Three Favorite Western Paintings

THREE FAVORITE WESTERN PAINTINGS

“Not to Be Reproduced” (1937) by Rene Magritte
“Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912) by Marcel Duchamp
“The Biglin Brothers Racing” (1873) by Thomas Eakins 

Dreams are intriguing relics of human experience so that the Surrealists who depict them in a highly skilled naturalistic style—Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, famously—unfailingly rope in our attention.

Magritte’s humor bites, sometimes. His “The Treachery of Images” (1929), for example, shows us that the image of a pipe is not a pipe, while his “Personal Values” (1952) displays before us household and personal items inside a doll’s house size room as if to tell us that our bourgeois values have in this picture been made visible.

Magritte displays characteristic wryness in “Not to Be Reproduced” (1937). True to the title of the work, Magritte does not reproduce the face of the subject, who is supposed to be Edward James, who commissioned the painting.

Sitting along the ledge at the lower right is a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (title in French), a novel by Magritte’s favorite author. Poe’s Gothic narratives show some affinity with fantastical Surrealism, so Magritte’s predilection does not surprise us.

Among other reasons, Magritte is popular because of his naturalistic style, which he executes consummately, in this as in other works.

Spoofed many times, Magritte’s “Not to Be Reproduced” is a cultural icon of the West.

Not to Be Reproduced (1937) by Rene Magritte

Cubism, showing subjects from the standpoint of multiple flat surfaces inhabiting a two-dimensional field, was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, building on the work of Paul Cézanne.

Often playful, Cubist paintings are pleasing to contemplate. My favorite among them is Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912). It is also a cultural icon of the West.

A visually complex work, it is largely monochrome, varying notwithstanding in color, shading, shape, lines, and other graphical elements. Duchamp divides the subject into multiple successive, overlapping views, creating the illusion of motion.

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) by Marcel Duchamp

American Realism is my favorite period of Western painting, and at least two and possibly three of my favorite paintings locate in this period. 

“The Biglin Brothers Racing” (1873) by Thomas Eakins serves us a masterpiece of plein air painting radiating energy. Dwelling on the subtly contrastive blues and oranges, we begin to understand why it pulsates.

Sweeping crosswise, horizontal motifs—deep green, the cluster of trees, orange sculls—engender pleasing visual rhythms.

With exceptional skill Eakins renders naturalistically the expansive sky and reflective water.

We are transported in time and space, breathing in the fragrance of the Schuylkill River and basking in the radiance of a lost Philadelphia summer. Silently, we contemplate the athleticism of the two boatmen until at some point a vagrant literary or theological morsel arouses our appetite…“What a piece of work is man…in form and moving how express and admirable” (Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, 1389-1403). Delectable.

The Biglin Brothers Racing (1873) by Thomas Eakins