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 that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Beach.
I’m there.
Love that big orange umbrella.
Interesting that there are no faces in this picture, and everyone is maximally dressed. Seems like cool temperatures somehow.
I see about 7 or 8 people on a sunny beach. It’s hard to say exactly because none of the figures are clearly drawn. The person on the far right practically blends into the scenery. Click on the picture to enlarge it and you’ll see what I mean.
THE SUN IS OFF SCREEN AND TO THE LEFT. Nobody wrote that yet.
While the horizon is clearly horizontal, the line of the beach slopes upward and to the right.
Only two of the figures are upright themselves. The others are all sitting or leaning or bent over.
I agree with the previous comment that you can’t see any faces. That seems odd.
It also seems odd that people would wear bright white clothing and then go lying about on the sand, which is not white itself but gray. I would think there’d be a lot of dirt to clean off later.
It seems like a particularly bright, bright day. The white foam on the waves is especially glowing.
My question is: those sailboats in the distance. Are they leisure boats or used for some kind of work? I wonder this because the people on the beach are dressed so formally, this must have been painted about 100 years ago? Were people also sailing as a hobby or sport then? I can’t imagine these women here, with so much clothing on, getting into a sailboat and living it up. Am I wrong?
I agree witb Amy. Someone should reproduce that big orange umbrella today. It would sell.