Canaletto played a large role in depicting Venetian lifestyles and cityscapes through his use of light, color, and detail in his eighteenth-century paintings and drawings. He was considered one of the first Venetian vedutisti, or view painters, and is most notably recognized for his creative interpretations of his native city, otherwise known as capricci. This study is a comparison of his images to the actual views in Venice, discussing the similarities and differences in content and style. Canaletto’s beautiful views of Venice played a critical role in the development of the new tradition of vedute, and his works came to be regarded as the supreme examples of a genre that combined reality with some elements of fantasy.

In the early twentieth century, ideas of beauty and aesthetic were being drastically transformed, in part due to artists’ reactions and responses to the industrial revolution and mass production. The utopian ideal set forth by the Bauhaus was to create a total work of art in the world, one in which uniformity, affordability, and novel materials would be used and seen ubiquitously. Unadorned façades, simple lines, and rudimentary shapes were regarded as forward-thinking, and these fundamental design elements presented a variety of opportunities for artists to experiment with innovative and different forms and aesthetics.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was one of the great pioneering artists who led contemporary art of the early decades of the twentieth century into his unique form of pure abstraction. Ranging between subtly enigmatic and boldly explosive, especially in his use of color, Kandinsky’s art reflects his personal experimentations with the creative process. What will be studied here is how he independently produced a deeply intellectual art that was rich in visual and psychological sub-matter.

Under Emperor Napoleon III’s reign, Baron Georges Haussmann redesigned and reconstructed Paris by adding boulevards and green spaces, creating the city that we recognize today. The French Impressionists reacted to the new cityscape and painted in their signature style to capture Paris’ flourishing popularity and effervescent atmosphere. This lecture addresses the vantage points from which many Impressionist painters worked and includes a discussion of how they captured Paris’ major hubs through the use of windows and window-like perspectives, including: the expansive boulevards; the Gare Saint-Lazare; and the views and bridges along the Seine River.