Swiss landscape near Geneva 1951

Zinaida Serebriakova made this landscape somewhere near Geneva with watercolor. It's as if she’s batting the light around, trying to pin down all these greens and blues into some kind of order. The way the light rakes across the foreground, picking out the stubbly edges of the grass – you get a real sense of the physicality of the place. There’s this funny little tree on the right-hand side, caught in the light, that she’s left really quite unfinished. It’s so raw and clumsy; it reminds me of a kid’s drawing. But that’s what I like about it. It makes the painting seem so open, so honest. Serebriakova seems to be picking up on some of the interests of Impressionist painters like Monet or Cezanne, but with her own focus on capturing the sensation of a place. It's a reminder that art is an endless conversation, and that there's always something new to learn from looking.