In Original Oil Paintings humble pigments mix with linseed oil to create poetries on canvases like the Mona Lisa. The recipe books of ancient Greek chemists show the discovery of a strange method of preserving colors- drying oils like walnut oil, poppy oil, hempseed oil, castor oil, and linseed oil as varnishes to seal pictures and protect them from water.
These very recipe books tell us the story of the birth of Oil Paintings. Through centuries monks carefully guarded these recipes, until it resurfaced in the 13 th century when this very method was used for painting details over tempera pictures.
However the brothers Van Eyck in the first half of the fifteenth century perfected this method and they are called the fathers of Oil Painting today.
Some Famous Original Oil Paintings
Listed below are some of the famous original paintings of our times.
Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda (La Joconde) was painted in the 16th-century and is an oil on poplar wood. For nearly 500 years, a sense of bafflement overwhelms those who stare at Da Vinci's most famous portrait. She appears to be smiling at times and the very next moment the smile fades away. How did the great painter capture such a mysterious expression and why haven't other artists copied it? After running the painting through an emotion recognition software (specially designed for this very purpose), they claimed that the smile is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, 2% angry, less than 1% neutral, and not surprised at all.
Like all great pieces of Art, Mona Lisa is indeed a mystery, which has inspired us to imagine
The Persistence of Memory- Salvador Dali
This is the most famous and recognized of Dali's works. It is also known as Soft Watches and Melting Clocks . The landscape of the Catalonian seashoer is the background for the depiction of the four soft,cheese textured clocks. This painting seems to suggest that time is not as rigid as it seems
This Oil Painting on canvas is probably one of the most Famous Paintings of all times. The painting portrays a swirling skyscape filled with yellow glowing stars above a small town and rolling hills. Van Gogh painted it just 13 months before his suicide. The large black formation in the foreground in this painting is a topic of much speculation. Some claim that it's a tip of a tree and others claim that it's a pointer to the sky. This paintings achieves something very rare, it manages to captures the artist's feeling of agitation with quite effortlessly. Van Gogh's immortal words are inevitably associated with this painting.
"Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."
Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe)– Pablo Picasso
This Oil Painting depicts a young boy with a pipe in his left hand. Its is a part of what has been classified as the Rose period. The colors are bright, warm and cheery, and the paintings have a carefree bohemian air about them . This painting was sold for a staggering $104.1 Million dollars in 2004.
Original Oil Paintings of Masters sell for millions of dollars today, and art connossieurs will say that they are worth every penny. After all they stand for everything that's beautiful and creative in human beings.