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 Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar
Artist: John Trumbull (American, Lebanon, Connecticut 1756–1843 New York)
Date: 1789
Culture: American
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 71 x 107 in. (180.3 x 271.8 cm)
Classification: Paintings
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 753
This painting depicts the events of the night of November 26, 1781, when British troops, long besieged by Spanish forces at Gibraltar, made a sortie, or sudden attack, against the encroaching enemy batteries. The focal point of the painting is the tragic death of the Spanish officer Don Jose de Barboza. Abandoned by his fleeing troops, he charged the attacking column alone, fell mortally wounded, and, refusing all assistance, died near his post. Trumbull portrays him rejecting the aid of General George Eliott, commander of the British troops. This work, the largest and last of three versions of the subject that Trumbull executed between 1786 and 1789, demonstrates his ambition to solidify his reputation on the basis of the highly respected genre of history painting.
This appears to be a battlefield and someone important appears dead on the ground. What gets me is that some of the soldiers on the left, despite their fancy-dress uniforms, are fighting with axes and pickaxes. What kind of army is this that spends all its money on fancy clothes but doesn’t supply its soldiers with real weapons?
Personally, I loathe paintings glorifying wars and battlefields. To turn something murderous into a magnificent painting with, I might add, a glorious golden frame, is immoral.
I’m wth Iris on this. Battlefields are never a place where soldiers show off their best dress uniforms and stand in a way that lets the painter fit them all in. Annd I agree with Gabby. How come the soldiers on the left are fighting with axes and pickaxes and even a crowbar?
I agree that this is a strange picture.
Like most of the other artwork we’ve seen, the sun is off to the left side. It shines from behind a raised parapet or hillock containing what looks like soldiers in blue coats who are rushing to fight the red-coated military people, who I agree are dressed up pristinely.
Yes, this picture glorifies war, even though apparently people are dying.