Notre Dame de Grace, Honfleur 

Curator: Here we have a landscape painting titled "Notre Dame de Grace, Honfleur," rendered with an impressionistic style using oil paints. It is held in a private collection. Editor: My immediate reaction is warmth, almost a golden, hazy feeling. The light is hitting everything in this vibrant way, giving even the building a sort of ephemeral quality. Curator: Absolutely. If we think about the choice of oil paints, they lend a certain richness and depth to these colours, especially crucial to impressionism, a style really emerging out of the socio-political context of mid-19th century Europe and reacting to the newly industrialized, urban landscapes of France. Editor: The plein-air approach feels so key here, too. Can you imagine lugging your easel and paints out to capture that particular quality of light filtering through the trees in that moment? I’m interested in that labour. I wonder, was the artist painting this for someone else? Where did their materials come from? Who would have bought it at the time, and what values do those economics represent? Curator: These are excellent questions! Because the subject is figuration, capturing a chapel that is dedicated to a patron saint in this town, the piece carries the weight of spiritual narratives. As well as a religious narrative, we also see the narrative of location and social positioning in the backdrop of a town, creating a social tapestry that involves spiritual beliefs and common human connections. Editor: And yet, it's almost disappearing! The light is so all-consuming it softens those details into something almost dreamlike. The technique feels more important than a crisp depiction. It's the feeling of being there more than it is a literal view. That impressionistic haze comes across. I suppose it’s the ephemerality of the scene and the means by which it’s captured that moves me. Curator: I concur entirely, and it brings into question how painting practices might influence an interpretation of lived experience and how our engagement with religion and community impacts the construction of social identities and values. Editor: Exactly! This piece highlights that for me. It's about what’s felt, processed, and, significantly, how it’s made tangible with paints, with labour. That’s exciting to consider! Curator: It does make me consider that these layers are important for our own understandings of how historical narratives become intersectional frameworks in art today. Editor: A vital lens to understand not only this landscape but art history.