From Cave Walls to Hieroglyphs: The Evolution of Early Painting

The origins of painting remain shrouded in mystery, with the earliest significant records emerging from ancient Egypt. However, long before Egyptian civilization, early humans likely used color for ornamentation and decoration. Evidence of this primitive artistry can be found in the scratched outlines of humans and animals on bones and slates. These rudimentary artworks, dating back to the cave-dwellers, are visible on pottery, weapons, and stone implements. Although these artifacts highlight the dawn of human intelligence, they are considered art only from an archaeological perspective, indicating a burgeoning inclination toward representation and decoration rather than accomplished artistry.

These early attempts at painting reveal more about early human desire than skill. They demonstrate an embryonic effort to embellish or depict, despite a rudimentary understanding of how to achieve these goals. The primary purpose of primitive painting was undoubtedly decorative, employing colored forms purely for their aesthetic value. This is evident in the pottery designs and cross-hatchings on stone knives and spearheads, where the intent was to use color and form for visual appeal.

A secondary, perhaps subsequent, aim of early painting was to imitate the shapes and colors of humans, animals, and other subjects. This was likely an effort to convey information about the proportions and characteristics of these entities. For instance, an outline of a cave-bear or a mammoth may have served as a pictorial record, narrating the feats of the cave-dweller to his peers. This primitive form of communication, akin to picture-written history, suggests that early humans used art to record and share their experiences.

This method of conveying ideas through imagery shares fundamental similarities with the later development of hieroglyphic writing and historical painting in Egypt. The evolution from primitive depictions to sophisticated hieroglyphs underscores the progression of human expression. Essentially, the difference between the early artworks of cave-dwellers and the advanced art of Egyptians lies in the degree of development.

In essence, the art of Primitive Man provides a glimpse into the two major branches of painting that exist today: decorative art and representational art. This duality highlights the enduring human desire to beautify our surroundings and to communicate through visual means, a testament to the unbroken thread of creativity that runs through human history.
From Cave Walls to Hieroglyphs: The Evolution of Early Painting

Byzantine painting

Byzantine artists loved to depict huge compositions whose details were all distinct; they avoided subjects that involved a large number of figures mingled with one another; they gave preference to those with almost no action, the posture calm and regular, in which the characters could be arranged without at all disturbing the uniformed arrangement of the ensemble.

Byzantine painting is two dimensional, formalized and symbolic (rather than realistic). Interestingly enough, although this painting was influential in the development of art in the Italian Renaissance, it was afterwards disdained as ‘religious’ and ‘unrealistic’.

It is generally assumed that a considerable number of Byzantine images must have been available to Italian painters as loot of the Fourth Crusade, brought back after the pillaging of Constantinople in 1204.

Italian artist could also have been familiar with developments in the east through model books or collections of drawing. This would explain the strong similarities between certain Italian worlds and Byzantine wall painting from the period.

Byzantine painting, like literature, tended to be somewhat formulaic and to focus on similar Biblical stories, making use of techniques and means of depiction inherited from the ancient world.
Byzantine painting

History of the Beginning by Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 28, 1950) was born in Leipzig. He is one of Germany’s most famous post-impressionist artists. He displayed characteristics of expressionism and the New Objectivity movement.

He taught in Frankfurt until 1933, when he was dismissed by the Nazi regime as a ‘degenerate artist’.

In Beginning, Beckmann looks back to his childhood with fondness and humor. Max Beckmann completed two of his nine triptychs in the United States, Beginning and the The Argonauts (1949-1950).

Beginning was begun in Amsterdam where Beckmann lived in exile from 1937 until 1947.
History of the Beginning by Max Beckmann 

History of the Night Café by van Gogh

Van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886, where he began to collect and copy Japanese print. In 1888, he relocated to Arles in southern France.

Van Gogh had become involved in an artistic competition with two of his most prolific correspondent, Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin who were both working in Pont-Aven at the time.

Bernard had sent him a series of drawings of brothel scenes, and in September 1888 these gave van Gogh the idea for a contemporary design in modern idiom, this was The Night Café.

The painting was executed in early September 1888. Van Gogh rented a room in this café before he went to live in the Yellow House.

A night café was an establishment, typically in the South of France, that stayed open all night. Van Gogh stayed up three nights to paint this picture, sleeping only during the day.
History of the Night Café by van Gogh

The Early History of Art

The book of Genesis names one of the great grandsons of Cain, as the first who wrought and graved on metal and another as the inventor of musical instrument, - a proof that the arts were cultivated in very early stages of civilization.

Again, within four centuries after the flood, the men had made images of wood, and stone, and metal to worship.

They had not only built them cities but they had tasted of the barbarous civilities of war; they had erected trophies; poets had extolled the exploits of heroes; and sculptors had already fashioned their images to adore.

Constant tradition names Terah, the father of Abraham as a maker of images; and that the worship of them continued in his family for nearly two hundred years notwithstanding the call and conversion of Abraham, is proved by Rachel’s theft of the images of Laban, when she left her father’s house to accompany her husband to the land of Canaan.

But more than a century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader, Aegialeus, who brought with him the knwlldge of sculpture and painting and founded the earliest and purest school of Greek art.

Another civilized colony, from Egypt, soon settled in Greece. Inachus founded the city of Argos, while Abraham was still an idolater in Ur.
The Early History of Art

History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi

History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi
Leornado da Vinci spent some five years living and working in and around Arezzo and the city is proud to host his painting ‘La Madonna dei Fusi’ for five months.

The painting was commissioned in 1501 by Florimond Robertet, secretary of state to Louis XII.

The version of this painting (Buccleuch version) often regarded as the most likely to be by Leonardo is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and hung in his home in Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland until stolen; he has said it will be returned to public display there.
History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi

Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948

Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948
Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in the small town of Cody, Wyoming. He was youngest of five sons, and the domestic circumstances of the Pollock family were anything but simple.

The boy’s personality was decisively shaped by a series of moves, his father’s increasingly long absences and his mother’s dominant character.

In 1928, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Jackson attended Manual Arts High School.

The same period saw Pollock’s incipient interest in the world of the Mexican muralist. Joe Clemente Orozco (1883 -1949), Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 - 1974), all of whom emphasized the importance of the political function of art.

At Manual Arts the following years, Pollock took instruction in drawing and sculpture from Schwankovsky and the sculpture Harold Lehmann – but apparently without the lightest success.

Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts.

The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

His painting no.5 1948 was sold with the price 140 million dollar in 2006.

That price would be the highest sum ever known to have been paid for a painting, exceeding the $135 million for Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I.”
Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948

Willem de Kooning – Woman III

Willem de Kooning – Woman III
“Woman III” comes with a rich history. David Mr. Geffen acquired it in 1994 from a Tehran museum in a quiet trade with the help of Doris Ammann, a Zurich dealer, on the tarmac of the Vienna airport. In return, Iran obtained the remnants of a precious 16th-century painted manuscript detailing the ascension of Shah Tahmasp of Persia to the throne.

In November 2006, the painting was sold by David Geffen to billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million, making it the second most expensive painting ever sold.

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam in Holland. When he was 5 years old, his parents divorced. From then on, De Kooning was raised by his mother and stepfather.

From a young age De Kooning showed a keen interest in painting, and when he was a teenager his parents arranged for him to attend the Rotterdam Fine Arts Academy, where he studied for over 7 years.

At the age of 22, De Kooning stowed away on a ship bound to the US, settling first in New Jersey. After 3 years of working as a house painter and decorator, he had earned enough to establish a small studio in Manhattan.

Woman III is one of a series of six paintings by de Kooning done between 1951 and 1953 in which the central theme was a woman.
Willem de Kooning – Woman III

Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe

Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe
Price $104, 168,000 USD in 2004, it was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1905 at the age of 24 during Rose period, a period in which Picasso preferred cheerful orange and pink colors. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand, crowned with garland of roses.

It was painting soon after settling in Montmarte, France.

The record price auction at Sotheby's New York on May 4, 2004 was a bit of a surprise to art buyers, since it was painted in the style not usually associated with the pioneering Cubist artist.

Bought for $30,000 by John Hay Whitney and his wife, Betsy Cushing Whitney in 1950, the painting was seen at distant intervals in major exhibitions dealing with the artist, from the 1967 Grand Palais retrospective in Paris to the 1996 portrait show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The portrait was thus both famous in art history and forgotten. This maximized its impact.
Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe

Dora Maar au Chat

Dora Maar au Chat
It was painted in 1941 by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar, the painter’s Croatian mistress, seated on a chair with small cat perched on her shoulder. Dora Maar au Chat fetched $95.2 million in 2006.

The canvas was one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade long relationship. Picasso fell in love with Dora Maar at the age of 55 and soon began living with her. Picasso painted Maar many times during their relationship began 1936, when she was making a name for herself as a surrealist photographer.

Maar — herself an exhibited artist, a poet and well-known photographer — is loved, admired, but also shamed and disgraced by Picasso. She is portrayed sometimes as a beautiful lady, and often in a hostile manner — as melancholic, and even as an insane woman with a contorted face, unnatural eyes, and wild postures.

This painting was done during the year 1941, when the Nazis were occupying France. In the 1940s, the painting was obtained by Chicago collectors Leigh and Mary Block. They sold the painting in 1963. Before that, the first recorded owner of "Dora Maar au Chat" was the Surrealist dealer Pierre Colle, who was related professionally with Picasso in the years prior to the war.

During 2005 and 2006, the Dora Maar au Chat, then owned by Gidwitz family of Chicago, was shown worldwide as part of Sotheby's exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and New York. It came up for sale in an auction of impressionist works held at Sotheby's on May 3, 2006 in New York. An anonymous bidder present at the New York auction won the work with a final bid of 95,216,000 $ well exceeding the pre-auction 50,000,000 $ estimates.
Dora Maar au Chat

Rembrandt van Rhyn

Rembrandt van Rhyn
Rembrandt van Rhyn, one of the most eminent painters and engravers of the Dutch school, was the son of a miller, and was born in 1606, at a small village on the banks of the Rhine, between Leyderdorp and Leyden, whence he was called Rembrandt van Rhyn, though his family name was Gerretz.

It is said that his father, being in easy circumstances, intended him for one of the learned professions, but was induced by Rembrandt’s passion for the art to allow him to follow his inclination.

Rembrandt had already brought both the arts of painting and engraving to very great perfection, when a slight incident led him to fame and fortune. He was induced by a friend to take one of his choicest pictures to a picture-dealer at The Hague, who, being charmed with the performance instantly gave him a hundred florins for it, and treated him with great respect. This occurrence served to convince the public of his merit and contributed to make the artist sensible of his own abilities.

Though Rembrandt excelled as a painter of history and portrait, and especially in the latter, he is much better known as an engraver. Some of his prints are deservedly famous for the excellent of the clare obscure, as it seen in a supposed, or accidental light; others are remarkable for the extravagance of that principle. He copied nature with all its defects, as he saw it in his own country; and even this he sometimes debased, but seldom rose above it. There is a vein of good sense running through his works. His print of Christ healing sick, esteemed the most capital of his etchings, sold for thirty guineas: his portrait of the Burgomaster Six, has sold for more.
Rembrandt van Rhyn

History of the First Paints

History of the First Paints
These were made from clays and plants ground into powder, then mixed with water. Some were exceptionally good: they’re still around today. Pottery and cave-wall paintings exist which date back to prehistoric times some 50,000 years ago.

The Egyptians probably invented the paint brush. They were also the first to manufacture what to be called paint, some 8,000 years ago. Around 1500 B.C both Crete and Greece produced paints. Somewhere between 400 B.C and 400 A.D the first metallic pigment was develop; The Romans used white lead. But when the Roman Emperor decline, so did the paint technology.

In the Middle Ages, English priest and monks began to use paints on their churches. In the late middle Ages, around 1500 A.D, the artists of Italy developed excellent paints. Some formulations were closely guarded secret – and remain mysteries to this day.

American Indians used paints for both decorative and religious purposes centuries before Europeans began to settle the New World. The Indians, too, found that rocks could be ground into pigment and that the leaves and bark of some trees produced stains. Many paints made in the United States in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s were based on formulas that came from American Indian. As late as the 1860’s many painters carried bags of powder which they mixed into paint as needed. The first liquid, premixed paints were manufactured and sold in this country in 1867.
History of the First Paints

The Bather by Paul Cézanne

History of Painting
Paul Cézanne is born in Aix-en-Provence Jan 19, 1839. He is a French painter and always called as a father of modern arts. Cézanne prepared to be a lawyer, worked as a banker, and then studied painting in Paris.

His canvases from 1861 to 1871, mostly portraits, are characterized by dark tones, thick paint, and strong lighting.

Camille Pissarro convinced Cézanne to adopt the broken brushwork and light palette of the impressionists.

He exhibited at the first and third impressionist group shows, but soon lost faith in the goals of the movement.

He claimed that his ambition was to "make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums."

By 1883 the artist was conveying mass and volume through a series of hatched strokes.

One of the painting is The Bather. It shows central male bather with his hands placed upon his waist and his head angled downwards towards the ground.

Even though this figure merges better with the surrounding landscape than the previously discussed bather due to Cézanne’s adept use of color, this male bather appears disconnected and oblivious to the world that surrounds him.

This pensive bather lost in inner thought displays a dichotomous body posture that may reflect his underlying internal conflict: his upper body appears frail and vulnerable while his lower body seems sturdy and powerful.
History of Painting