Dawn. The Kingdom of Birds 1906

Józef Chełmoński, a Polish artist, painted "Dawn. The Kingdom of Birds" with oil on canvas. Look at the way Chełmoński works with these muted tones, soft pinks and greys. You can almost feel the morning mist rising off the water. It feels like the painting came into being in layers, with thin washes of color building up to create this hazy atmosphere. I imagine him standing there at dawn, trying to capture that fleeting moment as the birds take flight. You know, there’s a quiet stillness to the scene. It is as if everything is holding its breath as the sun begins to peek over the horizon. The birds standing in the water have long delicate legs like a dancer in first position. Then your eye is led to those flocks of birds in the distance. How he captures the feeling of dawn with just a few strokes of the brush! The feeling reminds me of other landscape painters, like Corot. Artists always have their eyes on each other, you know, across time, building on the same ideas, seeing the world in new ways.