Henri le Sidaner – Soir de Printemps

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

(Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)

Henri le Sidaner, Soir de Printemps, c. 1920

Henri le Sidaner is amongst my new favourite artists because his paintings are just so damn dreamy and this painting, “Soir de Printemps” is no exception. The painting shows a view of the houses and blooming trees one evening in spring. Henri le Sidaner loved painting landscapes and gardens, overall he had a penchant for portraying places uninhabited by people or even animals, places which he could then, using the colours of his emotions, transform into landscapes and gardens of his dreams. The mood of his paintings is often dreamy, tinged with an inexplicable melancholy and a sense of beauty inevitably passing away, just like the warmth of summer does. In “Soir de Printemps” there is dreaminess, but no sadness. I dare say there is even a sense of excitement, and surely the painter must have felt excited as he gazed at this scene himself. An evening in spring is made for daydreams and the heart is filled to the brim with the beauty and fragrance of the blooming trees, and we are eager to take in all this transient beauty before the petals fall off, or are carried away by the wind. The houses with windows here and there from which a warm yellow lighth can be seen, and the trees in bloom create a lovely pattern and almost nothing else apart from these two motifs can be scene. The colour palette of lilac, grey, and blue perfectly encapsulated that hazy moment when the evening is falling in spring, as if the fairies themselves have woven a magical cloak and are covering the entire nature with it. I love the softness and vagueness of the scene, it is painted as if the painter was seeing the world through a gauze curtain. The tender, transient beauty of the blooming trees of early spring is truly unparalleled, especially after long, dreary months of winter.

Konstantin Somov’s Sleeping Beauties

“Sleep on and dream of love, because it’s the closest you will get to love.”
(Morrissey, November Spawned a Monster)

Konstantin Somov, Lady Lying on a Divan, 1917, watercolour

The Russian painter Konstantin Somov is a gift that keeps on giving! With all seriousness, I just keep finding new paintings of his that I simply adore. Somov’s prolific oeuvre consists of a diverse yet repetitive range of motifs; from his splendid carnival scenes with Harlequins, Pierrots and ladies dressed in eighteenth century style dresses, to lovers in forest settings, male nudes in bedrooms, meadows and rainbows…

Beautiful ladies reclining on a sofa, sleeping or just daydreaming is a yet another motif that is seen often throughout Somov’s work. My favourite of these “sleeping beauties”, at the moment, is the one above; a watercolour from 1917 titled “Lady Lying on a Divan”. A little detail, the snow-capped roof of a house across the street seen through the window in the upper right corner gives us a clue as to when exactly the painting was painting, in the winter of 1917-18, an ugly time of war, revolution and upheavals. Still, this delicate, doll-like reclining beauty is in a world of her own, oblivious to it all, or perhaps she is trying to take a nap and forget about it all. She is closing her eyes to reality and dreaming of the better days to come. I love the contrast of her porcelain pale skin with the redness of her cheeks, and also her pose, with the head and neck so stretched and then her left hand so elegantly placed on her waist, as if she were indeed a porcelain doll or a ballerina. The contrast between her dark dress and that vibrant red shawl around her shoulders is visually stunning. There is such an elegance about her figure and her face, and the fact that she is sleeping only intensifies this feeling. She is beautiful and passive, unaware of what is going on around her, dreaming away on a winter’s afternoon while the clock on the wall is ticking the minutes, hours away… What should land on her delicate, fragrant neck; a kiss or a butterfly? Since there are no butterflies in winter, a kiss it is, I say. Is she dreaming of flower gardens and kisses, of fountains of joy and secret caresses, or ripe apples and pink sunsets? Who knows, but we will let her dream…

Konstantin Somov, A Sleeping Woman, 1909

Konstantin Somov, Sleeping Young Woman, 1909

We may indeed call these paintings “variations on a theme” because they all share similiarities; the ladies are all in the same pose on the divan, even facing the same direction with their heads to the right, and the space around them, an elegant and sumptuous drawing room, is nearly identical. It is the details and colours that change, but the essence remains the same. In “Sleeping Young Woman”, painted in 1909, before the war and before all the turmoil, Somov had a more wild, rough approach. In times of peace, Somov sought vibrancy and , while in times of turmoil of 1917, as seen in the watercolour above, he sought harmony and peace. What energy and intensity is there in the woman’s dark blue dress! Attention to details was not his foretee here, but there is a palpable rush of energy. The lady’s arm, again, is placed in a doll-like way and her head stretched back, as if in some moments of secret ecstasy.

Konstantin Somov, Sleeping Lady in a Room, 1919

Painting “Sleeping Lady in the Room” from 1919 is the most detailed and the most ‘artificial’ looking out of all three paintings. The colours are almost too vibrant and the space almost too neat, too clean looking. The yellow dress that the Sleeping Beauty is wearing, with its ruffled details, low-cut bodice and three-quarter sleeves with ribbons, is just screaming Rococo and Boucher. One can almost feel the charm of the by-gone eras and sense a faint trace of Madame de Pompadour’s perfume… The lilacs in the vase are an indication of spring and she is also holding a letter or a note in her hand; who wrote it and what is in it, that is the real question! The lightness of a clear, sunny spring day is flooding the room. While the lady is sleeping, the couples on the panel behind her are giggling and kissing and having fun in the park. Somov is constantly referrencing the glory days of the eighteenth century and in particular of Rococo throughout his work.

Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs and Krishna Steals the Gopies’ Clothes

“Those nymphs, I want to perpetuate them.
So bright,
Their light rosy flesh, that it hovers in the air
Drowsy with tangled slumbers.
Did I love a dream?”

(Mallarme, Faun)

Gopies demanding their clothes from Krishna, Kangra, c 1800

(Disclaimer: this post was written in April.) As spring approaches, my thoughts start turning to Debussy, the playful games of the Faun and forest nymphs, forest groves and clear waters, lotus in bloom, weeping willows. There is without a doubt something sensual about the awakening in nature that always, in turn, awakens something inside of me. No other painter had painted nymphs as beautifully as John William Waterhouse in his 1896 painting “Hylas and the Nymphs”; the melancholy, the languour, the stilness of the green waters…

The painting shows Hylas, the young and handsome companion of Hercules, surrounded by enchanting nymphs that are seen arising from the tranquil greenish water as the lotus flowers themselves. Hercules and Hylas had arrived at the island of Cios and no sooner than the nymphs had noticed the handsome and young Hylas, that they became enchanted by his beauty. Hylas is being pulled into the nymph’s sinister watery abode, lured to his doomed. Nymphs are female creatures in Greek and Latin mythology. They are usually depicted as beautiful and fatal maidens who love to sing and dance, and behaving in a naughty way as one can see in the story with Hylas. Their name ‘nymph’ comes from Greek word ‘nymphē‘ which means ‘bride’ and ‘veiled’, referring to a marriageable young woman. One of the meaning is a ‘rose-bud’, perhaps indicating the beauty all the nymphs possess. The nymphs have been painted in art before, but never quite as magically, or as sinisterly. In previous versions they appeared plump and cheerful, whereas Waterhouse portrayed them as having more girlish bodies, with fair skin that takes on the greenish shade of the mystical waters around them. They appear otherworldy; their skin pale with a touch of absinthe green, their hair sleek and wet, decorated with but a few simple flowers. Their face expressions come in a wide range; from cold and posessive, to gazes full of yearning. My favourite are the two nymphs on the far right of the canvas; the dreamiest of them all, playfully coiling with the lotus leaves and staring somewhere into the distance.

John William Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896

Waterhouse’s painting is the first visual thing that comes to my mind when I think of nymphs and how beautiful and fair these Waterhouse’s nymphs are, as beautiful perhaps as the gopis from these Indian minature paintings. It is an understatement to say that I am obsessed with the Indian miniature paintings at the moment, in particular the Kangra paintings on love, and recently I have discovered these two paintings that depict a scene from Bhagavata Purana where the Hindu God Krishna in which he has stolen the clothes from the gopies bathing in the river Yamuna and now they are begging him to return the clothes to them. This is a fun and visually beautiful example of Krishna’s naughty, playful nature and his love of pranking. Saffron-clad Krishna is seen sitting high up in the tree above the river where the gopis are enjoying their bath. Their clothes are hung on the branches all around him and he is taunting them from above. The gopies, upon realising what has happened, are all in shock. Their different face expressions and body gestures are interesting to observe; some are pointing at hime and pleading with him, stretching out their arm and begging for the clothes to be returned, some are bowing their head down in shame or hiding in the lotus flower, and some are swimming away as if untouched by the situation. The gopis, or cowsherd girls, are Krishna’s devoted companons and as soon as the sound of Krishna’s flute starts spreading throughout the forest, the gopies arrive to his feet and gaze at him in absolute awe, with unrivalled love and pure devotion. Naturally, what the painting doesn’t show is that the gopis eventually let go of their shame and surrender to Krishna as they are.

Krishna Steals the Gopis’ Clothing, Garhwal, 1775-1800

Both the nymphs from Waterhouse’s painting and the gopis are painted as beautiful women with fair skin and long hair sleek from the water, there are lotus flowers in the water in both scenes, and both show a watery, natural setting with one male figure surrounded by beautiful women. In the Garhwal painting the water is painted in a very expressive manner, it seems to be flowing fast and in all directions and the gestures of the gopis are really expressive as well. Though a painting is silent, the faces of the gopis have so much to say. Although the visual resemblance is striking, the mood of these paintings, their symbolism and the play of dominance in them greatly differs. While the poor Hylas is powerless against charms of the nymphs, the beautiful gopies are powerless against the charms of Krishna.

Detail

Waterhouse detail

Detail

Arnold Böcklin – Ruin by the Sea

Arnold Böcklin, Ruin by the Sea (Ruine am Meer), 1880

Arnold Böcklin’s painting “Ruin by the Sea” is less a landscape of nature and more a landscape of the state of the soul. The title of the painting alone conveys such a melancholy, romantic state of the soul. Böcklin was a Swiss Symbolist painter but if I had to describe the mood of the majority of his paintings, and this one in particular, I would call it “dark Romanticism”. It is like an early nineteenth century Romantic painting, but seen through a veil of black tulle. Looking at the visual elements alone, this is something we might see on a canvas by Caspar David Friedrich, but in Böcklin’s paintings the dark, mysterious, unsettling, and foreboding elements are emphasised, even overemphasised. The artist called his similar, though more famous, painting “The Isle of the Dead” as “a picture for dreaming over”; what kind of dreams would arise from gazing at a painting such as this one?

The painting “Ruins by the Sea” shows the stone ruins of some mysterious building and a few dark and tall cypress trees looming over it like a shadow. In the background we see the infinities of the dark sea and the sky. I can feel the quietness of the place, an uneasy type of quietness… nothing save for the sound of the waves, now distant – now close, and the murmur of the western wind through the cypress trees. I feel the aloneness of this ruin, but not its loneliness. It doesn’t feel sad and abandoned, but uninviting, and the cypress trees serve as some sort of guards to this dark sacred place where only crows or demons may come and meet. Islands, ruins, dark seas and cypresses are motifs that constantly reappear in Bocklin’s paintings and they seem to be a great visul combination to portrait the eerie mood that Bocklin was clearly going after. There is a lot of mystery as well; what is the story behind the ruins? Who used to live there? Where are they now? How did the building look like in its original state and why did it fall to ruins?… Only memories are still haunting this place and slowly the darkness will envelop it and swallow it whole. Symbolism is a sort of a twisted, darkened version of Romanticism, and Bocklin was indeed inspired by the German art of Romanticism, and his paintings, his landscape or seascapes, from the 1880s, are conveying a dream-like mood that suggests death and decay. When I gaze at this painting, the music that comes to my mind is the Echo and the Bunnymen’s 1981 album “Heaven Up Here”; a wonderful post-punk album with a dark but hypnotic mood.

The Love Adventures of Radha and Krishna – Indian Miniature Painting

“O Krishna! Ever since she has seen you, she does not want anything else. She does not look at a lotus nor does she want to look at the beautiful moon. Even though by nature she is romantic, she does not want to listen to love stories. The beauty of three worlds do not touch her. If she does not see you, she will die. Please come and meet her!”

(From the Rasikapriya, as translated by Harsha V. Dehejia)

Radha and Krishna in the Grove, opaque watercolour on paper, Pahari, Kangra, ca. 1780

These past few weeks I have really been enjoying these watercolours of divine lovers Radha and Krishna. Their love and devotion are pure and strong, but still there is a certain playfulness and naughtiness in their love and these artworks beautifully illustrate these different moments of love, from sweet tenderness to jealousies, the yearning and the waiting, the love gazes and adoration, all in the beautiful, enchanting, verdant nature settings. All the watercolours in this post belong to the Pahari painting school; it is an umbrella term used for Indian paintings, mostly miniature, that were made in the Himalayan hill kingdoms of North India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, notably Kangra, Guler, Garhwal and others. The theme of love is an all pervading theme in the world of arts, but in no other art movement, in no other time has the cult of love been cherished to such an extent. Love seems to have been a religion and the very air that everyone was breathing, and this certainly tells us something about the culture and about the times in which these paintings were created, and not only created but also cherished and enjoyed. Vibrant colour, delicacy, sensuality, female beauty, a perfect dose of tenderness and naughtiness; these paintings posses all these elements – in abundance.

Perhaps my favourite out of these artworks is the one above called “Radha and Krishna in the Grove”, painted around the same time that the French Rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard was painting his amorous couples, stolen kisses and secret park meetings. Lovers, flirtatios and natural setting; similar motifs in both examples. The presentation of nature in Fragonard’s paintings is beautiful and his vision of love alluring and playful, but nothing can compare to the Beauty of Nature and Beauty of Love in the Kangra paintings on love. In this watercolour Radha and Krishna are shown enjoying their time and one another by a flowing stream of water, sitting on a soft bed of plaintain leaves, hidden by the lush tree tops, delighting in the fragrance of all the flowers. The nature around them is vivacious and alive, as if reflecting the ardours of love between the lovers. Krishna is dressed in his traditional yellow attire while Radha is looking delighful in gold and red. There are pink lotus flowers blooming on the surface of the river, all eager to hear the sweet nothings whispered between the lovers. It is just such an idyllic painting. The nature in all these watercolours absolutely mesmerises me.

Krishna Uses A Ruse To Meet His Beloved, 1781

This is a dream-like moment, but things are not always so sweet and dreamy between Radha and Krishna. In “Krishna Uses a Ruse to Meet His Beloved”, Krishna is seen dressed in an attire of a gopi so that Radha will think he is a gopi and will confide in her about her love woes. I love the gold details in this watercolour, the trees again are stunning but I also I love the little details that help build a story such as the little boat, for example. It makes me imagine that Krishna used that boat to come. Will they leave together on the boat to some far-off shore like the one in the watercolour above, where they can enjoy private moments? The lotus flowers are all-pervading, noisy yet beautiful creatures. Never kiss in front of them – they will tell.

Radha imagines Krishna with other women, from Gita Govinda, attributed to Purkhu, 1820

Krishna flirting with the Gopis, to Radhas sorrow. Kangra Painting, c. 1760

I also really love the watercolours where Radha is telling her friend about Krishna suspected cheating; in the lower right portion of the painting there is Radha confiding in her friend, while in the other parts of the painting there are different, imagined scenes of Krishna seducing other alluring gopis and enjoying himself while Radha is alone. The following watercolour is a proof that these are not mere jealous imagining on Radha’s behalf; there is Krishna is his yellow-like-the-Sun attire seducing with his appearence alone, and then words, all the beautiful and smitten gopis. Yes, yes, Radha is his special one, his one and only, but tell it to her when such a flirtatious scene is going one! Woe is her. But we know that Krishna will come back soon to comfort her, seduce her and assure her of his love and devotion, and she will again be all loving and trusting and sweet. It is the eternal dance of love, played by the sound of Krishna’s flute and Radha’s heartbeats. This is the downfall of being in love with a charmer.

Krishna Spying on Bathing Radha; truly how naughty!?

There are playful moments such as those when Krishna is spying on Radha while she is bathing, or when Krishna is wearing Radha’s clothes and Radha is wearing Krishna’s clothes, as presented in the watercolour bellow, imagine just how entertaining that would have looked like in real life, even in painting it is amusing, and then there are tender moments where Krishna is combing Radha’s hair and she is taking quiet delight in it, smiling contently because she knows that while he may be gazing at other gopis, admiring their beauty or flirtatiously amusing himself with them, that in the end she is the one, the Queen of His Heart:

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover
…

(The Beatles, Something)

I really must take a moment to appreciate the absolute beauty of nature in all these watercolours! I am drawn to it as the bumblebee is drawn to lavender. I love the attention to details when it comes to the depiction of the landscape. In painting after painting, it is just stunning – a true feast for the eyes, and the heart. Every tree is individualised. Every little leaf, every little pink or red flower is vibrant and alive, oozing its fragrance over the paper and over the centuries that have passed since it was painted. The various shades of green and blue, the layer upon layer of different plants, the little leaves and little blossoms, everything so palpably dreamy and delicate. Truly, the characters of these paintings are not just the figures of Krishna and Radha, but all the trees and flowers and lotuses and birds. One thing I know for sure, a piece of my heart belongs now to these painting, or rather, to the magical land that was depicted and created in them, and it is a land of Love and a “land of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers”, to quote John Keats’s poem “Hyperion”. When I think of some famous western representations of love and lovers in art – how lifeless and bland they seem to my eyes now. Compared to the vibrancy and magic of these Kangra paintings, they seem grey in comparison. The real tenderness, the real passion, the real union of souls; I find it all in these paintings of Krishna and Radha.

Radha with Her Confidant, Pining for Krishna, Folio from the Second or Tehri Garhwal Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd), 1775-80

Radha and Krishna Dressed in Each Other’s Clothes India, Himachal Pradesh, Kangra, c 1800-1825, Opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Krishna Combs Radha’s Hair c. 1820

“Charm of my life! by whose sweet power
All cares are husht, all ills subdued–
My light in even the darkest hour,

My crowd in deepest solitude!”

(Tibullus, To Sulpicia)

Radha and Krishna shelter under a Parasol. Attributed to the Purkhu family workshop, Kangra Miniature, c. 1825

Krishna Charms Radha Forest Glade, An Illustration From ‘Lambagraon’ Gita Govinda Series. Circa 1820. Kangra.

Radha and Krishna take shelter in a tree, Garhwal, 1820-1830

Krishna Adorning Radha’s Hair ca. 1815-20, Unknown Artist (Indian), opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Marc Chagall: Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me”

Marc Chagall, Les Amoureux, 1928

These days I am not merely thinking about Marc Chagall’s artworks – I am living in them, and oh my, what a wonderful place to live in. In particular, I am enjoying gazing at his painting “The Lovers” from 1928. The painting, as suggested in the title, shows two lovers lost in an embrace, floating somehere in the sky, somewhere in the world of their own. The motif of lovers is something that pervades Chagall’s canvases. While the woman is gazing in the distance, the man’s head is leaned on her shoulder, as if seeking comfort. She is looking into the future and he is holding onto her. The crimson colour of the woman’s dress is echoed by the fuchsia coloured background and in the colour of the roses on the right side of the painting. A blue sky with a large full moon and a bird flying by is seen emerging from the bottom right side of the canvas.

Chagall’s lovers don’t live in the real, material, tangible world around us, no, they live in the realm of love, in the soft, feathery, fragrant and sweet clouds of love. Dancing in the sky in the rhythm of each other’s hearts, floating through the night sky like shooting stars. Even when the space around the lovers is real, with its little cottages, wooden fences, cows, goats, fiddlers and mud, this ugly banality is transformed and transcended, it is as if the lovers are completely untouched by it all. It’s like threading over the fresh snow and leaving no footprints. In Chagall’s art the “down to earth” and “dreamy” meet and collide in a perfect way. Chagall is the most tender-hearted man in the world of art and his innocent, imaginative and childlike vision of the world is obvious in his canvases. The figure that always haunts his art is the slender figure of a black haired woman; his beloved wife Bella Rosenfeld.

Marc Chagall, The Promenade, 1917-18

Their early days of love are captured in a series of paintings such as “Birthday”, “Promenade” and “Over the Town”. There is a playful innocence and a pure display of affections in these paintings that chimes with me so well. Chagall takes the phrase “floating in the air” quite literally because in these paintings the lovers are flying indeed; the power of their love is so strong that not even gravity can stop it.”The Promenade” shows Chagall and Bella having a picnic on a meadow outside town but then suddenly Bella is flying in the air like a pink ballon. Chagall is holding her hand but he too will quickly rise into the clouds following his darling. Painting “Over the Town” shows an embracing couple flying above the little houses of the little town which is now too small to contain the vastness of the love that they feel. The houses and the landscape under them both seem faded, as if seen in a dream or in a memory, painted in shades of grey. Only that one house is red, like a crimson red heart pulsating in the rhythm of love.

“Over the Town” is a painting which thematically and aesthetically goes hand in hand with Chagall’s painting “Birthday” painted in 1915; both paintings show lovers magically lifted from the ground by the power of love, the power against which all the mundane things in life suddently seem gray and irrelevant. When I gaze at this paintings, these lovers which all have faces like Chagall and Bella, the lyrics of the Beatles’ song “Something” come to mind;

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover
Something in her style that shows me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

You’re asking me will my love grow
I don’t know, I don’t know
You stick around, now it may show
I don’t know, I don’t know…“

Marc Chagall, Birthday, 1915

I can imagine Chagall gazing at Bella and musing to himself “something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover, something in the way she woos me…” In the painting “Birthday” it is Chagall who is flying above Bella though she too is about to join him soon. Again we see the everyday transformed into the wonderful; a simple room, Bella in her everyday clothes, yet there is magic, the magic of love which transforms everything. Bella wrote about this feeling which Chagall so beautifully portrays in his paintings: “I suddenly felt as if we were taking off. You too were poised on one leg, as if the little room could no longer contain you. You soar up to the ceiling. Your head turned down to me, and turned mine up to you… We flew over fields of flowers, shuttered houses, roofs, yards, churches.” In most paintings Bella is portrayed as wearing the same clothes she would have been wearing everyday and on the photos which exists of her, and the town we see is their hometown of Vitebsk in Belorus. Both of these elements bring a domestic kind of familiarity which becomes magical and sweet when Chagall portrays it.

Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1913

The love at first sight between Bella and Chagall started in 1909 when a beautiful daughter of a rich jeweller met the poor and aspiring painter who worked as an apprentice for Leon Bakst and it lasted for thirty five years until Bella, sadly, passed away three months shy of her forty-nineth birthday in 1944. In his autobiography “My Life”, Chagall writes of Bella: “Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me; as if she has always watched over me, somewhere next to me, though I saw her for the very first time. I knew this is she, my wife. Her pale colouring, her eyes. How big and round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul.”

Bella, although seemingly a quiet, pale and withdrawn girl, was enthusiastic about Chagall as well, and later wrote about being mesmerised by his ethereal pale blue eyes: “When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes … long, almond-shaped … and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat.“ She also wrote of their first meeting: “I was surprised at his eyes, they were so blue as the sky … I’m lowering my eyes. Nobody is saying anything. We both feel our hearts beating.“

Marc Chagall and Bella in Paris, 1938

Marc Chagall and Bella, c 1920

Chagall’s paintings reflect his way of thinking, he said; “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” These are painting created from the heart, indeed. There is no logic, rationality or coldness about his art. Even when he paints in the Cubist manner, his squares and rectangles are not harsh but somehow still coated in the colour of dreams. Chagall had no interest in Cubism and Impressionist and was of an opinion that art is the “state of the soul.”

Marc Chagall, Lovers in Pink, 1916

Marc Chagall, Grey Lovers, 1917

When I am in love I live not in real world but in Chagall’s paintings. I am flying in the night sky and I am bathed in that gorgeous blueness. I am smiling at the stars and they are smiling back at me. Their golden dust is falling all over my white tulle dress. I am floating above the bridges, forests, meadows, flower fields, little houses with red roofs. I hear the violins, and flute, and the guitar, and I am carried away by that sweet music. I smell the violets, the roses, the lily of the valley; what sweet scents fill this warm summer night. Love is a warm summer night. My heart is overflowing with love and bursting into a thousand ruby red rose petals, and the petals fall and fall like a never-ending waterfall. I am melting into shapes, sounds and colours. I am the lilac, I am the crimson, I am the blue. I am the bird and the star. I am a rose petal carried by the wind, travelling far and far beyond. The coldness, dreariness and bleakness of winter Can.Not.Touch.Me. To live always in this way ahh that would be a life well lived. Is it possible? Is it really possible? Gazing at Chagall’s paintings makes me believe that it indeed is.

Andrea Kowch: A Beautiful Sense of Melancholy and Nostalgia Permeates Everything

“A beautiful sense of melancholy and nostalgia permeates everything as the natural world prepares to surrender itself over to winter.“

(Andrea Kowch)

Andrea Kowch, Knolls Edge

Andrea Kowch is one of my favourite contemporary artists. All of her paintings possess a dreamy and mysterious mood that is bound to make one curious. The everyday plain banality of the countryside is transformed into a scene out of some magic realism novel. Without a doubt, Kowch possesses a rich imagination and she has the artistic skill to match it. I mean, her technique and the detailed approach are impessable. In one interview she said that painting was something meditative for her, she even calls it a “self-therapy”: “The process of being a painter has served as a form of self-therapy for me, in that all the hours I spend painting, I also spend thinking and allowing myself to fully feel my deepest emotions and know myself. I come out of each piece transformed in a new way each time. People need encouragement to get in touch with their realest emotions and embrace them. What some may see in my work as “intense” or “disturbing”, others may see as beautiful and liberating. It happens all the time, and neither interpretation is correct or incorrect.”

A landscape with two women and a tree in the background, so simple in visual motives and yet so mysterious in the mood it conveys. The ordinary becomes extraordinary under Kowch’s brush. Scenes of magic realism indeed, but an interesting thing is that in novels such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” no matter the magic realism the plot and the characters still needs to be explained and it needs to make sense to the reader. On the other hand, Kowch doesn’t need to explain anything in her art; why are these ladies sitting here so near to the jumping frogs, why are they dressed so lightly considering the cold weather indicated by the bare autumnal tree behind them? This is all left to us to interpret and this is the beautiful but also the mysterious side of visual art.

The models for all of Kowch’s paintings are her friends. These two women are sitting casually on the meadow; their bodies are turned to different sides but interestingly they are both looking on the left. What is so interesting over there that we cannot see? The frogs are also casually jumping around but the women don’t seem to mind it the least bit. They appear to be fixated on that something which is beyond our sight. Kowch’s female figures always appear frozen, spellbound even, and this just serves to further the mystery. They are wearing their petticoats, tights and boots but their shoulders are bare. How are they not cold and shivering?

The tree in the background, completely bare and its spooky branches reaching towards the “skies that are ashen and sober” are a good indication of the autumnal weather. And this doesn’t appear to be the golden sunny autumnal day, no, this is the portrait of deep autumn’s doom and gloom. The crows in the background flying around the tree and the fireflies dancing and flying around the women further perpetuate the painting’s mysterious, dreamy charms. I like the line which marks the end of the meadow and behind it we see faint traces of vanilla yellow sunlight coming from afar. It creates a beautiful contrast between the lightness coming from the background and the swampy, frog and fireflies laden meadow bellow.

The tree is a definite ominous element and makes me think of something we would find in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. I also love the way Kowch paints blades of grass; she almost gives individual identity to every single piece of grass or wheat or whatever else she is painting. She truly creates a sense of texture. Perhaps a little bit this meadow and the girls bring to mind Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christine’s World” from 1948, but the atmosphere is different.

Kowch’s painting style may perhaps even be described as “dark fairytale” because both elements are all-pervading in her canvases; the dark, gloomy, almost Gothic vibes with the elements of fairytales and storytelling. In her own words: “I loved fairy-tales as a girl, and still do. They were an escape into a romantic, mysterious, and magical world. The classic tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm were the first to charge my imagination as a child. I later discovered and fell in love with the art of Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle… I’ve always been drawn to and intrigued by stories that are a bit twisted; the ones containing strange characters and a prevailing sense of impending danger. Perhaps that’s why my paintings often carry a similar feeling. There’s always an aspect of something unknown about to happen. The story is never fully revealed, it simply continues on, each painting serving as the next page or chapter.”

Some motives that are bound to be seen in nearly all of Kowch’s paintings are the countryside setting, whether it’s the fields of corn, wheat or barley, or the meadows littered with dandelions and other flowers, strange trees with bare and twisted branches, old barns or cottages; women, often with pale wistful faces, messy hair and strange, old-fashioned clothes, then animals such as ravens, seagulls, frogs, turkeys, dogs, roosters, crickets, grasshoppers, rabbits, even a guinea pig in one painting. The colours she uses are distinctly autumnal. She weaves the dreamy tapestries of her imagination in shades of fern and moss green, garnet red, cider, amber and marmalade orange, mustard yellow, ash grey, cinnamon brown, boysenberry purple…

Kowch is not shy when it comes to admitting her love for autumn: “Autumn is my favorite season. The scents in the air, changing landscapes, colors, mood of the sky, air of ominous foreshadowing… It’s when the earth begins to truly bare its soul. It’s when I can feel the bones, core, and essence of nature. There is also a cozy and mysterious quality that inspires me to turn inward and relish solitude and explore deeper feelings. The heavy, rolling clouds spark moods in me which translate into the work. A beautiful sense of melancholy and nostalgia permeates everything as the natural world prepares to surrender itself over to winter. All of those things are very poignant, and speak to my soul in many profound ways.”

All the quotes in this post are from an interview which you can read here.

J.M.W.Turner – Sunset over a Ruined Castle on a Cliff

“Autumn approaches and
The heart
Begins to dream.”

(Bashō, from The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets)

J.M.W.Turner, Sunset over a Ruined Castle on a Cliff, 1835-39, bodycolour on paper

The last true month of summer – August – has not even passed yet and already my end-of-summer-blues has started sinking in. I awoke the other day not welcomed by golden rays of sweet sunshine but with a gust of colder breeze. I sneezed… And I realised at that moment that summer is fleeing. A succesion of rainy days is a further reminder and now I cannot escape the realisation. Surely there will be more sunny days in September, but it is inevitable: the clock is ticking the last minutes of the summer of 2022. It’s back to scarves and jackets, cloudy skies, lighted candles, hot teas, wet streets and falling leaves. I feel a huge wave of blue sadness overwhelming me… A poetic kind of sadness and the only way to soothe it is to immerse myself in all things beautiful, poignant, melancholy and with a touch of the sublime.

It’s a wonderful thing then that I recently discovered yet another painting by J.M.W. Turner which I adore. This one is called “Sunset over a Ruined Castle on a Cliff” and it was painted between 1835 and 1839 in the medium of bodypaint on paper. Just the title alone catapults me into mad romantic reveries! The words such as “sunset”, “ruined castle” and “cliff” are enough to start the wildfire in my imagination. So so romantical! And the lyrical beauty of the painting perfectly justified the beauty of the title. It’s not a clickbait for sure, you know, a pretty title but a boring painting. Turner has painted many and many sketches and watercolours of castle, some half-ruined and some still intact, but this painting is something else. The rich and warm colours of the painting are warming my soul in a way only beautiful things can. I love the gradient way the colour go from the lavender sky to the pinkish-red-wine coloured ruins of the castle perched on top of the hill, over to the warm orange and yellow shades. The depths of the landscape bellow the castle with a lake I believe are painted in cooler blue and grey tones.

Considering just how abstract this painting is; the castle is not painted in a detailed manner, and there is no clear, strict, defined space such as we may find in some of Turner’s other paintings, the soft, gradient flow of colours really creates a certain vague, dreamy magic. I love how the yellow light appears out of nowhere in the middle of the lavender sky, right above the ruined castle’s highest tower. The light of the sunset is at once illuminating the castle in its warm, almost redish glow, and covering it with a veil of vagueness, mystery and dreams. Just like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty is covered with a veil of brambles, ivy and thorns, the castle in Turner’s vision is covered in a veil of sunset dreams. All of Turner’s watercolour sketches of castles have a vague, dreamy quality to them, but this one is something special or at least it fits my mood at the moment because it’s dreamy, impalpable and … just as all that is happy and beautiful, it is just beyond reach. I feel that if I stretched my arm and tried to touch the castle it would disappear, crumble into dust like a dry moth on the windowsill.

And something else crumbling into dust these days is my summer castle made out of poetry, wildflowers, moonlight and dreams. Just like the roots of a tree are encroaching the pavement or growing under the house, the cold and crooked fingers of the approaching autumn are slowly encroaching my summer castle. Soon the branches will break the windows, the winds blow off the rose wallpapers, and autumn rains soak in the soft carpets, the moss will grow over the birch hardwood floors, and the fog will hide the castle away from me forever… I need something beautiful to cling to and Turner’s paintings of castles and ruins are a wonderful choice.

But the last day of summer
Never felt so cold
The last day of summer
Never felt so old
Never felt so…

All that I have
All that I hold
All that is wrong
All that I feel for or trust in or love
All that is gone

(The Cure, The Last Day of Summer)

John Constable – Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (Rainstorm over the Sea)

“My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed. But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.“

(Mary Shelley, Mathilda)

John Constable (1776–1837), Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (Rainstorm over the Sea) (1824-28), oil on paper, 22.2 × 31.1 cm

English painter John Constable painted many interesting landscapes but the most beautiful, the most majestic and awe-inspiring, to me, are his seascape studies painted in Brighton around 1824-28. The most dramatic of these seascape studies is the painting you see above called “Seascape Study with Rain Cloud” or sometimes simply called “Rainstorm over the Sea”. The painting shows the sea and the vastness of the sky above it in the moment of a rainstorm. The rough, sketchy look of the sky attests to the quick manner in which the painting was executed, but still there is precision and confidence in the way the dark, threatening clouds were captured so as to inspire awe and the feeling of the sublime. The sea here takes up very little space of the canvas while almost the majority of it is dedicated to the portrait of the roaring clouds heavy with anguish and rain. It is in these moments, very much loved by the Romantics, that nature reveals its raw power. The clouds are black at parts and the vertical motion of the brushstrokes helps to convey the wildness of the transient moment of the summer rainstorm over the sea. Constable had a particular penchant for observing and portraying clouds, in all their shapes, colours and moods, and this is evident in these seascape studies.

John Constable, Seascape Study: Brighton Beach Looking West, ca. 1824-28

Another seascape study painted in the 1824-28 period is the painting called “Seascape Study: Brighton Beach Looking West” which shows two tiny female figures standing on the desolate beach and looking out at the sea. Their dresses are windswept as they admire the breaking of the waves. Our eye stretches from the soft seafoam in the shallow sea in the foreground all the way to the dark blue deep sea in the background. The diagonal line which visually separated the beach from the sea slightly curves in the background and, again, more than the half of the canvas is occupied by the sky with the delightful white clouds. Their whiteness is echoed by the whiteness of the sea foam and it is just so exciting to see touched of white colour here and there, they enlived everything. These beach scenes make me think of the film “Me Without You” (2002) which is set in Brighton in the early 1980s, in some scenes the girls are seen walking on the Brighton pier or walking by the sea.

John Constable, Seascape Study: Boat and Stormy Sky, 20 July 1828

Above we can see yet another wild and untamed portrayal of a stormy sky over a raging sea. This is a little less known painting by Constable but interestingly we know the exact date it was painted, the 20 July 1828, which is amazing.

The reason behind Constable’s constant visits to Brighton was the frail health of his wife Maria. They all hoped she would find peace and serenity in the melliflous music of the sea waves and the fresh, salty sea air. Maria and their six children stayed in Brighton for lenghtly periods of time on and off in the period from 1824 to 1828; she gave birth to their seventh and last child in January that year and finally succumbed to consumption in November. Constable would split time between London and Brighton and, interestingly, he had mixed feelings about Brighton. At times he wrote that Brighton was “perhaps no spot in Europe where so many circumstances conducive to health and enjoyment are to be found combined“, and other times he complained at how touristy and hectic it was, offering no serenity for his artistic endeavors: “Brighton is the receptacle of the fashion and offscouring of London. The magnificence of the sea, and its (to use your own beautiful expression) everlasting voice is drowned in the din & lost in the tumult of stage coaches – gigs – ‘flys’ etc – and the beach is only piccadilly …. By the sea-side … in short there is nothing here for the painter but the breakers – & the sky – which have been lovely indeed and always [various].”

John Constable, Brighton Beach, 1824, oil sketch

The third seascape study I’ve chosed fro this post is this simple but fascinating oil sketch called “Brighton Beach”, painted in 1824. The canvas is distinctly elongated which gives the painting a panorama-like view of the beach. The mood is definitely daker in this painting than in the previous one; the sky and the clouds are a much darker shade of blue and this stormy mood brings to mind the hypnotic sounds of the Echo and the Bunnymen’s album “Heaven Up Here” (1981) which is my go-to rainy day album.

Winslow Homer – Sunset Fires

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

(Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds)

Winslow Homer, Sunset Fires, 1880

I am a big fan of Winslow Homer’s watercolours and there is always a watercolour which is my particular favourite at that particular moment. Sometimes my favourite Homer watercolour is the one that I discover or rediscover at that moment, and other times it is the watercolour that speaks to me in some way, through the mood or the colours… At the moment, in these watermelon and crimson red late summer days of August my favourite is the watercolour titled “Sunset Fires” which dates from 1880. I am immensely attracted to its rich shades of red and orange. August is a red month for me. I see it red in my mind’s eye; the blood of dying summer. The watercolour shows the sunset at sea, a ship and a smaller boat with loosely sketched human figures of sailors on it. These simple motives; sea, boats, sky, sunsets, is something that we find often in the works of the Romantic painter such as Caspar David Friedrich. So the interesting thing here isn’t the originality of the motif, but rather the manner in which they were captured by the artist’s brush. Homer uses a very limited colour palette; only reds, oranges and greys, but they work in such a wonderful harmony where one colour feeds and kisses the other. The red would not appear as vibrant were it not for the lead greyness to contrast it, and without the warm orange tones the painting would not have its vibrant magic, its fireworks, its explosion of energy and joy. I also love the tiny empty spaces between the brushstrokes where the white paper underneath reveals itself to it; this is an interesting thing about watercolours. Homer loved the American landscape and travelled all over the country to capture the most beautiful spots, but also he travelled across the border, to the Caribbean, constantly seeking new landscapes to explore and capture in his artworks. It is in the Caribbean that the sea, the sky and sailors would become his main motif, but, as much as I adore his Caribbean watercolours, no sky in them compares to the fiery beauty of the sky here in “Sunset Fires”.

Homer’s watercolour can be seen in two ways; as mere sketches, or studies which were intended to serve as the basis for the oil-on-canvas painting, or as independent works of art. In my view, they are the latter because I don’t think one art medium should be seen as better or more important than the another. Why should only oil-on-canvas artworks be deserving or admiration and respect, and other mediums be seen as sketchy or less serious?

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”

(Jack Kerouac, On the Road)