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Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

rijksmuseum.nl

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Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#71

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

For me, it took going to Van Gogh’s museum in Amsterdam to really get it. The way they contextualize and explain his work and the actual lighting of the museum is something to experience first hand.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#72

To be honest I don't understand the obsession about documenting things that are done to the painting. Going through that section of the museum I felt like the curators cared more about showcasing their efforts to store the painting than the painting itself.

Preserving and restoring an oil painting that old and large is a minor achievement, especially considering how many people have tried to destroy the painting in the last hundred years.

One of the channels that I've stumbled across in my YouTube travels is Baumgartner Restoration - https://www.youtube.com/@BaumgartnerRestoration

> Julian Baumgartner of Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration, a second generation studio and now the oldest in Chicago employs only the finest archival and reversible materials and techniques to conserve and restore artworks for future generations.

Its really interesting seeing the removal of past restoration attempts and the modern techniques to restore a painting.

If I was to pick two that touch most on the responsibility of restoration and what is and is not achievable...

Scraping, Scraping, Scraping Or A Slow Descent Into Madness. The Conservation of Mathias J. Alten https://youtu.be/YOOQl0hC18U

Restoring The Faceless Painting https://youtu.be/hsTkaSbMLHw https://youtu.be/rDVcgpSwnyg https://youtu.be/JWCBNL-iu5s

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#73

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

For me, it took going to Van Gogh’s museum in Amsterdam to really get it. The way they contextualize and explain his work and the actual lighting of the museum is something to experience first hand.

There are several centuries between the Dutch Golden Age and Van Gogh.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#74

First time I visited the Rijksmuseum I was of course excited to see the night watch. I found it on a side wall, 20x15 cm and was really surprised. I was expecting something more grandiose. But never mind, I love paintings from that era so I went on admiring the others. At some point I was in the middle of the central corridor and it then hit me... Wow. Before getting to the main part of the museum, there were two tem…

You saw the small replica Rembrandt made for the dude who commissioned the painting. He wanted one to hang in his home. It’s much smaller than the actual piece, which covers a whole wall.

And indeed, the large one got a chunk cut off at some stage as they had to move it. This was long ago when Rembrandt was not particularly in vogue.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#75
post #16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikimedia has a slightly higher-res image more easily accessible: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Nightwatch_by_Re... (14,168 × 11,528 px)

Cool wiki has people recognition on paintings so you can click the link to see note about person in the picture!

It's not people recognition, it's just manually created tags by volunteers. Anyone can draw a box on any image and write whatever they want in it.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#76

There's something oddly satisfying in that you keep zooming in impressively close, and the image remains clean and non blurry.

The map or whatever they use to achieve the online widget is extremely impressive. I’ve never seen such a clean implementation of a progressively loading zoom tool like that before, apart from in map applications and even they often suffer from buffering.

It was built with https://micr.io/

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#77
post #63

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

> One of the things special to me about the night watch is that it's huge in real life which I never really appreciated before I saw it. Famous art that's stunningly bigger in person than I expected: - The Raft of the Medusa (Géricault) - Guernica (Picasso) - The Hallucinogenic Toreador (Dalí) Cannot recommend seeing art in person enough. Aside from the scale, it's also impossible to fully capture color or translucen…

And famous art that's much smaller in person than I expected: The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. For such an epic image, it's only 25x37 cm / 10x14".

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#78

For anyone interested in technical aspects of this, I recommend watching Pycon talk [1] from Robert Erdmann. I bookmarked this couple of years ago. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_hm5oX7ZlE

Watching that seriously intensifies my imposter syndrome.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#79

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

Yeah, it's not really fair to associate quality with size but... Thomas Cole's huge works. Most of Rembrandt's famous works are fairly large. Etc. I admit to not being an especial admirer of the Mona Lisa but certainly larger works grab our attention more.

Re: Ultra high-resolution image of The Night Watch (2022)

#80

I worked at this museum a few decades ago on a contract job, it was cool to walk around among so much history. Though I never really could appreciate the "old masters" from the Dutch Golden Age. Their work was part art and part record-keeping for which nowadays we have photography and video. The subject of many of these works are stuffy rich people posing for the "family album". Artfully done yes but boring subjects…

For me, it took going to Van Gogh’s museum in Amsterdam to really get it. The way they contextualize and explain his work and the actual lighting of the museum is something to experience first hand.

Van Gogh is modern art
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