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!
The Sheepfold
Artist: Charles Jacque (French, Paris 1813–1894 Paris)
Date: 1857
Medium: Oil on wood
Dimensions: 18 1/8 x 36 1/8 in. (46 x 91.8 cm)
Classification: Paintings
The barn depicted here is thought to have been owned by a friend of Jacque’s in or near the village of Barbizon. Jacque had moved there from Paris in 1849, settling next door to Jean-François Millet, whose subject matter and painting style he adopted. Yet Jacque’s approach was more literal and descriptive than Millet’s. He came fully into his own with rustic scenes such as this one, in which the abundance of prosaic details is harmonized through the warm glow of sunlight. The chickens are more than incidental: in addition to painting Jacque also tried his hand as a poultry farmer.
Lamb chops for dinner tonight. Mutton for winter stews. Chicken paprika. Those are my votes.
I notice that the only real color in the painting is the young man’s blue shirt. And perhaps some yellow in the straw.
Once again you have the sun off to the left. The way it comes through the bars of the windows is mesmerizing. What’s also interesting to me is that if you look at the dead center of the painting, it’s just gray. The worker in the blue shirt is a little to the right, the animals are below, or two the left or right. Also, the source of light in the picture (the sun) appears to be pouring on a slant going downwards from left to right. However, the other source of light in the painting, the sheaf of hay, is angled in the opposite way: going up from left to right. This helps balance the picture. And which is more telling – the bucket (or washtub) on the floor below the painting’s center, or the shadow the bucket makes on its inside wall?