Sunny meadow with fruit trees 1908

Richard Gerstl made this small, maybe plein air, painting, ‘Sunny Meadow with Fruit Trees’ using oil on canvas. The way Gerstl puts the paint down, it’s all about the gesture, the pure physical act of pushing the paint around. Check out how the colour shifts, those greens are really doing some work. Look at how the thicker paint sits on top, catching the light, while the thinner layers sink back. It is kind of murky but there are pops of light, so it's like the whole painting is breathing. Notice how the brushstrokes are pulled and dragged, giving the whole scene a real sense of movement. The way the paint is worked around the branches, it feels like you could just reach out and touch them. Gerstl died so young, but he made some really emotionally intense paintings, and he always had this interest in paint as a raw, expressive material. This really comes through when you compare him to other artists such as Van Gogh. For me, this painting is like a reminder to keep digging, keep questioning, and never settle for easy answers.