View of Notre Dame 1911

Gustave Loiseau built this vision of Notre Dame with oil paint, stroke by stroke, dab by dab. Imagine him standing there, working in front of the cathedral, trying to capture not just the building, but the light, the air, the feeling of the place. I'm thinking about the way he applied the paint – short, choppy strokes of greens and yellows, blues and grays. It's like he's building up the image piece by piece. Look at the way the light seems to shimmer across the surface, how the colours blend and shift. There is no heavy impasto, but rather a gentleness of application. I bet he was thinking about Impressionism, about capturing a fleeting moment in time, just like Monet did. But there's something else going on here too. It's like he's trying to find some kind of structure and solidity, something that will last. That's what painting is all about, right? It's about trying to make sense of the world, to find some kind of order in the chaos. And it’s about the conversations artists have been having with each other, responding to the world and to each other's ideas.