Sunset 1902

Maxime Maufra painted this 'Sunset' with oil on canvas, sometime around the turn of the 20th Century. Look at the marks, they’re like dashes and commas aren’t they? Short, sharp, to capture the fleeting light. It’s pure impression, but there’s a solid structure here too. The way the paint is applied, thick in some places, thin in others, it gives everything a real sense of weight. You can almost feel the dampness of the rocks, and the solid presence of the cliff face. See how the strokes follow the form? It’s not just about color, it’s about how the paint itself becomes the thing it’s representing. I love the little boat out on the horizon. It's barely there, but it anchors the whole scene, giving a sense of scale. Maufra seems to me to be in dialogue with artists like Monet and Pissarro, but he brings his own sense of solidity, a kind of groundedness. It reminds us that art isn't about perfect representation, but about feeling and experiencing the world in all its messy, beautiful ambiguity.