Cowgirl in the meadow 1906

Carl Larsson made this watercolour of a cowgirl in a meadow sometime around the turn of the 20th century. The tones are muted and earthy, but the light still shimmers through, a reminder that painting is not about capturing an image, but capturing a feeling, a moment. Look how the paint pools and bleeds, especially in the foreground. You can almost feel the dampness of the ground. Then there are the loose, scribbled marks, the way the artist defines the form of the cowgirl, her dress rendered with a few quick strokes, a balance between detail and suggestion. For me, the most striking element is the girl's shadow. It's almost another figure entirely, dark and mysterious. It reminds me of the work of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist who found beauty in the everyday. Like her, Larsson understood that art is not about perfection, but about capturing the messy, imperfect beauty of the world around us. It's this embrace of ambiguity that makes his work so enduring.