Aus den Tuilerien – Grauer Tag 1883

Tina Blau’s “Aus den Tuilerien – Grauer Tag” appears to have been made with oil on board or canvas, and it shows a Parisian park on a grey day. The way Blau uses the oil paint – thickly applied, with visible brushstrokes – is crucial to the work's feel. You can almost feel the dampness in the air. It's interesting to think about oil paint itself. It was a relatively recent invention, if we compare it to fresco or tempera. It allowed for a more fluid, responsive kind of painting, where the artist could work quickly and capture fleeting effects of light and weather. Consider the social context, too. The rise of oil painting went hand-in-hand with the rise of the art market, and the idea of the artist as an individual genius, capturing their unique vision on canvas. Blau was a woman artist, though, so she would have been contending with an art world dominated by men. Thinking about materials and making helps us to understand not just what we see, but also the social forces that shaped the artwork.