My husband, isn't an art critic, but he is a critic. Not in a bad way, he just naturally analyzes everything. I sent
this to Pat because he asked me if Impressionist painted the scenes the way
they did because that’s how they saw it (implying they needed glasses) or because
they were applying color theory and probably took creative license to portray light
and color in an aesthetically pleasing but not necessarily accurate way. I said
neither. They painted it as they felt it.
Then Pat says, "So what do you think Van Gogh saw that made him paint balls of rotating fire in the sky instead of stars." And I said, "Stars." Just to annoy him. Because if he didn't get what I said then he's not going to and I'm not going to keep trying and get nowhere. But perhaps that's not fair. Maybe he is trying to get me to really explain it in a way that he would understand but it's hard because he's making assumptions. And a huge one is that the scene didn't really look like the painting.
So today I read this snippet about an astrophysicist that determines the exact time and date of a painting and figured that would help explain my point.
So I sent him this email.
You asked if impressionist painted what they saw or were
just taking creative liberties.
Donald Olson, working with Texas State physicist Russell Doescher and a team of three students, used topographical measurements, planetarium software, and old-fashioned research to determine that “Monet observed this sunset on Feb. 5, 1883 at 4:53 p.m. local mean time,” Olson said in a press release. Their research is published in in the February 2014 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.
A researcher on the Texas State team holds a postcard of Monet’s “La Porte d’Amont, Étretat” (c. 1868–69) in front of the present-day scene
They described his methods as the Olson Treatment and have
applied it to other paintings such as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
He determined that the sky was red due to the eruption of
Mount Krakatoa in 1883 which sent so much gas and ash into the atmosphere in
1883 the sky was darkened or coloured worldwide for months.
So you see Munch really saw the world like that when he did
that painting.
So the answer is both. They saw the world the way they
painted it but they also were painting their “impression” of the world so it’s
the world through their own personal filter.
By the way the eruption was the loudest sound heard in
historic times. So since my husband did sound I thought he'd find this really interesting.
This was copied from Wikipedia about the eruption of Mount Krakatoa:
On August 27, four enormous explosions occurred. At 5:30 am, the first explosion was at Perboewatan, triggering a tsunami heading
straight to Telok Betong, now known as Bandar Lampung. At
6:44 am, Krakatoa exploded again at Danan,
with the resulting tsunami stretching eastward and westward. The largest
explosion, at 10:02 am, was so violent that it
was heard 3,110 km (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and the Indian Ocean island
of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away,
where they were thought to be cannon fire from a nearby ship. The third
explosion has been reported as the loudest sound heard in historic times.[2][3]:79 The loudness of the blast heard 160 km
(100 mi) from the volcano has been calculated to have been 180 dB.[4] Each explosion was accompanied by tsunamis estimated
to have been over 30 meters (98 feet) high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and
a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The energy released
from the explosion has been estimated to be equal to about 200 megatons of TNT,[5] roughly four times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear
weapon ever detonated. At 10:41 am, a landslide
tore off half of Rakata volcano,
causing the final explosion.
Final explosive eruption
The pressure wave generated by the colossal fourth and final
explosion radiated out from Krakatoa at 1,086 km/h (675 mph). The
eruption measured an ear splitting 310 dB, loud enough to be heard
perfectly clearly 3,100 miles away.[6]:248 It was so powerful that it ruptured the
eardrums of sailors 64 km (40 miles) away on ships in the Sunda Strait,[6]:235 and caused a spike of more than 2 1⁄2 inches of mercury (8.5 kPa) 160 km (100 miles)
away in pressure gauges attached to gasometers in
the Batavia gasworks, sending them off the scale.[note 1]
The pressure wave was recorded on barographs all
over the world. Several barographs recorded the wave seven times over the
course of five days: four times with the wave travelling away from the volcano
to its antipodal point, and three times travelling
back to the volcano.[3]:63 Hence, the wave rounded the globe three and a
half times. Ash was propelled to an estimated height of 80 km
(50 mi).
The eruptions diminished rapidly after that point, and by the
morning of August 28, Krakatoa was silent. Small eruptions, mostly of mud,
continued into October 1883. By then, less than 30% of the original island
remained.
No wonder the poor guy in Scream was holding his ears. So you can see why I think Van Gogh saw the stars that way. Plus ever since Lasik surgery my night vision has sucked and I see all lights heavily starred and they rotate. So maybe it was an eye problem after all.
