We just learned about the painting The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.
Another famous painting is called the Luncheon of the Boating Party, by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who is sometimes called just Renoir. (Sounds like uh-en-wah)
This painting shows a bunch of people having lunch on a boat.
When people are painted it is usually called figures.
When things like tables and food are painted it is called still life.
When backgrounds like mountains or sunsets are painted it is called landscape.
This painting combined all three.
Some of the people on the boat were Renoir's friends, and the woman on the bottom left playing with a dog is the woman that Renoir would marry later on.
The painting was made in the year 1881 and Renoir it is called an impressionist painting.
The impressionist painters did things like paint outside in the sunlight when a lot of people thought you should paint indoors.
They used lots of ways to try and show sunlight and brightness in their paintings, to try and make things look alive and happy.
Usually when someone wanted to make something stand out, they would use very sharp strong lines, kind of like the dark lines around the Mona Lisa, but for this painting they used bright colors in front of mixed colors. So the people in the white shirts really stand out in front of their background.
They also used different kinds of mixed colors and bright colors with small brush strokes to make it look like there was light shining off of people and things.
If you look at the white shirt the man is wearing, from far away you can see it as a white shirt, but up very close you can see almost a rainbow of colors like red, blue, pink, orange, yellow and white.
(from: wikipedia - luncheon of the boating party)
Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Lunar Domes
