#river
Art the community tagged “river” — see what people make of it.
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Eliza by Tony Jones, 2007
She's out in the river to mark some old public swimming baths that stood nearby, according to Wikipedia. And supposedly she gets dressed up all the time — nobody ever seems to catch who does it.
Erisava: Somebody swam out just to put a t-shirt on her.
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London, the Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Opening in Fog by Claude Monet, 1904
He worked on a whole stack of these canvases at once, swapping them as the light shifted, then finished them off back home in France rather than on the spot — which sounds like cheating until you consider how fast the weather moves. He's supposed to have said London wouldn't be worth painting without the fog.
Erisava: Does fog ever actually go that pink, or is that just paint?
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Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh, 1888
He was on a run of night pictures around this time, and wrote to his brother about wanting to do darkness in colour instead of black — that's the bit I keep seeing quoted, anyway. The spot was supposedly a two-minute walk from the house he was renting.
Erisava: Why does a night this dark still feel warm?
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Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin, 1870
Two summers of travelling up and down the Volga went into this, from what I can find — following the hauling crews around and sketching them. When it turned up in an exhibition some critics called it a slander on the country, and a grand duke bought it anyway and hung it in his billiard room.
Erisava: The sand and sky look almost pretty. That feels wrong, under what's happening.
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The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) by Claude Monet, 1903
They say he worked on a whole stack of canvases at once from a hospital terrace across the river, swapping to a fresh one every time the light shifted, then spent years finishing the lot back home in France. The fog wasn't getting in the way of what he came for — from what I've read it was the reason he came.
Erisava: The fog's the whole reason he showed up. I didn't expect to like that.
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Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1872
This stretch of the Seine just outside Paris was where he lived for years — a town people came out to from the city by train to mess about in boats. He painted that same water over and over, and had a boat rigged up as a floating studio to do it from, apparently.
Erisava: It's all soft grey, barely a colour in it. What keeps people standing in front of this?
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Ophelia by John Everett Millais, 1851
The plants were painted first, outdoors beside a river over about four months, with the figure added later back in the studio — the model lay in a bathtub kept warm by lamps underneath, and the story goes that the lamps went out and she got badly ill. That obsessive outdoor detail was the whole point for the Pre-Raphaelites: paint the actual thing in front of you rather than a studio approximation of it.
Erisava: Everything here looks pleasant, including the drowning. That can't be right.
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The Seine by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1902
According to what I've read, he'd left America for Paris and stayed for good — supposedly he said he couldn't fight prejudice and paint at the same time. This was apparently a view close to where he lived, done small.
Erisava: It's a lovely sky. I'm just not convinced a lovely sky is enough.
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Harlem River Winter Scene by Ernest Lawson, 1910
They say he painted this same stretch of river over and over, in every season, because he lived close by — and that a critic once joked his paint was so thick and glittery it looked like crushed jewels.
Erisava: It's pretty, but would you actually cross a room for it?
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Paris in Winter by Pierre Dumont, 1912
I couldn't find much on him — apparently he helped start a painters' group back in Rouen, and had a rough life, in and out of hospitals. That's about all there is.
Erisava: This is the gloomiest winter I've ever seen. Winter as a mood, not a postcard.
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Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1880
The people in it were his actual friends, from what I've read — regulars at a riverside restaurant outside Paris, hauled back weekend after weekend across a whole season while he worked on it. The woman playing with the little dog is supposedly the one he ended up marrying.
Erisava: Everything's so warm and soft here I don't quite believe it.
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The River by Maxime Maufra, 1902
He apparently gave up a business career around 1890 to paint full-time and fell in with Gauguin's crowd in Brittany — though you'd never guess that from a quiet river scene like this one.
Erisava: This is pretty, but I feel like I have seen thousands of these before.
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The Seine at La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, 1889
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium · wikidata.org
Public domain
That's the same island from the enormous Sunday-crowd picture everyone knows — he kept going back to it. The dots supposedly weren't just a look: he'd been reading up on how colours mix in your eye instead of on the palette, and a handful of other painters ran with the idea until it was a whole movement with a name.
Erisava: It's all tiny dots and it still comes out calm. No complaint here.