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  • Essay / Visiting a Museum Reflection: The Honolulu Museum of Art

    During a visit to the Honolulu Museum of Art, among the more than 50,000 pieces on display, the most interesting was a painting called Kaaterskill. Falls on the Catskill Mountains, taken under the cavern, oil on canvas, c. 1827. The artist who painted this piece was an American painter of Irish descent named William Guy Wall. When Wall painted this work, he was already a well-trained artist and he would soon become well known for his sensitive watercolors of the Hudson River valleys. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In this painting, the artist indicates what life was like near Kaaterskill Falls from an outside perspective. The way Wall brought the viewer into focus on the scene demonstrated more forward and brighter colors toward the focal point of the painting. There appear to be villagers along the bank of the stream, perhaps fishing to survive. The villagers have no definition to express people's emotion. Wall probably painted them in small size to emphasize the actual size and immensity of the cavern and valley in which this scene took place. When viewing the artwork, the paint appeared almost glossy, making each warm color stand out even more. There are hard edges in this painting like the stream flowing towards the villagers, it forms lines to lead the viewer to look towards the central point of the scene. On the left side of the painting, you will notice that the tree line is also a line, but more distorted in an attempt to draw the viewer's eye. On the right side of the painting, the tree line is less defined, almost distorted. In the title it includes the waterfall, but from my perspective that's not what the artist really focused on because the waterfall is less defined than the actual stream flowing from the waterfall towards the villagers. The artist used an almost three-dimensional layered space to depict the depth of this valley with an infinite number of mountains slowly fading towards the center of the painting, to demonstrate the immensity of the valley. One thing worth mentioning is the lone villager who enters the cave and almost uses the cave as shelter. A villager in blue, taller than the others, seems to shout at the one who enters the cave. The artist included old branches stuck in the stream, indicating that a harsh winter may have just passed and the villagers are trying to recover. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay William Guy Wall has many paintings of different landscapes similar to this painting. The artist mastered the ability to highlight the true size of a scene such as mountains and streams like this with correct proportions between the villagers and the mountains..