Attention to Detail Pays Off by James Finneral

                Thursday the crew took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The museum contains various types of art such as American, European, Ancient and Contemporary. In Gallery 255 there are many landscape paintings mostly by Claude Monet, but one piece that really caught my attention was The Regatta by Theodore van Rysselberghe. It is oil painting on canvas that Rysselberghe made when he was on a Mediteranian cruise with Paul Signac. A regatta is a sporting eventing consisting of boats or yachts so Rysselberghe must have observed the regatta from up on a hill. The painting overlooks to ocean with many jagged rocks on the coast line. Above the jagged rocks is a nice slope with green/yellow looking grass. There are ripples in the painting where the waves are in the ocean and the horizon is set very high up on the canvas.

                I felt that this piece was carefully crafted and beautiful from both up close and far away. From a distance it looked like a beautiful scene of a bunch of sail boats in a blue ocean, jagged rocks and a green hill. When you observe the painting from up close you realize just how impressive the painting is. The style used in the painting is pointillism which is a technique of using small dots of color in patterns to form an image. Rysselberghe used an entire collection of colors to create the image. He incorporates blues, greens, pinks and purples into the ocean using the pointillistic style. In the hill there are greens, yellows and oranges. It is amazing that he was able to incorporate all these colors in his painting and style make it look beautiful. Rysselberghe’s attention to detail in The Regatta has opened my eyes to have difficult pointillism is. I would highly recommend stopping by the Museum of Fine Arts and you have to go to Gallery 255 to see The Regatta and many other great works.