Monday, May 14, 2018

Rural Nineteenth Century in Paint

Joseph Mallord William Turner
House beside the river, with trees and sheep
ca. 1806-1807
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

John Constable
East Bergholt
1808
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

John Constable
Shoreham Bay near Brighton
1824
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Richard Parkes Bonington
Landscape with a pond
ca. 1825-26
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

In payment for those mornings at the mirror while,
                          at her
               expense, I'd started my late learning in Applied

French Braids, for all
                          the mornings afterward of Hush
               and Just stand still,

to make some small amends for every reg-
                          iment-
               ed bathtime and short-shrifted goodnight kiss,

I did as I was told for once,
                         gave up
               my map, let Emma lead us through the woods

"by instinct," as the drunkard knew
                          the natural
               prince. We had no towels, we had

no "bathing costumes," as the children's novels
                          call them, and I
               am summer's dullest hand at un-

premeditated moves. But when
                          the coppice of sheltering boxwood
               disclosed its path and posted

rules, our wonted bows to seemliness seemed
                         poor excuse.
               The ladies in their lumpy variety lay

on their public half-acre of lawn,
                          the water
               lay in dappled shade, while Emma

in her underwear and I
                          in an ill-
               fitting borrowed suit availed us of

the breast stroke and a modified
                          crawl.
               She's eight now. She will rather

die than do this in a year or two
                          and lobbies,
               even as we swim, to be allowed to cut

her hair. I do, dear girl, I will
                          give up
               this honey-colored metric of augmented

thirds, but not (shall we climb
                          on the raft
               for a while?) not yet.

– Linda Gregerson (1996)

Richard Parkes Bonington
Les Salinières near Trouville
ca. 1827-28
oil on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Samuel Palmer
View of Lee, North Devon
1834-35
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
La Châtaigneraie
ca. 1830-40
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
The Dyke
ca. 1865
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gustave Courbet
La Ronde Enfantine
ca. 1862
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Camille Pissarro
Les bords de la Seine à Bougival
1864
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Auguste Renoir
The gust of wind
ca. 1872
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
94 degrees in the shade
(Henry Francis Thompson, age 17, in cornfield at Godstone, Surrey)
1876
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Vincent van Gogh
L'Allée en automne
1885
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Richard Roland Holst
Orchard at Eemnes
ca. 1888-95
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Eugène Boudin
The bridge over the Touques at Deauville
1895
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland