favorite painting Archives - Author K. Williams

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #87

What is your favorite painting?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

This week’s question had me really excited. I’m not an art history major but I do love art. I guess it’s something that comes with the territory of writing. My medium is words, and the pictures I make will be painted on the minds of the readers who encounter my books. Visual artists have the ability to make those visions corporeal, so to speak. I’ve always appreciated their ability.

Modern art is not where it’s at for me, however. Some things are certainly intriguing, but I know from word-smithing and my own attempts at visual art, how difficult it is to create as literal a representation as is possible. I raise my glass to those who have that ability. For instance, Ron Mueck the sculptor or Audrey Flack. There are many more and I encourage you to look into hyperrealism or realism to check out the works.

Open Book Blog Hop, William Adolphe Bouguereau, self portraits

William Adolphe Bouguereau, self portraits from 1886, 1879.

My favorite painting, though, comes from much earlier. There’s something about the smoky haze of the works done in earlier realism. You know they’re paintings and don’t have to search for a point in the work where the illusion isn’t so complete in order to be sure. Still, their realism is sublime. Mostly you’ll find this style on portraits of the late 19th and very early 20th century. At least, that is mostly what I see hanging in representation of the genre.

A few weeks ago, this hop asked us to talk about our favorite poems. In that post, I used a painting by my favorite artist, Williams Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). Bouguereau, if you couldn’t tell, was a French painter and academic. His second wife also painted.

Bouguereau’s works include pastoral portraits, nudes, religious iconography, and rural life. Once you get to know a little of his work, you’ll be able to identify it easily. Or, maybe I am obsessed? I wouldn’t be the only one!

My favorite painting is a nude titled: Evening Mood. The work has been re-rendered by enthusiasts many times, so finding a copy of the original is difficult. I discovered it one of those catalogs that sell museum type decor for the home, and I fell in love. Nudes are not usually my thing. I feel they’ve been done far too much, especially of women, and that they really have less to do with art than we’re constantly told. That aside, this work is impeccable. Something about the layout and colors insist you look beyond the subject’s bare breasts. Perhaps, on some level, I relate to it through having experienced a rather lazy evening in perfect comfort. She really does look comfortable; that state between asleep and awake. Evening mood…