Impressionism and Pat Loebach

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.

Click here for full article. 

 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.