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.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Wild Turkey, from the Game Birds series (N13) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands
Publisher: Issued by Allen & Ginter (American, Richmond, Virginia)
Lithographer: George S. Harris & Sons (American, Philadelphia)
Date: 1889
Medium: Commercial color lithograph
Trade cards from the “Game Birds” series (N13), issued in 1889 in a set of 50 cards to promote Allen & Ginter brand cigarettes.
Inscription: Printed text at upper left: Wild Turkey.
Printed text on verso of card: Game Birds/ One packed in each box of/ Cigarettes/ [checklist of all 50 birds included in series]/ Allen & Ginter/ Richmond, Virginia./ Geo. S. Harris & Sons, Lith Phila.
The big bird looks like it has a hole in the wing’s shoulder. The little birds are practically tripping over themselves.
Sun’s on the right. Turkeys running towards the sun. Fleeing brown sky, heading for blue. Unnecessary period after “Wild Turkey.”. Sky is all dots. Baby turkey closest to viewer has some of its head outside the picture. Big turkey seems in a hurry.
Well, it’s the day after Thanksgiving, and it looks like this momma turkey and her three brood made it safely through the holiday, unscathed. The brown sky she is fleeing from is the smoke of many kitchen wood fires where many of her friends and relatives are being roasted on a spit. And what does she have to contend with next? THe onslaught of winter —— cold temps —— snow on the ground —— little to eat —— and a gathering of the other turkeys who fled with their wings intact as they try to make sense of what happened and plan for a brighter, if that is possible, future. Life is hard.
My grandson LOVES this picture ! I had to keep it on the screen and get out the crayons !!! I know the other comments here are all about the terror of being a turkey at Thanksgiving, but if you take Thanksgiving out of the picture, it’s really a fun and intriguing postcard.
Searching for Chicken Little, the sky is definitely falling. .
When I was a child I used to visit for long weekends with my grandparents who lived in rural Pennsylvania. In the mornings I would wake up an hear turkeys’ gobbling in the woods next to the field outside their house. I would jump out of my bed and rush to the window, but I almost never saw the birds.