Tag Archives: Fine Art Friday

July 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a close look at “Worn Out” by H. A. Brendekilde 1889

Artist: H. A. Brendekilde (1857–1942)

Title: (English: Worn out) (Danish: Udslidt)

Date: 1889

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 207 cm (81.4 in); width: 270 cm (106.2 in)

Inscriptions: Signature and date bottom right: H.A. Brendekilde 89

Collection: Funen’s Art Museum

About this painting:

Hans Andersen Brendekilde (7 April 1857 – 30 March 1942) was a Danish painter.

H.A. Brendekilde was a forerunner of the social realist style, embraced by Diego Rivera.

This is one of my favorite paintings because the artist shows us the story of a poor farmer or farm laborer.

Brejdekilde’s early work often depicted the daily lives of the rural working class. Later, he painted portraits on commission and also painted children and countryside landscapes. He is also famous for his garden which contained more than 3000 species of flowers.

Via Wikipedia:  “His painting of flowers and animals are mentioned among the best pictures illustrating the material and spiritual correlation between vegetation, animals and the Danes.” 

“Worn Out” (1889) is one of his most famous paintings. It shows an elderly man lying fallen on his back in a vast, barren field. This is a strong social statement, showing that the lowest working class had no option to retire with even a tiny pension. Laborers worked until the day they died.

Brendekilde’s genius shows in the way he depicts the central subject. The rocky field nearly blends with the sky. Dirt and rocks dominate this painting. Dirt on their clothes, small rocks embedded in the soil, larger rocks gathered into piles to be carted from the field … this man’s life was the soil, hard and rocky though it was. Yet he clung to it, working to clear the rocks until he could go no further.

I love the detail in this painting, the way he shows the broad flat lands of Denmark. It’s easy to see how their day began: the man and woman spent the morning picking rocks from a field and making small piles of them, preparatory to plowing the field.

Then, something happened. Was it a heart attack? A stroke? One of the man’s clogs has fallen off his foot, lost when he stumbled and fell. The stones he was picking up and carrying in his apron have tumbled to the ground beside him.

Farming is working in the dirt, and that is made clear in this painting. If you have ever planted a garden in an area where a glacier once stood, you know that new rocks tend to work themselves to the surface every year.

The woman wears a dress that has been patched many times. The loose, dry soil on her garments show she too has been picking rocks all morning.

Is the woman his daughter? Or perhaps his wife? Even if only a friend, she is terribly concerned for him.

They are nearing the end of their winter stores, and the first new vegetables have yet to be planted. Has he worked himself to death? Will he recover?

As most artists do, H. A. Brendekilde tells us a story in this stark painting. He leaves us the option to imagine what happens next.

Credits and Attributions:

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Worn Out by H. A. Brendekilde File:H. A. Brendekilde – Udslidt (1889).jpg – Wikipedia accessed July 7, 2026.

Information sourced from: Wikipedia contributors, “H. A. Brendekilde,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=H._A._Brendekilde&oldid=1343079043 (accessed July 8, 2026).

 

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July 3, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Boats at Anchor by John Singer Sargent 1917

Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Title: Boats at Anchor

Medium: Watercolor

Date: ca. 1917

Location: Worcester Art Museum

What I love about this painting:

John Singer Sargent is best known for his work done in oils, and they are brilliant. But I really love his seascapes done in the medium of watercolor. Canals, rivers, oceans, or lakes – Sargent painted the sheen of calm water beneath a summer’s sun or the gray froth and white water of storm-driven waves.

John Singer Sargent made his living painting society portraits in oils, but he had a true gift for the less-prestigious medium of watercolor which seemed to be his choice whenever he was just painting a scene for fun. He could capture the personality of a day as skillfully as he did when painting the portraits of Madame X and Theodore Rosevelt.

In recent years, Sargent’s numerous paintings of boats have gained some recognition by critics. In this picture, he shows us the South Atlantic, a small yacht or fishing boat. (I can’t decide which, but I’m leaning toward fishing vessel.) She is berthed in a marina with two smaller boats tied to her.

The small boats are the kind of rowboats that my father was partial to for trout or bass fishing. A light breeze ruffles the water, and the South Atlantic sits serenely at her berth. The boat is wide, but the prow is sleek, and I’ll bet that, under sail, she cuts though the water.

The way he shows the sky and boats reflected in the water is exactly how it looks on a calm day in a marina. He loved boats, but in this painting, water and reflections take center stage.

About The Artist via Wikipedia:

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.

From the beginning, Sargent’s work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.

With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. He also painted extensively family, friends, gardens, and fountains. In watercolors, he playfully portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orientalist costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions (The Chess Game, 1906). His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927:

‘To live with Sargent’s watercolors is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, ‘the refluent shade’ and ‘the Ambient ardors of the noon.’

Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America’s greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Sargent – Boats at Anchor, 1917, 1917.90.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sargent_-_Boats_at_Anchor,_1917,_1917.90.jpg&oldid=1154766116 (accessed July 3, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “John Singer Sargent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Singer_Sargent&oldid=1360295475 (accessed July 3, 2026).

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June 29, 2026 · 6:00 am

The Great Artists are Brilliant Storytellers #writing

If you are a follower of this blog, you know that Fridays are “Fine Art Friday” here. I love the art of the past, as well as many modern pieces. I also love examining photographic art.

Paintings and photographs offer us a glimpse of a moment in time that may have occurred centuries ago or may not have occurred at all. It is the story of a moment frozen in time and preserved forever for us. Forever, that is, for as long as the painting or photograph exists.

I would love to have created beautiful visual art. I’ve shot some decent photographs, but I’m a writer. Perusing the vaults at Wikimedia Commons allows me to view images with possibilities. Each is a visual representation with a past and a possible future.

We see the whole story.

I’m not educated as an art historian and would never claim to be one. I’m just an old lady who loves the paintings of great artists. I doubt I will ever visit the great museums of Europe, as that would be an expensive endeavor, but I can view their collections in detail.

Anyone with internet access can see great art and photography from the past and present.

Every week, I scour Wikimedia Commons, looking for images that intrigue me. My goal is to give others like me access to see the art that humanity is capable of, the good and perhaps the not-so-good.

Art can be beautiful or savage, depending on the story the artist is trying to present. I love beautiful scenes, and sometimes, especially in winter, I crave the view of a warm summer’s day.

However, more than anything, I like images that tell a story. I am compelled to zoom in and look deeper whenever I view a painting. I research a museum’s website to discover the symbolism the artist snuck into the scene. I want to inform my perception of the story the artist has painted.

Whether I want if to or not, my writer’s brain will influence my interpretation. And the art of the past influences the art of today.

One of the most stunning works of modern art is Guernica, a 1937 painting by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). This painting is considered to be one of the most powerful anti-war statements of all time. This single painting, done in shades of black and white, tells the story of the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy destroyed at the request of the Spanish Nationalists.

(Yes, a faction in Spain bombed the citizens of their own country.)

Pablo Picasso was influenced by the great art of the past and based the layout of Guernica on the layout of a history painting, The Consequences of War by Peter Paul Rubens.

Looking at art can lead the viewer to new ways of looking at the world.

Some artists offer us fantasy, and others show us the truth about historical events. Both are necessary. Art can be pretty and comforting, and art can teach us a moral lesson.

Art can be brutally truthful.

One of my favorite artists is Pieter Brueghel the Elder. His paintings always tell us a story. He embeds a moral in every aspect of his work. For example, let’s look at The Hunters in the Snow, probably his most famous painting. On first glance, we see a comforting winter scene, a bucolic view of hunters returning and people frolicking on the ice. But when we look deeper, we see the true story.

Brueghel used symbolism to convey an entire story by employing paradox and gallows humor in every painting. Here, he shows us that winter was harsh, and for the average person, survival required a lot of work, sometimes for nothing.

  • He shows us the hunters returning with empty game bags, the lone corpse of a skinny fox, and little else.
  • One dog looks at us with starving eyes, as if hoping for scraps.
  • The tavern’s sign is about to fall down, a large hint that all is not well. That symbolic broken sign tells us the owners are bankrupt.
  • The owners are cooking outside, directly in front of the door, evicted from their home and business. A woman brings a bundle of straw out of the inn to use as fuel, while in the distance an ox-drawn wagon is heavily laden with firewood. Where is it going? Not to their inn, that is for sure.
  • A man is carrying a table away. He glances over his shoulder at the meager soup they are cooking, as if they had somehow gotten it away before he could take that too. Is he the new owner, having acquired it for pennies from the city by paying the taxes at a forced bankruptcy sale? Or is he a hired thug employed by the new owner?
  • A rabbit has crossed the hunters’ path and evaded their snares.
  • Ravens, which in Medieval times were considered birds of ill omen, roost in the trees above the inn and the hunters and fly above the revelers. They are a warning of worse days to come.

But in this story, Brueghel’s characters have hope and faith that things will improve. In the distance (the future), people are playing winter games. The future is indistinct and far away, shown in a fantastic, mountainous landscape rather than the flat terrain of the Netherlands. It is almost as if they are visions of what winter could be if only the harvest had been good, rather than the truth of the dead fox, hounds with empty bellies, a bankrupt tavern, and the rabbit that got away.

If you get a chance, visit www.wikimediacommons.org and see what the picture of the day inspires in you. Will you come away with an idea for a story?

Perhaps so. But take the time to write those thoughts down. Your notes could become a storyboard, which could become a novel.

A photograph or painting might inspire you, but the way you put those ideas into action will be uniquely yours. That story will be an expression of your voice and your art.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “Guernica (Picasso),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guernica_(Picasso)&oldid=1361273241 (accessed June 28, 2026).

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “Consequences of War,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Consequences_of_War&oldid=1361248306 (accessed June 28, 2026).

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “The Hunters in the Snow,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hunters_in_the_Snow&oldid=1361428760 (accessed June 28, 2026).

 

 

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June 19, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Boat building Near Flatford Mill by John Constable

Title: Boat-Building Near Flatford Mill

Year: 1815

Type: Oil on canvas, landscape painting

Dimensions: 50.8 cm × 61.6 cm (20.0 in × 24.3 in)

Current Location: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

 

What I love about this painting:

I love Constable’s work, and this painting in particular. The dry dock was owned by Constable’s father.

The boat under construction is a barge and was painted from a sketch, but was painted in the open air.

The builder sits, carving a piece that will be fitted with care and precision. Building a boat nowadays requires skilled, knowledgeable craftsmen, as much as it did in 1815, although for most modern ships, it needs people with skills in different materials.

A tour of an historic sailing craft will show you that boat builders who built before the modern era were also skilled woodworkers. One of my favorite historic vessels is the Lady Washington, a replica that was built in Aberdeen Washington. Whenever it is there, I go to visit it.

About this painting, via Wikipedia:

Boat-Building Near Flatford Mill is an 1815 landscape painting by the English artist John Constable. It depicts a scene on the River Stour near to Flatford Mill on the Essex–Suffolk border. Constable’s father owned Flatford Mill and the area around it is now known as Constable Country. Portraying the process of boat building, it has been described as a forerunner of his best-known Six-Foot paintings depicting scenes from the area. [1]

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

John Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionizing the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale, the area on the borderland of Suffolk and north Essex surrounding his home – now known as “Constable Country” – which he invested with an intensity of affection. “I should paint my own places best”, he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, “painting is but another word for feeling.”

His early style has many qualities associated with his mature work, including a freshness of light, color and touch, and reveals the compositional influence of the old masters he had studied, notably of Claude Lorrain. Constable’s usual subjects, scenes of ordinary daily life, were unfashionable in an age that looked for more romantic visions of wild landscapes and ruins. He made occasional trips farther afield.

By 1803, he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy. In April he spent almost a month aboard the East Indiaman Coutts as it visited south-east ports while sailing from London to Deal before leaving for China.

Another source of income was painting the portraits of country manors.

In 1817 Constable started work on his most ambitious project to date. The picture was Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River). It was the largest painting of a rural scene that he had done to date and the largest he would ever complete largely outdoors. Constable was determined to paint on a larger scale, his objective not only to attract more attention at the Royal Academy exhibitions but also, it seems, to project his ideas about landscape on a scale more in keeping with the achievements of the classical landscape painters he so admired. Although Flatford Mill failed to find a buyer when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1817, its fine and intricate execution drew much praise, encouraging Constable to move on to the even larger canvases that were to follow. [2]

For more information on this artist, go to: John Constable – Wikipedia.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “Boat-Building Near Flatford Mill,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boat-Building_Near_Flatford_Mill&oldid=1335473797 (accessed June 17, 2026).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “John Constable,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Constable&oldid=1358915080 (accessed June 17, 2026).

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June 5, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: The Money Changer and His Wife by Quentin Matsys, 1514

  • Artist: Quentin Matsys  (1456/1466–1530)
  • Title: The Moneylender and his Wife
  • Date: 1514
  • Medium: oil on panel
  • Dimensions: Height: 70.5 cm (27.7 in)
  • Current location: Louvre Museum
  • Inscriptions: Signature and date

The Money Changer and His Wife is a 1514 oil on panel painting by the Flemish renaissance artist Quentin Matsys.

What I love about this painting:

I first featured this painting in June of 2020. The pandemic was raging, and my husband and I spent many an hour on our back porch, sitting in the shade and watching the birds. I’d seen all the television I could stand, and so I talked Greg into helping me select a painting for that week’s Fine Art Friday post.

We sat in the shade, drinking iced tea.  I had my laptop out, and together we searched though the incredible storehouse of great art available on Wikimedia Commons.

That night, we fell in love with this painting.

These two people seem happy with each other. Matsys’ shows them with rich and vivid colors, and sharp, clean lines. He included the smallest details in the prayer book, the pewter plate in the background, and the crystal jar by the man’s right hand, showing a prosperous, well-educated young couple.

In some ways, Matsys’ style and level of detail reminds me of the work of the lesser-known Flemish painter, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who was born long after Matsys’ death. The few original works of Pieter Brueghel the Younger that have survived leaned more toward caricatures and grotesques.

About this painting, via Wikipedia:

A man, who is weighing the jewels and pieces of gold on the table in front of him, sits next to his wife who is reading a book of devotion with an illustration of the Virgin and Child. The couple is not dressed as members of nobility, but rather as well-to-do burghers of Antwerp, where the painting was made. At the time, Antwerp had grown with the influx of many southern immigrants fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Among this international community there was a demand for money-changers and money-lenders, as international commerce was increasing in the port city.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Most early accounts of Matsys’ life are composed primarily of legend, and very little contemporary accounts exist of the nature of his activities or character. According to J. Molanus’ Historiae Lovaniensium, Matsys is known to be a native of Leuven with humble beginnings as an ironsmith. One of four children, Matsys was born to Joost Matsys (d. 1483) and Catherine van Kincken sometime between 4 April and 10 September 1466. Legend states that Matsys abandoned his career as a blacksmith to woo his wife, who found painting to be a more romantic profession, though Karel van Mander claimed this to be false, and the real reason was a sickness during which he was too weak to work at the smithy and instead decorated prints for the carnival celebrations.

Matsys work is considered to contain strong religious feeling—characteristic of traditional Flemish works—and is accompanied by a realism that often favored the grotesque. Matsys’ firmness of outline, clear modelling and thorough finish of detail stem from Van de Weyden’s influence; from the Van Eycks and Memling by way of Dirck Bouts, the glowing richness of transparent pigments. Matsys’ works generally reflect earnestness in expression, minutely detailed renderings, and subdued effects in light and shade. Like most Flemish artists of the time, he paid a great deal of attention to jewelry, edging of garments, and ornamentation in general.

Credits and Attributions:

The Money Changer and His Wife by Quentin Matsys, 1514 Public domain. The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Wikipedia contributors, “The Money Changer and His Wife,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Money_Changer_and_His_Wife&oldid=937629150 (accessed June 04, 2026).

Wikipedia contributors, “Quentin Matsys,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quentin_Matsys&oldid=960328863 (accessed June 04, 2026).

 

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May 15, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Harvest 1915 by Zinaida Serebriakova

Artist: Zinaida Serebriakova (1884–1967)

Title: Harvest 1915

Description: English: Harvest (Français: Moisson) (Русский: Жатва)

Date: 1915

Collection: Odesa Fine Arts Museum

What I love about this painting:

I love that Zinaida Serebriakova paints women at work in the field, getting the harvest in. They are taking a midday break from raking hay. These women are barefoot, and their skirts are tied up around their waists, leaving them more able to walk easily in the fields of tall grain and field grass.

No men are there, as Russia had entered WWI a year earlier in 1914. Just like in Brittain and elsewhere, the farms were worked by the women, children, and old people.

Women managed livestock, plowed, planted, and harvested, ensuring their husbands, sons, and brothers had food on the front lines.

Their skirts are shown in shades of red, black, and brown, standing out from the field of gold. The sky overhead shows of high white clouds drifting across the afternoon sky.

Serebriakova shows us strong young women doing what women have always done: making sure that whatever needs doing gets done.

About the Artist Via Wikipedia:

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Lansere was born on 10 December [O.S. 28 November] 1884 on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov in the Russian Empire. Her father, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Lansere (1848–1886), was a sculptor. Her mother, Yekaterina Lansere, was a painter and came from the artistic Benois family.

Serebriakova’s most famous self-portrait, At the Dressing-Table (1909, Tretyakov Gallery), was painted while she was snowed in at her family home and models from a nearby village were unable to travel there. Her brother Yevgeny encouraged Serebriakova to enter the painting in an exhibition mounted by Mir iskusstva in 1910, where it was received with enthusiasm and purchased for the Tretyakov Gallery collection.

After the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova’s life changed for the worse. In 1918, her country estate was burned to the ground. Her husband Boris was arrested, and in 1919, he died of typhus. She was left without any income, responsible for her four children and her sick mother. All the reserves of Neskuchnoye had been plundered, so the family suffered from hunger. She had to give up oil painting in favour of the less expensive techniques of charcoal and pencil. This was the time of her most tragic painting, House of Cards, which depicts their four fatherless children.

In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural. On finishing this work, she intended to return to the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. However, she was not able to return, and although she was able to bring her children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she could not do the same for her two other children, Yevgeny and Tatiana, and did not see them again for many years.

To read more about this amazing woman’s powerful and sometimes tragic life, go to Zinaida Serebriakova – Wikipedia.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Harvest by Zinaida Serebriakova. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Serebryakova Harvest 1915.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Serebryakova_Harvest_1915.jpg&oldid=1160900234 (accessed May 9, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Zinaida Serebriakova,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zinaida_Serebriakova&oldid=1352183665 (accessed May 9, 2026).

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May 8, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a closer look at “Boys in a Dory” by Winslow Homer 1873

Artist: Winslow Homer (1836–1910)

Title: Boys in a Dory

Date: 1873

Medium: Watercolor washes and gouache over graphite underdrawing on medium rough textured white wove paper

Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 13 7/8 in. (24.8 x 35.2 cm)

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inscription: signed Homer 1873

What I love about this image:

I first featured this painting a year ago. When I was searching Wikimedia for an image to discuss today, I kept coming back to this one.  Perhaps I like it so much because it reminds me of my childhood, of taking my dad’s powerboat out with my little sister and our cousins.

My oldest cousin, Skip, was fourteen and in charge, and we were his crew. Skip ran a tight ship and never drove the boat faster than my father had decreed.

Those were the days when summers lasted forever and the future held nothing but promise. A golden moment of time before life intervened and my cousins moved away, their lives changed by the stormy seas of their parents’ divorce.

Here we have four boys out for a summer’s day on the water. Are they brothers? They all wear similar long-sleeved lightweight cotton shirts and straw hats as protection against the sun.

The two youngest ride while the older boys row. The water is calm, perfect for a sunny afternoon of freedom. Do they plan to fish or are they just out for the fun of it?

I especially like how Homer paints the water. He depicts the reflections perfectly, showing us how they mirror on the soft movement of the water’s surface. He shows us the sailing craft in the distance with minimal strokes, clearly showing the other boats heading out for a day’s fishing or pleasure boating.

About this painting via Wikipedia:

Boys in a Dory is one of Homer’s first watercolors. According to the Met’s description of the painting, the artist’s initial style of watercolors resulted in Boys being simple and direct.

The painting was rendered by Homer while he was in Gloucester, Massachusetts. [1]

About the dory, via Wikipedia:

The dory can be defined as a small boat which has:

  • a flat bottom, with the bottom planks fastened lengthwise (bow to stern).
  • a hull shape defined by the natural curve of a sawn plank (never steam-bent).
  • planks overlapping the stem at the front of the boat and an outer “false” stem covering the hood ends of the planks.
  • (with some exceptions) a fairly narrow transom often referred to as the “tombstone” due to its unique shape.

The hull’s bottom is transversely flat and usually bowed fore-and-aft. (This curvature is known as “rocker”.) The stern is frequently a raked narrow transom that tapers sharply toward the bottom forming a nearly double-ended boat. The traditional bottom is made from planks laid fore and aft and not transverse, although some hulls have a second set of planks laid over the first in a pattern that is crosswise to the main hull for additional wear and strength.

As the need for working dories diminished, the Swampscott or beach dory types were modified for pleasure sailing. These sailing dories became quite popular at the beginning of the 20th century around the town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. They were generally longer yet remained narrow with low freeboard and later were often decked over. Another common distinctive feature of the sailing dory was a long boom on the rig that angled up with a mainsail that was larger along the foot than the luff.  [2]

About the Artist via Wikipedia:

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general.

Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations. [3]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Boys in a Dory by Winslow Homer. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Boys in a Dory MET DT5026.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Boys_in_a_Dory_MET_DT5026.jpg&oldid=928781177 (accessed April 3, 2025).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Boys in a Dory,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boys_in_a_Dory&oldid=1249874568 (accessed April 3, 2025).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “Dory (boat),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dory_(boat)&oldid=1281846716 (accessed April 3, 2025).

[3] Wikipedia contributors, “Winslow Homer,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Winslow_Homer&oldid=1277975900 (accessed April 3, 2025).

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May 1, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Palazzo Corner Spinelli by John Singer Sargent, ca, 1902

Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Title: Palazzo Corner Spinelli

Date: circa 1902.

Medium: watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper

Dimensions: 10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.6 cm.)

Inscriptions: signed and inscribed ‘to Miss Gertie/from her friend/John S. Sargent’ (upper left)

What I like about this painting:

John Singer Sargent’s love of Italy, and Venice in particular, is clear when you look at the number of stellar watercolor paintings he made while living there.

Sargent’s watercolors are as fine as any of his work done in oils and show us a bit of his personal life. It seems as if he paints in watercolors for fun, and oils for cash.

The day he shows us is warm and hazy. Several gondolas are moored, waiting to ferry passengers around town. The imposing architecture is balanced by water and sky.

He shows us the scene in nuanced shades of blue, cream, gray, tan and brown. This is a pleasant scene, a glimpse of a place that was clearly important to him.

About The Artist via Wikipedia:

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.

From the beginning, Sargent’s work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.

With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. He also painted extensively family, friends, gardens, and fountains. In watercolors, he playfully portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orientalist costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions (The Chess Game, 1906). His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927:

To live with Sargent’s watercolors is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, ‘the refluent shade’ and ‘the Ambient ardors of the noon.’

Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America’s greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Palazzo Corner Spinelli SN00666431 001 1 001.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Palazzo_Corner_Spinelli_SN00666431_001_1_001.jpg&oldid=1013372496 (accessed April 30, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “John Singer Sargent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Singer_Sargent&oldid=1347366201 (accessed April 30, 2026).

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April 24, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: ‘The Louvre, Morning’ by Camille Pissarro 1902

1902_Camille_Pissarro_Le_Louvre,_matin,_printempsArtist: Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)

Title: French: Le Louvre, Matin, Printemps (English: The Louvre, morning, spring)

Date:1902

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 54 cm (21.2 in), width: 64.8 cm (25.5 in)

References: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/modern-evening-auction-5/le-louvre-matin-printemps

What I love about this picture:

This is one of my favorite paintings. I first featured it in 2022, when I was desperate for a glimpse of spring. I did the same last year when it seemed as if spring couldn’t come too soon.

This has been a lovely April, with more sunny days than we normally see, many gray and dry days, and overall, not enough rain. The trees are covered with blossoms, and even the later bloomers are bursting with colors we don’t usually see for another month.

The current lack of precipitation means little snow in the mountains and looming water shortages. It really doesn’t bode well for summer, as dry summers are known hereabouts as Wildfire Season.

But we all agree, we need to enjoy the brilliant blue skies and glorious shades of purple, pink, and white while we can.

This painting shows us the way spring begins. It’s tentative and holding back as if gauging the audience before leaping to center stage. Pissarro’s style of brushwork lends itself to the misty quality of the pastel blossoms.

This was one of Pissarro’s final works. It is a pretty picture, a simple scene not unlike one I might see here in the Pacific Northwest this weekend. The flowering plum trees in my town have burst forth, and the other flowering trees too. The streets and gardens in my town are alive with color.

Pissarro has given us a pretty picture. It’s not profound or revolutionary, not highbrow in any way. It has no deeper meaning, other than to urge us to enjoy the world and the moment.

No matter what some art critics might say, there’s nothing wrong with simply taking the time to enjoy a pretty picture.

Sometimes, what the soul needs is a pretty picture, something featuring the beauty and serenity of a sunny day.

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the “pivotal” figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the “dean of the Impressionist painters”, not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also “by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality”. Paul Cézanne said “he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord”, and he was also one of Paul Gauguin‘s masters. Pierre-Auguste Renoir referred to his work as “revolutionary”, through his artistic portrayals of the “common man”, as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without “artifice or grandeur”.

Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. He “acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists” but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and van Gogh.

Founder of a Dynasty:

Camille’s son Lucien was an Impressionist and Neo-impressionist painter as were his second and third sons Georges Henri Manzana Pissarro and Félix Pissarro. Lucien’s daughter Orovida Pissarro was also a painter. Camille’s great-grandson, Joachim Pissarro, became Head Curator of Drawing and Painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and a professor in Hunter College’s Art Department. Camille’s great-granddaughter, Lélia Pissarro, has had her work exhibited alongside her great-grandfather. Another great-granddaughter, Julia Pissarro, a Barnard College graduate, is also active in the art scene. From the only daughter of Camille, Jeanne Pissarro, other painters include Henri Bonin-Pissarro (1918–2003) and Claude Bonin-Pissarro (born 1921), who is the father of the Abstract artist Frédéric Bonin-Pissarro (born 1964).

The grandson of Camille Pissarro, Hugues Claude Pissarro (dit Pomié), was born in 1935 in the western section of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and began to draw and paint as a young child under his father’s tutelage. During his adolescence and early twenties he studied the works of the great masters at the Louvre. His work has been featured in exhibitions in Europe and the United States, and he was commissioned by the White House in 1959 to paint a portrait of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. He now lives and paints in Donegal, Ireland, with his wife Corinne also an accomplished artist and their children. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:1902 Camille Pissarro Le Louvre, matin, printemps.jpeg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:1902_Camille_Pissarro_Le_Louvre,_matin,_printemps.jpeg&oldid=948378278 (accessed April 21, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Camille Pissarro,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Camille_Pissarro&oldid=1278793537 (accessed April 21, 2026).

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April 17, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Castle Bentheim by Jacob van Ruisdael, ca 1650

Artist: Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/1629–1682)

Title: Bentheim Castle

Genre: landscape painting

Description: Castle Bentheim. The castle located on a hilltop, seen from below by a stream with a small waterfall, rocks, and tree trunks.

Date: between 1650 and 1682

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 68 cm (26.7 in)

Collection: Rijksmuseum

What I like about this painting:

Jacob van Ruisdael gives us a view of Castle Bentheim in the late afternoon. The sun is low in the sky behind us and to our right, casting a warm glow on the sandstone walls of the ancient keep. Skies are one of van Ruisdael’s fortes, but in this painting, the sky with its clouds of gray and white doesn’t quite dominate. The fortress on its hill rises high, as if to say “You have no power over me. I’ve withstood the centuries and risen from the ashes more than once. I am not going away.”

This painting is an excellent visual for fantasy writers. We see how it seems to grow from the rocky hill, how it towers over the countryside. There are many stories here, both historical and imagined.

About Ruisdael’s visit to Bentheim Castle, via Wikipedia:

There has been speculation that Ruisdael accompanied an expedition to acquire Bentheimer sandstone for building the new Amsterdam Town Hall, an ambitious project by mayor Nicolaes Tulp that employed many artists, including the Haarlem architect Jacob van Campen as master builder. Bentheimer sandstone was a popular product being used to build canal mansions along the new canals of Amsterdam. In Haarlem, the facade of the house of Pieter Teyler van der Hulst is cladded with Bentheimer sandstone, and though this was probably done later in the 1740s, it shows how the popularity of this material overshadowed the use of Namur stone from Belgium, the material used earlier in the 17th century for cladding of the Waag, Haarlem, which is a few doors down from Teyler’s house. However it is also entirely plausible that Ruisdael was invited to the castle to paint it, but little is known of the art collection in the castle at that time.

Ruisdael was even tempted to make a dramatic sweeping version of the castle that was copied almost in mirror image by Haarlem contemporary Nicolaes Berchem, called “his great friend” by Ruisdael biographer Arnold Houbraken. It is assumed that the artists travelled together, but no archival evidence beyond dated artworks survive which support this. [1]

For more about the history of Castle Bentheim go to Bentheim Castle – Wikipedia. Also, The Secrets of Bad Bentheim | What’s Hidden Under the Castle?

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was born in Haarlem in 1628 or 1629 into a family of painters, all landscapists. The number of painters in the family, and the multiple spellings of the van Ruisdael name, have hampered attempts to document his life and attribute his works. The name Ruisdael is connected to a castle, now lost, in the village of Blaricum. The village was the home of Jacob’s grandfather, the furniture maker Jacob de Goyer. When de Goyer moved away to Naarden, three of his sons changed their name to van Ruysdael or van Ruisdael, probably to indicate their origin. Two of De Goyer’s sons became painters: Jacob’s father Isaack van Ruisdael and his well-known uncle Salomon van Ruysdael. Jacob himself always spelled his name with an “i”, while his cousin, Salomon’s son Jacob Salomonszoon van Ruysdael, also a landscape artist, spelled his name with a “y”. Jacob’s earliest biographer, Arnold Houbraken, called him Jakob Ruisdaal.

It is not known whether Ruisdael’s mother was Isaack van Ruisdael’s first wife, whose name is unknown, or his second wife, Maycken Cornelisdochter. Isaack and Maycken married on 12 November 1628.

Ruisdael’s teacher is also unknown.  It is often assumed Ruisdael studied with his father and uncle, but there is no evidence for this.  He appears to have been strongly influenced by other contemporary local Haarlem landscapists, most notably Cornelis Vroom and Allart van Everdingen. [2]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Kasteel Bentheim Rijksmuseum SK-A-347.jpeg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kasteel_Bentheim_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-347.jpeg&oldid=1176106258 (accessed April 16, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “View of Bentheim Castle,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=View_of_Bentheim_Castle&oldid=1332491171 (accessed April 16, 2026).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “Jacob van Ruisdael,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jacob_van_Ruisdael&oldid=1346810374 (accessed April 16, 2026).

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