Isaac Brodsky

Isaac Brodsky

The Luxembourg Gardens in Spring

circa 1910

     A breeze winds itself in and out of this vignette. Momentarily it tickles the child's hair as she loses herself in whatever pebble or tassel of weeds that her eye finds clawing at her shoe. It then slivers over the ground, like an unseen blanket, to brush against the light ruffles of skirts and string laces, causing a dog to steal a slight yawn and then - as if to make up for its brief laziness - to alertly stiffen its aged, somewhat wonky ears into two miniature patrol guards, each of which twitches its thorough disapproval at the disruptive nature of those wavering hemlines (it lets out a low bark).
     Now it steers away: the soft wind splits itself into two puffs, maybe three, and they hastily shoot up the ripening spine of a bright young thing, its knobby branches quickly bowing and flirting with such dashing gusts of air. They jump, they leap, they make their final pirouettes and then paff! The applauding leaves and clattering sticks cease their noise; they fall still, they resume their stagnant thoughts. But the playful breezes refuse to pause - victim after victim they stroke and tease; if boredom strikes, they spread their game into the shadows, multiplying their tiny terrors into the dancing grey-blue shapes that know no boundaries, that recognise no crevice or patch too small. The clusters of parasols, the lulls of conversations, the red ribbon on the boy's straw hat: all enjoy the whispers of spring. 

Carl Larsson

Carl Larsson

Open-Air Painter

circa 1886

     A painting within a painting: in noticing the tiny splotch of red on the artist's canvas our eye inevitably draws itself across the bumpy breadth of snow to the bigger spot of red, clearly shaped in the form of a sleigh-like carriage equiped with reins, rickety wheels and a rather audacious horse. Larsson uses this clever trick of staging his painted 'props' so as to pull his audience into the scene. Like agitated winter rabbits we are constantly bouncing and zig-zagging across the tableau as our attentions are grabbed by the strange shapes nestled here and there, or by sudden urges to discover or re-visit specific details - or simply to escape into the distant copses. The spindly branches of the largest tree, possibly an elm, spread themselves into a flaked hovering web of snow-capped tentacles, all of which prod their wirey tips into the biting air so as to taunt us, to threaten to snatch and drag us inwards. But we are not that unwilling to venture in closer: the skis of the boy's wooden sled, the faint central road heavily pounded with years of pastoral traffic and the pairs of fleeting sledge marks - all converge to form a stepping stone over which we may easily and weightlessly trip into this wintery realm.

     But will we choose to remain in our cozier worlds and admire it from a distance? Or, like the heavy wisps of smoke and charring timber and frozen air, will we let ourselves gently recede into this nineteenth-century vista?

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Fisherwomen on the Beach

circa early 1900s (?)

     They are grouped together like a hoard of shells, cupped in a large sand-polished palm of some unseen hand as if precious and rare. Their dresses and headscarves, the pale pure colours of which heighten the already blinding sea of sunlight, flap casually and chicly like crisp, starched wings, resonating the cool power of the coast's wavering drafts. Pouring in from the side the women bare themselves as a subtle barrier between us and the indecisive wet world beyond. Their detached indifference conflicts with their foreground presence, and they do not return our gaze. With heads bent they swim in their own separate worlds; they recede from us in a slow, sloping decline towards the base of the shore, forming a slight pull or figurative trail for us to consider.

     Our eye has little choice but to notice that floppy moss-green notebook (from which a wind-swept page is about to be flicked over) or the braided wicker basket, sun-bleached with the years and determined to serve at least as many more. We see the freckled patterns of flowers and dots; the sagging linen pouch clutching the man's aged hips, and the steady furrow of his brow; and the plain sails, turgid with air and un-yielding strength, cradling the tossing winds. Raking the surface the waves pile over one another, frothing and spitting, creating a pulp that, if not for its translucency, assumes a kind of a salty marmalade - one thickly spread over a doughy base of clams and corals and cast-down creatures. And, just as the women are with their own thoughts, it is into this that we plunge and drift, and soon become lost at sea.

Maria Iakunchikova

Maria Iakunchikova

Oranges 

circa 1895
(progravure and oil on panel)

     The coarse and roughly-incised grooves of this piece are like fresh scrapes on the skin: they are things that require attention and tending to, and they force one to scrutinise (or at least remind one of) what lays beneath any surface, fragile or not. These particular grooves - gouged by a sturdy and confident hand - are just as much part of the painting as are the painted objects themselves, perhaps even more. Like prominent rivulets they run their never-ending course in order to emphasise and join together the contours of the shapes they outline with the original material into which they are carved. They unify the composition with its backing, giving both a physical depth and equal importance, as well as call attention to the painting's woody flesh. 
     It is arguable that the boldest features of this piece are not so much the shapes or the bright pigments, but the actual way in which it was created. Each petal, each twist of the thick stems and of the bowl's gnarled tracery relies most on its incised gritty silhouette. In this way the artist has given her subjects a weighty feel; she has literally exposed the meat of her piece by cutting and attacking its skin so as to lay bare its full potential as a simple still-life and to testify, in a sense, to the alluring qualities of texture!

Filipp Maliavin

Filipp Maliavin

Dancing Peasant Woman

circa 1913

    

     With a single swish of this woman's dress a story materialises across the folds and creases of its fabric. We fall into these as if engrossed by the painted pages of a rich tale; yet in this particular narrative we learn of everything but luxury and extravagance - at least in the material sense. Stronger than the colours themselves is a proclamation of raison d'étre. However burdened this woman may be by the requirements of her unsophisticated and 'lowly' vocation she refuses to let it degrade her; she lives through the little that she has and she proudly bears the crude beauty of the land she cultivates day after day. Her mysterious moves are like the words of another language, but through these rhythmic steps she traces for us an outline of the world with which she is most familiar. Her skirts, billowing with vulumptuous breaths of earthly air, echo the lumps and bumps of untouched terrain, blotched with spots of petals and leaves and of uncombed blades of grass; her land, her métier, is her very skin and clothes. Only when we see the pinched waist, the deeply-shadowed face and the flexed hand are we gently reminded of the human being that inhabits this painting. She teases us with her silent laughter; she gestures defiance in playing 'leader' (should we not follow her trailing skirts to wherever they may lead?) and she grips us with a hurricane of underappreciated wonders. Now comes the time to question whether her story really is as poor as it is real...