Object Image

A Sonata of Beethoven

A Sonata of Beethoven was painted using light colours and muted tones. This, combined with the title’s suggestion of music, creates a sense of serenity but perhaps also a sense of mystery,further emphasised by the spatial relationship between the two figures. There was a rising trend in late nineteenth-century Europe to paint unseeable subjects. The subject of music was particularly prevalent, with artists such as Fernand Khnopff in Belgium employing the trope with his Listening to Schumann (1883). It is possible to interpret the painting as a simple domestic scene, where the viewer of the painting is encouraged to consider sound through a visual medium. But it is equally possible to view it as...
Oil on canvas
157.0 x 117.0cm
997
Images and text © Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London, 2017

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