You can take photos of any artwork on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Many museums now allow visitors to take non flash photos of their collections. For some one like me whose second choice for where to spend the rest of her life would be touring the world's museums this is a wonderful development. First chose is moving back to the tropics where there are usually very few museums. I will always take warm weather and ocean over traipsing around the world. Check first with the museum's staff before firing up your camera and you will walk away not only with that wonderful afterglow you get from looking at art but with some reference files.
I've been taking a beginners painting class on color. My instructor talked about how a classical painting's palette was governed by a pigment's availability and cost. Reds and blues were more expensive then earth tones. Artists needed to be methodical when laying out a palette, using expensive pigments for their greatest impact. Having to make your own pigments and the availability of ingredients contributed to a classical visual similarity which produced a very long and sometimes lovely period in painting.
Rembrandt's oeuvre comes not only from his astounding way of rendering life on canvas but from how he was able to utilize limited resources. While the faces that stare out from his canvas have their own unique lovely painterly quality his hands are sublime.
I wonder what Rembrandt would have created if he were painting in the late 1800s. Would he have stuck with realism or would he have grown into an impressionist? Would having tubes of paint made any difference to his creativity?
Cezanne's landscapes were possible when pigment came in tubes allowing him to be out doors and concentrate on what he was seeing instead of indoors grinding all his own pigments. We are indebted to Cezanne's father for providing his son with financial support, leaving him free to paint and that red pigments had become drastically less expensive once they were milled with the help of advancements in chemistry.
