Spring, St Paul 1923

Curator: This is Rupert Bunny's "Spring, St Paul," a painting from 1923. Immediately I'm drawn to how Bunny achieves this scene of, seemingly, Southern France through relatively thick applications of pigment. Look at the layering of brushstrokes; it gives the whole piece such a textured surface. Curator: It evokes a very specific atmosphere, doesn't it? There's this soft, almost dreamy quality to the light. The color palette feels incredibly tranquil. To me, this painting speaks volumes about leisure and the picturesque in early 20th-century artistic circles. Curator: I agree. Notice the rendering of the flowering trees. They aren't precisely photorealistic but crafted with repetitive daubs that draw your focus to the activity of their creation as a visual statement on modern art's means of production. It almost feels like labor is erased despite how obviously handmade this picture is! Curator: Exactly. And think about who had access to that lifestyle Bunny's portraying? Post-WWI Europe saw significant shifts in class and privilege. An image of pastoral ease would’ve resonated very differently depending on one's position within society at the time. Was this painting attempting escapism? Or perhaps selling the benefits of modern society’s newfound class mobility through leisure? Curator: Well, considering that the art market was still highly class-stratified, Bunny's primary audience would almost exclusively be wealthy people who were more inclined to spend their leisure on high art like paintings, and that means they very well could see themselves on display. Curator: The fact that we know Bunny spent much of his career hopping between Australia, London and Paris should probably indicate the economic freedoms he possessed at the time and how paintings of idyllic scenes played to that experience of privilege. There’s so much going on beneath its lovely surface. Curator: Looking at Bunny's process, his deliberate choices concerning medium and composition really open our perspective beyond the superficial. Thanks for highlighting the social dynamics that intersect with paintings such as these. Curator: It's always worth questioning how such beautiful images can inadvertently reflect complicated societal realities. A valuable thing to always remember in art analysis, don’t you agree?