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 embiggen the image, click on it!
people of leisure. what enthralls me is how perfectly and precisely the faces are rendered. while the rest of the painting is more impressionistic.
Where was this picture painted? I’m assuming it’s in Europe somewhere, but somewhere warm and lush (at least in the summer) because of all the foliage. In other words, not England!
So my next question is, how did those Asian (Japanese? or maybe Chinese?) parasols get there?
And my third question is not really a question but a statement of appreciation: I love the cat walking on the walkway in the background. Is it feral? Does it belong to the household? Did people keep cats as a way of warding off rats and mice? Is the cat in the picture to let everyone know that the children in the foreground are safe from rabid rats? Is there anything significant to it being a black cat, or is it black just to make it stand out? As a kind of accent piece?
Three children, maybe four, maybe five. Lying in the sun for warmth but still there are parasols and sun bonnets to keep the complexion light. And clothes covering the entire body save the hands. Yes there is a black cat strolling in the background. It is a kind of counterpoint to the fair-skinned humans, the older two wearing dark colors, I should note, and the younger ones wearing black stockings.
And for once the sun is on the right.
The mood for me is one of relaxation and repose. Nobody seems to have a care in the world. Yet who knows what each of these lounging humans feels inside?
By the by, is that a second cat hiding in the bushes close to the painting’s center?
Yes. The sun is on the right. Yes. The humans are relaxing and dressed well. Yes. The faces are “rendered” perfectly while the rest of the painting seems blurry, hazy, impressionistic, and soft.
The line the humans makes curves up to the right. The woman on the far left starts the curve with her hatted head. THen the curve swoops down to the children laying on the ground, then swoops up to the boy and the other woman sitting on the wall.
The line the big blotch of SUN makes curves up to the left. And it continues off-and-on in the walkway in the background where you see the black cat. In that walkway you see the sunlight coming in on the left side and the shadows coming in on the right side.
The feeling is one of relaxation and repose, but it’s a false feeling because at the same time this is happening there are violent acts taking place in other parts of the world.
My guess is that everyone just had a delightful lunch and now they’re relaxing. They look very content.
IS THIS SOME RICH MAN’S REQUEST FOR A FAMOUS PAINTER TO PAINT A PORTAIT OF HIS CHILDREND ??? OR DID THE PAINTER JUST GO AHEAD AND CREATE THIS SCENE ? I’D LIKE TO SEE WHAT KIND OF PICNIC FOOD THEY’D BRING !!! IT LOOKS LIKE THEY SHOULD BE ONA PICNIC
Mary, the young woman on the far left, is looking drowsy. She stayed up last night waiting for her beau to whistle below her window but he never showed up. She didn’t sleep a wink.
Lauren-Ann, the sprite lying on her tummy next to Mary, is wound up. She has the beginning of the flu and her parents gave her a tincture of opium and other drugs and are having her lie in the sun to get better. She feels the energy pulsing through her veins and is ready to stand up and spin around in circles until she vomits.
Beatriz, under the parasol, was given a dose of the drug tincture, too, and is about to fall asleep for six hours, drowsy. She’ll give no trouble to anyone.
Tommy is bored hanging out with all the girls and looks forward to the day when he can go off with other, older boys and play cricket. He resents having to lean up against Daisy, the nanny, but the painter forced him to. He wants to cut his hair short but his parents won’t let him. THey love his golden silken locks too much. It makes him look angelic even though he’ll grow up to be hell on wheels.
Daisy the nanny just blew her nose in the lovely handkerchief and is now examining the contents. She, too, is drowsy because she stayed up late last night with Jimmy the lorry driver, and to ward off the tickle in her throat she drank a triple shot of cough syrup. She may barely make it through dinner.
Everyone or almost everyone is drugged up. Therefore they don’t mind posing for the artist for what seems like eternity.
The people are lined up in a straight line. It veers away from the viewer, if your eye moves from left to right.
Manyy pretty colors, too!
If I squint and look at the picture I see the most light in the very center surrounded by a donut of darkness , although the light leak s a little to the left.
The scene seems “built up” on the right side, what with the wall, the standing boy, the older woman/girl sitting on the wall, the high plants, the imposing large pots, the lumpy brown pillow bunched up on top of the smaller gray one, and the open umbrella. In contrast, the left side of the picture is mostly open space, except for the other woman/ girl who is sitting there in black, dominating that side of the picture. She’s the closest to the viewer and is essentially a big black blotch.
This reminds me of summer days when there was no school and my family and I spent Sunday and Saturday afternoons just laying around our back yard. It was so peaceful and comforting!
For me this is a pleasant picture to look at. The garden is lovely, everyone seems at peace. The sun is out but I think it’s not too hot. Maybe the air is fresh and there’s a gentle hum of bees and the birds are chirruping. People seem relaxed and maybe lost in their own thoughts.