Classification of Impressionist and Pointillist paintings based on their brushstrokes characteristics

Abstract

The classification of works of art in terms of artistic style is a complex task. Some painting styles are closely related to the form of their brushstrokes. Salient examples are Pointillism and Impressionism, having both distinguishable brushstrokes characteristics which are small, rounded of clear color, repetitive dots for Pointillism style and visible, elongated and slanting, repetitive touches for Impressionism style. As Impressionism is the ancestral style of Pointillism, the two styles have many elements in common and distinguishing them is difficult. In this paper, specific texture features are investigated for the classification of the two styles, focusing mainly on small differences of their brushstrokes. The texture features adopted are: Granulometric features, Grey level co-occurrence matrix features, and Run length features. It is shown experimentally that Run Length method outperforms the other features and can efficiently (up to 95%) discriminate the two textured styles, since it incorporates information about, size, direction and intensity of brushstrokes.