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!
Alfred Thompson Gobert
Artist: Louis-Rémy Robert (French, 1810–1882)
Date: 1849–55
Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
Classification: Photographs
Louis Robert grew up on the premises of the Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres and assumed the leadership of its Painting Workshop in 1847. Inclined by training and temperament toward endeavors that brought painting and chemistry together, he was among the earliest French artists to take up paper photography as an amateur pursuit, in about 1850.
Robert’s colleague Alfred Gobert, head of the Enameling Workshop at Sèvres, is shown here with his head slightly bowed and his eyes half closed (in part to help maintain his pose during a long exposure in bright sunlight), as if lost in thought. The shallow depth of field—only Gobert’s face is in focus—and the flecks of light and soft massing of shadows so characteristic of prints from paper negatives heighten the sense that this portrait is a privileged meditation by Robert on the interior world of his friend.
Gleaming pate.
THe blurred background looks like it’s encircling his head.
I agree that the background seems to be swirling around him in a circle, but so, too, are his arms and legs creating the same circular movement which is centered on his head.
His eyes seem to be peering downwards, and the bar of light on the left side of his mustache bothers me for some reason.
He is trying to be still, but he can’t quiet his mind that is swirling in all directions.
The background is so full of chaos.
His hands are clenched.