Rendering Water

Johann Reger
War Galleys Advancing
1496
woodcut and letterpress
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Ignaz Raffalt
Boat Trip after the Rain
1849
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Albert Pinkham Ryder
Homeward Bound
ca. 1883-84
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Georges Seurat
Study of the Seine from La Grande Jatte
1888
oil on panel
Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Brussels

Arthur Rackham
In the Austrian Tyrol
1901
watercolor on paper
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Antoine Ponchin
Houses on the Water at Martigues
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes

Tom Thomson
A Northern Lake
1914
oil on panel
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Donna Schuster
Garden Reflections
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Williams, Brown & Earle (Philadelphia)
Garden Fountain, Château de Courances
1936
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Angelo Pinto
Icarus
ca. 1944
painted glass
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Arthur Tress
Boy Under Bridge, Queens N.Y.
1970
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michaele Vollbracht (designer)
Shopping Bag from Bloomingdale's, New York
ca. 1978
screenprint on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joanne Tod
Chapeau Entaillé
1989
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Tasman Sea, Ngarupupu
1990
gelatin silver print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Ed Pien
Pond #6
1993
oil on canvas
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Jack Stuppin
Window Rock
1995
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Lucas Samaras
Conflict 23
2003
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Large Bad Picture

Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or

some northerly harbor of Labrador,

before he became a schoolteacher

a great uncle painted a big picture.

Receding for miles on either side

into a flushed, still sky

are overhanging pale blue cliffs

hundreds of feet high,

their bases fretted by little arches,

the entrance to caves

running in along the level of a bay

masked by perfect waves.

On the middle of that quiet floor

sits a fleet of small black ships,

square-rigged, sails furled, motionless, 

their spars like burnt match-sticks.

And high above them, over the tall cliffs'

semi-translucent ranks,

are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds

hanging in n's in banks.

One can hear their crying, crying,

the only sound there is

except for occasional sighing

as a large aquatic animal breathes.

In the pink light

the small red sun goes rolling, rolling,

round and round and round at the same height

in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling,

while the ships consider it.

Apparently they have reached their destination.

It would be hard to say what brought them there,

commerce or contemplation.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

Salon Painting (19th Century)

Marie-Gabrielle Capet
Scene in the Studio of Madame Vincent
 (Salon of 1808)
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet
Young Woman mourning Dead Pigeon
 (Salon of 1808)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Arras

François-Joseph Heim
The Bloody Robe of Joseph brought to Jacob
(Salon of 1817)
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre-Henri Révoil
Joan of Arc imprisoned in Rouen
(Salon of 1819)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Eugène Delacroix
The Death of Sardanapalus
(Salon of 1828)
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Joseph-Laurent Bouvier
The Egyptian
(Salon of 1869)
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Jean-Jacques Henner
Woman on a Black Divan
(Salon of 1869)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse

Alphonse Eugène Félix Lecadre
Le Sommeil
(Salon of 1872)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Alexandre Antigna
Aragonaises d'Anso
(Salon of 1872)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans

Élie Delaunay
David Triumphant
(Salon of 1874)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ
Homer the Blind Wanderer
[Odyssey, left panel – right panel, Iliad]
(Salon of 1882)
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Henry Jones Thaddeus
The Wounded Poacher
(Salon of 1881)
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Charles Ronot
The Last Montagnards
(Salon of 1882)
oil on canvas
Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille

Léon Comerre
Pierrot playing Mandolin
(Salon of 1884)
oil on canvas
Musée départemental des Hautes-Alpes, Gap

Paul-Emmanuel Péraire
Gust of Wind
(Salon of 1892)
oil on canvas
Musée Salies, Bagnères-de-Bigorre

Paul Gervais
Folly of Titania
(Salon of 1897)
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Poem

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,

American or Canadian,

mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays,

– this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)

has never earned any money in its life.

Useless and free, it has spent seventy years

as a minor family relic

handed along collaterally to owners

who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there

does one see gabled wooden houses

painted that awful shade of brown.

The other houses, the bits that show, are white.

Elm trees, low hills, a thin church steeple

– that gray-blue wisp – or is it? In the foreground

a water meadow with some tiny cows,

two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;

two minuscule white geese in the blue water,

back-to-back, feeding, and a slanting stick.

Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,

fresh-squiggled from the tube.

The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring

clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky

below the steel-gray strom clouds.

(They were the artist's specialty.)

A specklike bird is flying to the left.

Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?

Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!

It's behind – I can almost remember the farmer's name.

His barn backed on that meadow. There it is,

titanium white, one dab. The hint of steeple,

filaments of brush-hairs, barely there,

must be the Presbyterian church. 

Would that be Miss Gillespie's house?

Those particular geese and cows

are naturally before my time. 

A sketch done in an hour, "in one breath,"

once taken from a trunk and handed over. 

Would you like this? I'll probably never

have room to hang these things again.

Your Uncle George, no, mine, my Uncle George,

he'd be your great-uncle, left them all with Mother

when he went back to England.

You know, he was quite famous, an R.A.  . . .

I never knew him. We both knew this place,

apparently, this literal small backwater,

looked at it long enough to memorize it,

our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,

or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).

Our visions coincided – "visions" is

too serious a word – our looks, two looks:

art "copying from life" and life itself,

life and the memory of it so compressed

they've turned into each other. Which is which?

Life and the memory of it cramped, 

dim, on a piece of Bristol board,

dim, but how live, how touching in detail 

– the little that we get for free,

the little of our earthly trust. Not much.

About the size of our abidance

along with theirs: the munching cows,

the iris, crisp and shivering, the water

still standing from spring freshets,

the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1976)