My Favorite Paintings at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Center, Los Angeles

What I found most interesting at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Center in Los Angels were European paintings, and my top choice was Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago (1804) by Spanish painter Goya — a formal portrait of an aristocratic lady in dramatically contrasting black dress with golden braids, pink shoes, and white lacy mantilla, with provocatively exaggerated makeup, standing atop a hill, a closed fan in hand, and holding herself like a seasoned stage trooper.

Goya employed broad and quick brushstrokes to establish her black dress and rustic cottages in the low lying village at distance, seen behind tilting ground, which, along with stormy sky, contributed to establish a personality prone to self-dramatization. Despite Goya's loose brushstrokes, this full length portrait was still very realistic, though the sitter's face was curiously plastic and devoid of personality. Maybe Goya did capture his sitter rather too well.


Francisco Goya [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago, 1804, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya) (Spanish, 1746 - 1828)

I was also very impressed by Edvard Munch's Starry Night (1893), whose sweeping atmospheric sky, mysteriously-shaped mound and other objects on the shore, and the mirror-like glinty sea, often basked in a blue wash, gave us a sense what the beginning of everything might have looked like, and we were in the presence of some celestial phenomenon recorded with quick brushstrokes and varying thickness of paints of blue, green, maroon, and brilliant white, interlaced with some eloquent patches of almost naked canvas, where the paints thinned out. Altogether, those loosely applied pigments and vaguely suggested elements not only generated a shimmering atmosphere, but gyrating slow movements as well, and the viewers were dazzled by that.


Edvard Munch [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Starry Night, 1893, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863 - 1944)


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 153: My Favorite Sculptures at J. Paul Getty Museum - Getty Villa, Los Angeles (Malibu)
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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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