Art Relay

Oil painting in Europe has gong through several hundred years. Many schools and masters appeared and left us uncountable outstanding works which represent their genius. Generations of painters tried to free their souls, chased the true beauty and they learned from each other, all these contributed to glory in this field. This paper systematically studies the heritance of a few figure subject matters used among some representative masters in European oil painting's history, focusing on four typical subjects: "self portrait", "the other life", "dressing and bathing", "routine life", proves Delacroix's idea of the timeless true beauty. What is more important, through examining and analyzing many individual cases on the chain of heritance, the paper sheds light on the reasons which made different painters employ different methods on similar subject matters, hence widens the knowledge to the carrying on of the tradition, and puts forward the viewpoint, namely the inner relation between subject matter and life and culture gave the former(subject matter) a bigger chance than form in becoming part of tradition. The paper also strengthens again the non-visual character of subject matter heritance.