Cathedral at Ronda 1910

Childe Hassam made this painting of the Cathedral at Ronda sometime in the late 19th, early 20th century. You can see the brushstrokes are small and deliberate, laid down one next to the other to describe the light as it hits the building, and the ground. It gives you a sense of artmaking as a process of slowly building up the image through observation. I love the texture in this piece, the way the paint is applied thickly, especially on the facade of the cathedral. It's almost as if Hassam is trying to recreate the rough texture of the building's surface with his brush. Look at the way he's rendered the shadows under the eaves. It's not just a dark color, but a complex mix of blues, purples, and even some greens, that give it depth and richness. And how he uses small dashes of color to create the impression of light filtering through the trees. It's like he's inviting us to slow down and really see the world around us. It reminds me a little of some of Monet's paintings of cathedrals. Neither artist is really trying to give us a photorealistic depiction. More, they are recording their impressions. It feels like a conversation about how we see, and how we represent what we see, that's been going on for centuries.