Landscape 1911

Joan Brull made this landscape painting, we don’t know when, but looking at it, you can tell that Brull was working with a kind of tonalist approach. See how the colors blend gently into one another, with very little hard distinction between areas? It’s like a memory of a landscape. The way Brull has applied the paint, thinly, transparently, especially in the sky, gives it that dreamy quality. But then, look at the lower part of the painting, the grassy area. Here, the brushstrokes are a little more assertive, giving the space a feeling of depth. Think of Whistler, another artist concerned with capturing atmosphere and mood, but who also never wanted to tell you exactly what to think! That tension between clear depiction and a certain ambiguity is what makes art so interesting, don't you think?