Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Analysis

For today’s class, we visited the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. In the beginning, we learned the history of this museum. This museum is made up of a private collection from the Thyssen-Bornemisza family, and both the privatization and time period make this collection unique. The collection includes many landscapes, still lives and genre paintings, but not many portraits. The family was extremely wealthy from their success in the industrial world, so they were able to purchase a vast amount of artwork. Lastly, the museum is located in Madrid due to the wife’s nationality, and the offer of a building located near the Prado and Reina Sofia. Throughout the tour, we followed along in chronological order, until we arrived at Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection. At the start of the collection, we looked at a piece academic artwork. The painting was a landscape that included, tress, mountains, animals and humans. Every aspect of the painting was perfect, and the colors were all natural. Also, the painting displayed perfected brush lines, symmetry and an idealized view of nature. All of which were aspects we discussed in class. This academic landscape was beautiful and perfect; however, it did not cause the viewer to feel any
Delacroix’s painting showed aspects of romanticism such as Orientalism and dark colors. This individual picture was small because it was a created as a private picture, unlike his painting “Liberty Leading the People”, which is extremely large. Next we looked at two of Goya’s paintings. First was El tio Paquete, which was a part of his black paintings. This painting shows aspects of romanticism through its use of dark colors and its emotion. Afterwards, we saw Goya’s painting of Ferdinand VII. In class we learned that Goya and Ferdinand did not have a solid relationship, and this painting did not portray Ferdinand as a powerful or wealthy