30 August 2012

"Market by candlelight" (Petrus van Schendel, 1865)


I was stunned by this artist's ability to capture light, both on the young woman's face and the diffused light of the misty moonlit scene.  I had not heard of him before, but discovered he was famous for precisely this effect.
Petrus van Schendel (1806-1870), Dutch Romantic painter, etcher and draughtsman. Van Schendel specialised in nocturnal Dutch market scenes, exploring the effects the soft light had upon his subjects, as a result he was named Monsieur Chandelle by the French... Petrus van Schendel also had an important precedent within the art of the Low Countries, Rembrandt van Rijn’s masterpiece The Nightwatch
Twenty-five of his paintings are assembled at Wikigallery.

Image from Bonham's auctions, via Alabaster.  Click on the embed above to view it at larger size.

4 comments:

  1. It might be a night market rather than a misty morning. To me,the sky looks as much like a moonlit sky as it does an early morning sky.

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  2. I agree - text amended. (And I don't know why your comments got trapped in the spam filter x3 ??)

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  3. Gaah! I just had a vision of that old lady from Spain retouching this painting, and I can't get it out of my mind! Gaah!

    Lurker111

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  4. Beautiful effect, but the crooked face is too distracting.

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