Great Artists - DVD 5 (Vermeer, Turner, Van Gogh)

Vermeer (1632-1672)
In the three hundred years since his death, the name Johannes Vermeer languished in the backwaters of art history. Yet in recent times his status as a great artist has been assured and his paintings are more popular today than ever before. Vermeer, the pre-eminent Dutch genre painter, lived and worked in the town of Delft. Little is known of his life other than he painted very few paintings and that he died penniless. A master of light and color, Vermeer excelled in creating the illusion of reality in his paintings, the result of a meticulous painting method often employing camera obscura. Most of Vermeer's work follows a similar theme, often featuring a single female figure standing or sitting in a domestic setting engaged in a simple everyday activity such as reading a letter or playing a musical instrument. There is no incident or drama here, yet Vermeer's genius is his ability to transform a placid everyday event into an episode littered with mystery and intrigue. This deliberate ambiguity leaves the mind racing to fill in the gaps of an otherwise unassuming scene. In their combination of exquisite brushwork and quietly enigmatic subjects Vermeer's paintings are among the greatest masterpieces of Western art.
Works featured in this program include View of Delft (1660-1661, Mauritshuis, the Hague), Street in Delft (1657-1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), The Milkmaid (1658-1660, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Girl Asleep at a Table (1657, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665, Mauritshuis, the Hague) and The Art of Painting (1666-1673, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Turner (1775-1851)
The most famous of all British painters, J. M. W. Turner was a visionary and a maverick, whose landscape paintings both astounded and antagonized those that saw them. From humble beginnings Turner rose to become the dominant force in British landscape painting and a towering figure of Romanticism. A member of the Royal Academy in London, Turner was nevertheless fiercely attacked by critics for his radical approach to painting, one remarking that he painted with 'soaps suds and white wash'. Turner's paintings reflect his varying responses to the world around him, a world that was rapidly changing as the industrial revolution propelled society forward. As well as depicting steamships and steam railways, Turner's paintings recall the ancient world, echoing neo-classical landscapes of the French painter Claude Lorrain. But Turner's true muse was nature itself. Nowhere is the power and majesty of nature so emphatically depicted as in the landscapes of Turner. Rain, snow and sea engulf great ships and conquering armies, as humanity is utterly dwarfed by the awesome forces of nature. Turner painted nature as he understood it and not as saw it, and in this way he is often seen as anticipating Impressionism. His handling of paint at times teetered on the brink of abstraction. Turner was a radical force in his time and for that he is remembered as great artist.
Works featured in this program include Fishermen at Sea (1796, Tate Gallery, London), The Shipwreck (1805, Tate Gallery, London), Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812, Tate Gallery, London), Dido Building Carthage (1815, The National Gallery, London), Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842, Tate Gallery, London) and Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844, The National Gallery, London).

Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Vincent van Gogh was one of the true pioneers of modern painting. He is perhaps the most mythologized artist in the history of art and his tragic life is ingrained in the popular imagination. Active as an artist for only ten years he completed 1250 paintings, before succumbing to mental illness and taking his own life in July of 1890. Son of a Dutch Protestant pastor, Van Gogh was a deeply spiritual man and began painting after witnessing the desperate poverty of the agricultural communities of Holland and Belgium. Buoyed up by the unquestioning support and encouragement of his younger brother Theo, Van Gogh developed a highly individualistic visual style, typified by bold forms and short brushstrokes of pure color. Influenced in part by the Impressionists, Van Gogh strived to develop an expressive language more direct than that of the Impressionists in an effort to communicate the almost religious fervor with which he perceived and interpreted the world. Although he sold only one painting during his lifetime, his enormous rise to fame after his death means that today his are among the most cherished paintings of all the great artists.
Works featured in this program include The Potato-Eaters (1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Sunflowers (1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House) (1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London) The Starry Night. Saint-Rémy. (1889, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Wheat Field with Crows (1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).