Village at the Water's Edge 1910

Roger de La Fresnaye’s ‘Village at the Water’s Edge’ is a small oil painting, a puzzle of ochres, grays, and browns. I’m imagining de La Fresnaye, squinting, trying to capture the light of a small town. He lays down these muted tones with a brush loaded with paint. Look at how the blocks of color almost tessellate. What seems like the sky hovers above the scene. It’s heavy with the creaminess of the paint. The dark patches at the bottom could be reflections in the water. The artist’s signature floats just above them in the corner like a memory. I think of other painters like Vuillard, Bonnard, and even Morandi, all wrestling with the same problem of how to capture what's right in front of us. It’s like they’re all in conversation, passing on their experiments and discoveries. I think that painting, like any language, is constantly evolving, and it invites new ways of seeing and understanding the world.