Landscape, Paris 1912 - 1914

Henry Lyman Saÿen made this painting, Landscape, Paris, using bold brushstrokes and a daring color palette that really grabs you. What I love about this piece is how Saÿen fearlessly uses color. Look at the red tree—it’s not just red, it's a vibrant, almost electric, red. The paint is applied thickly, you can almost feel the texture, like he was wrestling with the canvas to get his vision out. The buildings, rendered in blues, yellows, and greens, create this odd, dreamlike quality. There’s this one teal building on the left, that really catches my eye. The way the windows are just these dark, simple rectangles, it’s like he’s not trying to give you the whole story, just a feeling, an impression. It reminds me a little of Matisse, that same freedom with color and form. Art is this constant conversation across time, each artist riffing off the others, and in that sense, Saÿen’s painting invites us into this ongoing dialogue about how we see and interpret the world. It's never a fixed answer.