Fishermen's houses, Port Vendres 1926

Rupert Bunny painted this coastal scene with soft, chalky strokes, like he was building up the image, slowly, letting the houses emerge from a haze of blue and green. I can imagine Bunny standing there, squinting in the bright Mediterranean light, trying to capture the essence of this little town. He probably had a few false starts, wiping away paint, rethinking his approach. That’s what painting is, right? A constant process of trial and error, of pushing and pulling, until something unexpected emerges. Look at the way the light bounces off the whitewashed walls, how he’s used a limited palette to create a sense of warmth and tranquility. The brushstrokes are so gentle, so unassuming, yet they convey so much. You get the sense that he's really looking, not just at the houses, but at the way the light falls on them, the way the colours interact. He's in conversation with artists of the past, like Monet and Bonnard, but he's also doing his own thing, finding his own way of seeing the world. He's embracing ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.