Art History Paper
Allanah Rubi-Mooney
TA Jaime Pagana
ART-HIST 110
14 March 2014
The Tattered Sonata: A New Genre of Music Genre paintings have always made bold statements regarding the “everyday life” of whichever time period they were completed in. Scenes could range from parties in a domestic setting in France, to bitterly realistic views of street and slum life during the Gilded Age in the United States.
In Alfred Kappes’ very real depiction of this time, Tattered and Torn was completed in 1886 and sheds light on this both dark and light time in history by painting a character bathed in the Gilded Age. With this in mind, at around the same time just eight years later in 1894, Berthe Morisot, a most famous Impressionist artist, completed The Mozart Sonata, just a year prior to her death in 1895. Morisot, a French borne passionate artist, eventually moved to Brussels with her daughter Julie, who is the light of The Mozart Sonata. Both genre paintings are swathed in history from their time periods while also eluding to each artist’s own personal backgrounds. The various visual properties of the paintings contain uncountable differences such as coloring, brush stroke variation and the amount of apparent detail, however the interesting topic of discussion are the similarities in the works, which may not be as apparent but are certainly more intricate and fascinating to determine: The focus of light on a single subject in the painting, both of which happen to be a woman, as well as the general light in the setting protruding into a room from a blank window. These light similarities and personal artist implications from their personal lives make each work come alive while adding bouts of history and insinuating characteristics about each subject in the painting. The subject matter of these pieces is obviously one of the many differences that is involved between them. In Kappes’ Tattered and Torn, an elderly African American woman bathed in light almost coming from what looks like
TA Jaime Pagana
ART-HIST 110
14 March 2014
The Tattered Sonata: A New Genre of Music Genre paintings have always made bold statements regarding the “everyday life” of whichever time period they were completed in. Scenes could range from parties in a domestic setting in France, to bitterly realistic views of street and slum life during the Gilded Age in the United States.
In Alfred Kappes’ very real depiction of this time, Tattered and Torn was completed in 1886 and sheds light on this both dark and light time in history by painting a character bathed in the Gilded Age. With this in mind, at around the same time just eight years later in 1894, Berthe Morisot, a most famous Impressionist artist, completed The Mozart Sonata, just a year prior to her death in 1895. Morisot, a French borne passionate artist, eventually moved to Brussels with her daughter Julie, who is the light of The Mozart Sonata. Both genre paintings are swathed in history from their time periods while also eluding to each artist’s own personal backgrounds. The various visual properties of the paintings contain uncountable differences such as coloring, brush stroke variation and the amount of apparent detail, however the interesting topic of discussion are the similarities in the works, which may not be as apparent but are certainly more intricate and fascinating to determine: The focus of light on a single subject in the painting, both of which happen to be a woman, as well as the general light in the setting protruding into a room from a blank window. These light similarities and personal artist implications from their personal lives make each work come alive while adding bouts of history and insinuating characteristics about each subject in the painting. The subject matter of these pieces is obviously one of the many differences that is involved between them. In Kappes’ Tattered and Torn, an elderly African American woman bathed in light almost coming from what looks like