Here are a few of the images previously
posted in my “Victorian Fantasy Art” album on Facebook, but with new comments:
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| This is a painting by Benes
Knupfer who has pushed the colors in a lyrical direction. |
Before color photography began
limiting the imagination of artist by “dumbing down” the color range that they
were used to seeing (remember that the photographic process compresses the millions
of color shades of nature into a mechanically limited few thousand) fantasy
artists felt free to stretch the colors in their paintings in lyrical and
dramatic directions, though always taking care to maintain a naturalistic
proportional relationship among the colors.
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| A mysterious beauty of a painting by
Maximilian Pirner who has made some unexpected color choices |
This made sure that even as the colors were exaggerated
the image still gave the impression of being a believably real representation.
When these proportional relationships between colors and values are lost the
image begins to look cartoony and the main goal of good fantasy art: “To make
the unreal seem real” is lost as well.
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| "Pharaoh's Army Engulfed By The Red Sea" by Frederick Arthur Bridgman. |
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| Gaston Bussiere's painting of "The Rhine Maidens" |
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| Another Bussiere painting of sirens. He always paints with highly saturated colors. |
