Arnold Kirkeby

American

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At least one rowboat occupied by two people floats on a lake, which is surrounded by lush green vegetation in this vertical landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with short and long parallel brushstrokes, so some details are difficult to make out. The white of the four geese lining the bank near us break up a color palette almost entirely dominated by spring, mint, and sage green and royal and baby blue. Three of the geese stand in a line and the fourth bends down to peck at the grass. A bed of deep pink flowers is indicated with touches of vibrant color to our right of the geese. One person wearing a golden yellow garment and a butter-yellow hat rows the boat near the center of the lake. A smudge of cobalt blue could be another person in that boat. Other curved lines in the water could be additional boats or may be reflections in the lake’s surface. Barely discernable, a person, possibly holding a stick, stands among the tall trees lining the opposite bank. The horizon line comes about three-quarters of the way up the composition, and the sky above is painted with watery blue, pale yellow, and ivory-white brushstrokes. The artist signed the work with dark letters near the lower left corner: “B. Morisot.”
Berthe Morisot, Girl in a Boat with Geese, c. 1889, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.50

Girl in a Boat with Geese

Berthe Morisot · c. 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.50

We look slightly down onto a baby tucked into an oval-shaped cradle with a woman sitting on the far side looking down at the child in this vertical painting. Both the woman and baby have light skin. The cradle is draped with a sky-blue, scallop-edged cloth decorated with pink flowers and green leaves. A curtain of the same material is tied above so it hangs down behind the head of the cradle from the top center of the composition. The baby’s dark eyes are wide open, and he seems to gaze ahead. His cheeks are flushed peach, and his coral-pink lips are pressed down in a crescent shape. The baby’s head is wrapped in a white hood with a royal-blue bow or decoration over the right ear, to our left. Two loosely painted, round, salmon-pink shapes on either side of the child suggest hands emerging from the under the white blanket. In his left fist, to our right, the baby holds a white drum on a pumpkin-orange stick, with red and white forms, possibly feathers, at the top. The dark green handle of a pinwheel lies across the baby’s legs in the cradle. Another green, vertical form overlapping the edge of the crib suggests that another toy is clipped or propped there. It is difficult to tell if the pinwheel in the crib has canary-yellow and mauve-pink blades or if there are two, overlapping toys. The woman sits with her back to us but is angled so we see her profile looking down at the baby. Her face is painted with broad strokes of sand brown and parchment white. Her dark hair is pulled back under a white cap, and she wears a charcoal-gray and black, vertically striped dress with a white collar. Her back rests against the slats of a wooden chair, which seems to dissolve into the loosely painted, fawn-brown area in the lower right corner. The cradle sits next to a bed, mostly cut off by the left edge of the painting, with a golden-brown blanket or cover. Eggshell-white cloth seems to hang around the bed and along the wall behind the woman. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes.
Claude Monet, The Cradle - Camille with the Artist's Son Jean, 1867, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.25

The Cradle - Camille with the Artist's Son Jean

Claude Monet · 1867 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.25