The Gardeners of the Veil Picard 1897

Curator: The piece we are looking at is titled "The Gardeners of the Veil Picard", an 1897 oil painting by Giovanni Boldini. Editor: First impression? I’m seeing an intensely lived-in face and someone entirely at ease, perhaps even exhausted, amidst some luscious overgrowth. I feel a quiet intimacy here; as if I'm catching a rare, unguarded moment. Curator: That captures some of the intention, certainly. Boldini, although associated with portraits of Parisian society, painted this outdoors, using impressionistic brushwork for a naturalistic effect. In other words, painting en plein air as it was named, where the artist creates outside rather than inside. It marked a shift, placing even formal portraiture in a social landscape. Editor: You know, the bench feels more alive than many figurative paintings. Boldini is so subtle, hinting at both leisure and deep interiority. I can smell the fresh air! Am I crazy, or is there a slight melancholy here, a world-weariness that almost contrasts with all the life surrounding him? Curator: It is a melancholic painting. We could say he seems both comforted by the nature, and separate from it; an observer within a public space made personal, thus reflecting a transitional era between Romanticism's inward gaze and the more confrontational modern era that soon arrived. It’s an era where the gardens, parks and the entire experience was something of a stage where the population came together in its search for pleasure. Editor: So beautifully put. It almost invites me to contemplate my own little theater of rest. So, with a deeper look into the Gardeners, what do you think you are left to wonder on? Curator: The changing landscape of art consumption in general and how artists balanced between tradition and a new, burgeoning social reality of an urban park life. Editor: For me, Boldini is offering an intimate, complex and rather delicious experience for the eyes that has shifted to a quiet observation inside my soul.