Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see in the picture?
- What does it make you think of?
- What observations can you make?
Note: To examine the picture in full size, click on the image.
Thank you for this painting of what looks like a fantasy scene. A ruined castle, two boys and cattle. Dim lighting but spots of sunlight on some of the ruined buildings. A grass-roof hut which seems in better shape than the castle.
The boy in the lower left corner is shaped like an L and makes the biggest impression on me with his bare legs and bare feet. He and the other boy seem preoccupied with the content of the other boy’s basket, and are not taken in by the beautiful and mysterious landscape around them. I think this is ty[pical of youth! My mother would never let me walk barefoot near those cows!!!
Thank you again!!!!!
People keep asking and declaring where the sun actually is in these paintings, ( where its parked on the Parking Suns site !!! ) and based on the shadow of the building behind the standing boy’s head, i’d say the sun is in its ” default ” position for many Western paintings – off screen and to the left.
The main action is in the lower left corner : the boys and the cows. What are they boys doing ? talking about ? Where are the cows headed ? What’s happening ????
The rest of the picture is kindof spooky, desserted, mildewy. The greenish brown tinges give one the feelings of nausea.
BTW : the cows are headed away from the lads, who at the moment couldn’t care.
In terms of composition, everything in the picture slopes downward towards the boys in the lower left corner. You have the hill, the tree growing from the roof of the central building, the wooden trough on the far right, the wall connecting the two towers on the left, the brighter section of the thatched roof building ; they all slope down to the boys.
And as other commentors have written, the boys seem oblivious to it.
It’s strange that the center of attention in this painting is not the center but the low left corner.
This painting obvirously tells a story from folk lore or somewhere, but I don’t know what it is. The feeling is eerie. The only reason to have cattle is to eventually butcher them. But where are the other inhabitants of this mystical land? And who are the two boys? With their basket of leaves, perhaps corn or green onions. What is the story of these boys? I’m surprised one is wearing short pants because I didn’t think that was common long ago.
I think my grand son would like this picture, the spooky aspect is good for Holloween next week, and he loves animals. I’ll see what he says.
As for me,I find it both quiet and unsettling. It would chill me thoroughly to be there at night!
This is not a work of art hanging on the wall in a museum. IT’s a still from a Bugs Bunny cartoon and if you had waited just a few seconds more you would see Bugs Bunny come down the hill on a surfboard knocking into the cows which would fly up in the air like scattering bowling pins and fall to the earth in the shape of hamburgers and the boys would reach into the basket and pull out a picnic cloth and bottles of catsup, and just as they were about to eat Daffy Duck would snatch the table cloth and upset the picnic food and fly up the hill on a broomstick, and Elmer Fudd wouldl cry cry cry ……….. That’s the way with these so called art forms hanging on the walls of high strung museums …………………………………………………………..
It looks like a baseball player ‘s mitt – the whole picture looks like a catcher’s mitt with the left tower being the thumb, the other tower and building and the thatch roof being the other finger s …and the cows are the baseball.
I agree with the other comments that this looks like a cartoon still or maybe a page from a lavishly illustrated children’s book.
All those windows and porticos and doors make me feel the absence of the inhabitants of this mystical place!
And the barefoot boy in shorts. YEs, the barefoot boy in shorts. Shaped like an “L”. That says everything.
I don’t get what the two hollowed out bent backwards tree trunks are supposed to be, over on the right side of the picture. Can someone explain this?
In general the landscape seems to be retreating from the two boys, rushing backwards up the hill. I’m talking about the bent backwards tree trunks but also the vines and tree growing on the center building( they are leaning to the right, away from the boys), the wall retreating up the hill from the tower on the left, the tall trees in the background on the far right. The clouds bunched up on the upper right corner. Even the lines of the edges of the clouds veer away from the boys in the lower left corner.
Everything is retreating from either the two boys in the lower left, or maybe retreating from the sun that’s off-frame to the left.
One of the commetns above says everything is sloping down towards the boys. I say the reverse. Everything is retreating up and away from the boys. And the cows prove it : they are all facing away from, heading away from the boys. They give the clue that everything is moving away from the boys.
And the boys? Are more engrossed in whatever’s in the basket.
I get what you all are trying to do with this but if the art is about suffering than where is it in the picture ?! The painting is empty and the two boys are so meaningless. But you can say what you want. I’m thinking that the whole thing is hiding from the real truth about this.