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...