Not-so-great artists who were acclaimed in their time

OP, do you really consider those colors to be “vulgar”?

When I finally saw the Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir in person, I realized why it’s so famous. The colors are so much more vibrant and lively than comes across in photos of it.

I do think that the subject matter of the one you posted is a bit sentimental and more Thomas Kincaid than Renoir, though.

r1, It's the use of colour on the dresses that bothers me. It's so fucking.... cute. The pink and green with embroidery! The ruffles! The artful dishevelment! The hint of (lacy) petticoat! Similar is this shit.

As for your Renoir, I don't especially like it, but I can see why it is considered great. You can see the movement of the party and you know its on the water even though none is painted. Lucky you that you got to see it in person!

R2 Some art that looks placid and sentimental to us now was not in its time. The costumes that look twee to us today may have been common attire years ago.

Throughout most of the history of Western art, the only “legitimate” subjects were religious, and so some early Modern painters were radical in painting everyday, mundane life with no allegorical symbolism.

Monet’s waterlilies look to us like a 1980s furniture fabric, pleasant and inoffensive and ambient, but when Monet was painting, his art was offensive and vulgar to the establishment. He was a radical in his time.

So in some cases, we may not see what is ‘great’ about art that was great in its time. Monet’s work is still appreciated, but the reason Monet was a standout in his time is not registered by most people. His treatment of landscapes was radical to the point of being obscene to thousands of years of tradition.

Must you post links that are downloads? Sheesh. And we are supposed to take you seriously as a connoisseur of painting?

For example (because I've been watching The New Pope)... Victor Marais-Milton (France, 1872-1948) among the painters of too jolly cardinals in cocksucker red gowns at ease in their plush palaces. There were worse painters in this genre, certainly, but Marais-Milton was quirkily handsome enough as to raise the bar of expectation. The paintings are not bad individually, and excellent technically in some aspects, but the enormous proliferation of the subject and all that work to portray a just barely amusing subject matter and some of the background details (that palm in the distant room that manages to be both flat and lurid.) It's the painter's willingness to throw away his talent on silliness, I suppose.

Alfred Charles Weber was another of this genre, and there are quite a few artists who milked it to death.

Here is another, hopefully not downloadable De Blaas. It is almost a fetishisation of country life.