Compare Contrast Starry Night and Water Lilies

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I found similarity in the use of lighting between Starry Night and Water Lilies. Both artists spent a lot of time concentrating on the light in each of the paintings. “Van Gogh´s passion for nighttime is evident in the Starry Night painting, where the powerful sky sits above the quiet town. It seems that van Gogh is contrasting life and death with luminous stars and a gloomy, peaceful village. The main light sources are the bright stars and crescent moon”. (Starry Night Analysis) “In his effort to capture just the right amount of light and dark, Monet always worked on several canvases at once and furiously followed the changing daylight. He painted intently, disregarding all the topical trends, and declared to his astonished contemporaries.” (Water Lilies). The lighting captured a great deal of depth and illuminates both images to create paintings that are so believable and lifelike. Color is the main difference in the paintings. In Starry Night, Van Gogh uses brighter and bolder colors that create more of a modern feel. “Van Gogh´s choice of color in Starry Night has been much debated, particularly the dominance of yellow in this and other late works. Some believe van Gogh may have been suffering from lead poisoning or a type of brain disease and that this explains his strange use of color in later paintings”. (Starry Night Analysis)

In Water Lilies, Monet uses more muted colors that provide a softer almost Victorian feel. The softness of the painting is exposed by color. They are many layers of color that serve to reflect light off the pond.

Both Monet and Van Gogh used color to create light and reflection in both of these paintings. However, it is the color that also makes these two paintings different. The difference in color is that one is very vivid color and one is very much muted in color and cool color tones. They are similar in their technique for brush strokes for texture and depth. There are also several similarities in the artist themselves. They were both impressionists that suffered from self-doubt and depression. Another visible difference is that in Water Lilies, Monet uses impressionists’ mechanism to make his painting look like photography. Van Gogh uses more of an artistic formal style. During this time period, many artists painted to express their emotions and symbolize what they thought or how they saw things. Postimpressionists thought that impressionists’ art was too vague, so they felt the need to focus their art on using more elements of art and color.

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Water Lilies, Oscar Claude Monet

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Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh

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