Totally—they get a little preview at the inn on the hill, their destination finally within sight.Never occurred to me before that one of the appealing things about that Brueghel is that the hunters entering stage left are (I think) arriving home, down into the safety of the valley, the potential warmth of the buildings. That's a very potent, comforting feeling in winter - arriving home to the warm hearth.
I never get this. Why do they make the painting all blurry and fucked up? I think I saw too many Ross replicas and cheap contemporary impressionists to ever like this stuff. The cathedrals, haystacks, water lilies—all fine and good. But small shitty blurry people?? Why??
Well, as I understand it, Monet was trying to capture the first fleeting impression a scene made on him before his brain caught up to his eyes. Although of course people don't look blurry like that to the focused eye, I think a large, bustling crowd like the one in that painting does first strike you as rather blurry and confused and amorphous.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply to my shitposting. All excellent points.Well, as I understand it, Monet was trying to capture the first fleeting impression a scene made on him before his brain caught up to his eyes. Although of course people don't look blurry like that to the focused eye, I think a large, bustling crowd like the one in that painting does first strike you as rather blurry and confused and amorphous.
Of course, the other explanation is that (despite painting portraits in his early career) Monet wasn't really interested in painting people. He painted some Parisian scenes, always with blurry crowds, but his interest was always more in the quality of light and atmosphere of a scene than in its 'concrete' realities. He found his true calling when he got out into the countryside and began painting trees, rivers, lilies, etc.
Worth pointing out also that the people in Brueghel's painting are just as stylised as in Monet. Those further from us than the hunters up front are pretty much all black silhouettes. People can of course be very indistinct from a distance but are they ever black silhouettes?
I'm marooned in the countryside at the moment. This Ravilious painting captures what winter looks like out here. Brown, grey, stark, muddy. Wretched, essentially.
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I just noticed their little penises are showing
i never thought of that either, looks like they didnt get much, and the pub sign is busted?Never occurred to me before that one of the appealing things about that Brueghel is that the hunters entering stage left are (I think) arriving home, down into the safety of the valley, the potential warmth of the buildings. That's a very potent, comforting feeling in winter - arriving home to the warm hearth.
zooming in on this now, it looks like it's a sanitised version where the poor innocents have been replaced with sheep or cheeses which are getting massacred instead
the breughels are the best by far in this thread. the first one is so twee it's a poster not a painting. the second one i don't really see how it's winter, it's some rocks. that impressionist one is good too.