Description
Brittany Landscape – the brightest thing in the picture is not the sky but the reflection
The lower third of the canvas is taken up by a calm river winding from the bottom edge towards the middle. The pale sky, the bare trees and the banks are mirrored in the water. Slender leafless trees stand above the river, leaning over it; their branches are painted in thin brownish and violet strokes. Bands of sharp green grass run along both banks. Brown-red slopes rise to left and right, densely covered with small vertical strokes. A grey-blue sky with soft clouds stands above. A tiny dark figure stands by the left bank. At the lower left a signature with a year is painted in. The work is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington under inventory number 1963.10.148; it was painted in 1888.
The strongest light is in the water
The sky on this canvas is muted: grey-blue, with warm greys in the clouds. The reflection of that sky in the river, by contrast, is almost white and is the lightest area on the whole canvas. The source of the light is therefore darker than its own reflection. That is not an error of observation but a decision, and it obliges the viewer to look down rather than up.
The trees are bare
Not one of the trees carries a leaf. The crowns are nets of thin branches through which the slope and the sky can be seen, and for that reason they do not close the space. This season is rare on this shelf: most canvases by this painter show summer or tropical green, whereas here everything is open and transparent.
How the slope is made
The brown-red hills are not painted as areas but as a dense multitude of short vertical strokes set side by side. Close up it is a weave of coloured dashes; at a distance it resolves into thicket. The same method returns in the reflection, except that there the strokes lie horizontally.
A single figure
By the left bank, among the trees, stands a small dark figure. It is singled out neither by colour nor by size and is easy to miss. Once noticed, it gives the scene its scale: only then does it become clear how wide the river is and how tall the trees are.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every painting here is made by hand in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the water is the hardest part: it is built from horizontal strokes that must stay separate, or the reflection turns into an even grey and the painting loses its brightest point. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval. Nothing on these pages is printed: an oil painting on canvas is begun again for every order.
- Subject: a river with reflections, bare trees and brown slopes above it.
- Technique: oil on canvas, dense short strokes in the slopes and the water.
- Sizes: landscape format, from 40 x 32 cm to 200 x 160 cm; 80 x 64 cm and 100 x 80 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the reflection of the sky in the water is lighter than the sky itself.
Other views of Brittany on this shelf: Haystacks in Brittany, Four Breton Women and Winter Landscape (Vinterlandskap). The museum notes the measurement as height by width: 71.1 x 89.5 cm.
