The artist Natalia Goncharova said: “Colours have an effect on one’s psychological makeup.” In this painting Goncharova used bold Fauvist colours and curved lines to show the peasants’ joyful movement, and borrowed stylized techniques from woodcuts and iconography for the…
art
Baked Pears in Duane Park – A Poem
This poem was inspired by The Met Museum’s description accompanying William P. Chappel’s Baked Pears in Duane Park. Writing in the 1880s, one New Yorker fondly reminisced about the black women who stood in the streets tempting passersby with a…
Man with a Hoe – A Poem
Georges Seurat (1851-1891) was famous for developing the technique of pointillism, using tiny dots of colour, and scientific theory about colour perception, to create his gorgeous post-Impressionist paintings. There is more about Seurat here and here: “In Seurat’s method, which…
Rainy Day in Camp – A Poem
Probably the first thing you saw about this painting was the cluster of men drawing comfort by the fire? Then the rest. The mud. The horses. The tents. Even the rain itself. You can’t see the rain? You can zoom…
The Harvesters – A Poem
I find it hard to imagine The Harvesters was painted four-hundred-and-sixty years ago! It still teems with life. Pieter Bruegel was nicknamed “peasant Bruegel” because he was one of the first artists to focus on painting the common people as…
Entwined – A Poem
This painting is a little bit out of left field for my ekphrastic series, as it doesn’t really depict food, or eating. However, hummingbirds do like to sup on red passionflowers. And red passionflowers do bear a fruit, with apparently…
The Wife of Robert Gordon – A Poem
There is so much going on here, not only in this painting, but in this painting’s title: The Contest for the Bouquet: The Family of Robert Gordon in Their New York Dining-Room. Robert Gordon was a banker, merchant, and art…
Spring – A Poem
The Met descibes Spring as Cephas Giovanni Thompson’s finest work. He also has a companion piece, entitled Autumn. Thompson’s Spring portrait is a misty romantic and sentimental piece, which got me thinking romantically, and sentimentally. It seems to me the…
Costumed Woman with Vegetables – A Poem
No one knows who painted this watercolour. It was first thought to be a Franco-Spanish artist, but then the piece was recognised as having British provenance. It’s possible even the monogram is a deception. This costumed woman with vegetables remains…
Nightcap – A Poem
There’s something cheeky about this trompe l’oeil painting, that seems to suggest someone’s raided the pantry for a little nightcap. From the Art Institute Chicago description: “In Just Dessert, the exotic clashes with the quotidian—Maraschino liqueur, half a coconut, and Smyrna figs…
Madame Tallien as a Compote Bowl – A Poem
The 19th Century loved a good compote. These serving dishes on pedestals were used for fruit, sweets, candy, or other foods, and were often the centrepiece on a table. I was struck by the design of Roesen’s compote, particularly the…
Nini in the Garden – A Poem
This painting is of Nini Lopez in the garden next to Renoir’s Montmatre studio in Paris at 12 rue Cortot. Nini was one of Renoir’s favourite models, appearing in several of Renoir’s rue Cortot garden paintings, as well as other…
