Our fifth exemplary essay comes from Clark Chism, who thoughtfully concentrated his analysis on the lighting of each artwork. Notice also the detail of the concluding points of contrast, through which Clark demonstrates that differences in execution lead to different interpretive experiences in the viewer’s engagement with the artwork.
The Strike of the Blacksmiths was painted by German artist Theodor Esser in 1892. It is a large oil on canvas painting measuring some seven and a half feet wide and nearly six feet tall. As its title implies, the painting depicts striking blacksmiths; the argument that the artist is making, however, can only be discerned from the visual detail. Through the painting, Esser is supporting the smith’s cause and making clear the forces that they are facing (namely, the State). Esser’s sharply contrasting portrayals of each side serve to make his point.
The painting casts the smiths in a humanizing light, or, rather, a lack of light; their placement in the dark part of the painting clearly implies their oppressed state. The smiths’ faces and body language clearly show emotion as they are cornered in some sort of walled-in space. On the other hand, the soldiers are painted as identical figures marching in a line, with each indistinguishable from one another. Esser gives the soldiers no emotion, no tribulations about fighting their fellow countrymen; indeed, their faces are not even seen; they are simply depicted as faceless agents of the State bearing down on the brave but hopeless strikers. The ominous, towering soldiers march in the “light” of the State’s power and organization, while the smiths are in the darkness of oppression. Notably, this use of light, by placing the antagonists in the light and the protagonists in the shadow, manages to subvert the common paradigm.
Overall, The Strike of the Blacksmiths is a very well-executed painting. The sharp contrast between the strikers and soldiers makes clear the conflict between the two sides. More importantly, the sympathetic (lack of) light that the strikers are placed in clearly and elegantly shows where Esser’s sympathies lie.
In contrast to the deftly executed The Strike of the Blacksmiths, Fransesco Simonini’s undated 17th century piece Harbor Scene comes off as muddled.
The piece is a landscape, with the main focus being a large, moldering castle slightly to the left of center. The castle is offset by a ship facing end-on to the viewer, which does not fit in with the rest of the image and almost appears to be added as an afterthought. In the extreme foreground, Simonini has placed some obligatory human figures for scale; they don’t add anything to the painting by fitting into the picture in any special or creative way. Indistinct mountains compose the background; it would have been just as well had they been left out, because they contribute nothing to their overall picture.
The worst feature of Harbor Scene is its awkward use of light. Simonini does indeed use light realistically, accurately depicting shadows from a light source low on the horizon and to the left of the frame. Unfortunately, this places much of the canvas in shadow; unlike The Strike of the Blacksmiths, however, this shadow serves no symbolic purpose and only serves to make much of the painting dark and hard to see.
Harbor Scene and The Strike of the Blacksmiths show sharp contrasts. In The Strike of the Blacksmiths, the human figures are purposefully arranged and depicted to bring out the painting’s meaning; Harbor Scene simply features slapped-on people at the bottom of the frame with no real significance. The Strike of the Blacksmiths features creative use of light and dark to make the painting’s point, while Harbor Scene attempts to be flashy through realistic use of light and shadow, but only ends up making the whole frame too dark. All in all, the deliberately arranged scene and impressionistic style of The Strike of the Blacksmiths looks more “real” than the slapped-together Harbor Scene, despite the more finely detailed realism of the latter.
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