The Hawk 1909

Charles Courtney Curran painted ‘The Hawk’ with oils, most likely en plein air, maybe in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. Look at the movement of the brushstrokes, mirroring the breeze through the sky. Curran is so in tune with the light. I wonder if he felt like one of the kids in the painting, laying on the rocks staring up at that bird, trying to feel what it feels like to fly. Think of him dabbing at the canvas over and over, a bit of yellow there, a bit of blue there. It looks a lot like pointillism. The way he patiently built up those layers of paint, it's like he's trying to catch the wind. There's something so timeless about this scene. Curran probably looked at impressionists like Monet and Pissarro. And, like them, he's reminding us that painting is also about light, and air, and being alive. He's showing us how artists riff off each other across time, turning observation into imagination.