Art Analysis: The Oxbow By Thomas Cole

The use of lines in Stone City is one of the key visual elements in this painting. The artist used many contour lines to define the boundaries between the trees and the valley, the river and the land, and even the long roads from the hills as it winds through the countryside. Wood also incorporated a lot of implied lines into his artwork. The trees and bushes that line the hills create a line of sight which draws the eye of the viewer to the house on the river, which is the focal point of this painting. The lines all move in different directions and help the artist highlight different aspects of the painting. Around the city and in the foreground of the painting the artist uses a lot of horizontal lines, which gives the town a calm sensation. As we move away from the city, we find a lot of vertical lines which denote growth. We also find a lot of diagonal lines which imply action in the painting. The diagonal lines are predominantly used by the artist in the creation of the roads and

The Oxbow is done in a very large scale, giving the viewer a sense of actually being in the landscape and increasing its affect. The 4’ 3 ½” x 6’4” size of the painting gives it a sense of life and its size pulls you into the drama that is The Oxbow and allows every minute detail within the painting to be seen. The proportions of this painting are all pretty accurate and give the work its naturalistic quality.

There are many different styles of lines used in the piece including thin, thick, and contour lines. Lines created by an edge, and vertical lines. The contour lines can be seen throughout the piece. They help to define not only the clothing the male is wearing but also the background. Both thick and thin lines can be seen throughout the piece. The thick lines help to define the clothing while the thin lines add detail to the piece such as in the sailboats in the background. The curtain towards the top of the piece is defined by an edge created by a medium line. There is also a distinct edge which was created by line in the background. The line clearly separates the open sea from the landform.

Ritchie has mentioned that arrows are often illustrated as straight lines. In addition, these arrows remind him of Saint Sebastian the Christian martyr. The lines in the painting burst through a pile of sticks, symbolic for the beaten path of life. They become free flowing, wide and violet curves, defined later by Matthew Richie as “…figures being reassembled and rebuilt inside the people that had survived” (Sayre,70).

Jackson Pollock did not use the brush to draw the lines or created any shape for his painting and used the dripping technique to draw his painting. That is why, if we look at this painting for the first time, we can’t imagine what the painting means because it does not have any shapes or lines. It also has lines and shapes overlapping and do not follow a directed way. Although the painting does not have exactly shape and line, it still the most dominant element because it performs the way of the white lights goes.

Manet did not use vertical lines in this painting; instead, he used bending line. The bending line indicates hard working, tired, and weariness. The man’s walking stick appears to be very vertical but is actually at a slight diagonal. His life does not at all look like a proud one but more of a laboring, hard and tired life. The bending line gives away the feeling and emotion of the piece.

The Shipwreck off Nantucket has many different LINE forms. There are actual lines and implied lines. The actual lines in this particular painting makes you look at the different details in the boat and around it. All of the poles and beams in this painting are actual lines. The implied lines give us a sense of MOTION in the water. The curves of the waves are where the implied lines are. But, not only does this painting have different line forms it has different types of SHAPES. There are mostly geometric shapes because the different shapes in the painting are more precise

Thomas Cole (1801-1848) lived a remarkably short life; however, his influence as an American landscape painter gives him his renown as an artist. His art is recognized as possessing all the attributes of Romanticism. Cole’s father owned a wallpaper business, but his disinterest in this field drove him, after receiving elementary art lessons, to travel to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Paintings displayed at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts kindled inspiration, and his pursuit in art continued. In 1825, he visited New York City where he painted genuinely sublime landscapes along the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, broadening his fame as a landscape painter. (Avery) Worthy of attention concerning Cole are the Hudson River School of Romantic Landscapes he founded, how the Hudson River School’s art was Romantic, why landscapes are an American national symbol, and about one of Cole’s famous paintings The Oxbow.

Lines are paths or marks left by moving points and they can be outlines or edges of shapes and forms. Lines have qualities which can help communicate ideas and feelings such as straight or curved, thick or thin, dark or light, and continuous or broken. Implied lines suggest motion or organize an artwork and they are not actually seen, but they are present in the way edges of shapes are lined up.

One of the stronger horizontal lines is the front of the table the two men are seated, located at the bottom of the painting. The white banner/piece of paper on the wall, behind the man on the left is another. Others are the shelf at the top left of the work, as well as bottom of the shadow it casts. the final horizontal line that caught my attention is the wooden border on the wall at the top of the image. There are two vertical lines that direct the eye in this work.

The use of line in this piece is also very interesting. The artist employs a high horizontal line to create a plunging effect giving the piece more depth. Another use of lines in the image is to create focal points to attract the viewer. Lines are also used to separate the different sections of the painting. Overall this painting uses lines in dynamic ways that vastly enhance the viewers’ pleasure and admiration of the piece.

The direction of the lines is very interesting in this masterpiece. Traditionally, horizontal lines have been shown to portray calmness and stability, while vertical lines suggest formality and alertness. La Pieta shows many diagonal lines giving it a feeling of movement, fluidity and a strong lifelike quality. We can see many horizontal lines on the rock on which both Mary and Jesus rest on, but aside from that, there seems to be a low variability between the directions of the

When one observes a painting or drawing, the lines direct the eyes attention and dictate the piece. Line is used in nearly every aspect of art, whether is an actual mark on a piece of paper of if it is implied in the work. Some of the descriptive characteristics of the line, often heard when describing a piece of art, are: horizontal, vertical, angular, curving and diagonal. Lines are not only descriptive, but they are also often expressive. For example, vertical lines often convey a feeling of strength and balance, and thin lines convey fragility. In The Maundy Thursday Festival before the Ducal Palace in Venice, by Canaletto, lines are used to guide the audience’s eye and to form the boundaries of the work at hand. Canaletto uses lots of

Looking at the lines in Wrapped Trees is a bit different than looking at lines on a painting. The lines I see easily are the actual outlines of the fabric laying over the trees. The ropes holding the material

To begin with the line, we can see that the artist used one point perspective in order to draw this painting. Therefore, this painting is consisted mostly from lines, we can see the lines in the center of the image that takes our eyes until the end of the road where we can notice the buildings. Moreover, there are a lot of horizontal and vertical lines in drawing the buildings and some of them in drawing the shops and windows of the building.