman to take up much of her picture plane, creating not a domineering effect, but rather a sense of coziness and intimacy, developing her motherly personality seen through her nurturing task of calmly leading the child to sleep. Through the way they place and size the figure, the artists control the way the audience understand the women.
Though both artists paint portraits of a single woman in the nineteenth century, their approaches and intents differ tremendously, producing two completely unique works of art. Winterhalter’s meticulously planned and well drafted academic painting justifies the portrait’s mere objective in heightening Countess Lamsdorf’s image and idealizing the sophisticated aristocrat, while Van Gogh’s musical post-impressionistic painting gives a deeper look to the woman’s personality and peacefulness of her task. In their specific ways of painting, Winterhalter and Van Gogh take full advantage of their strokes, colors, and composition, to better express the attributes and personalities of the women being portrayed.
