Baltic Herrings 1904

Magnus Enckell made this painting of Baltic Herrings with oil on canvas and signed it in 1904. I can just imagine him painting this; he probably started with some loose sketch, you know, kinda blocking in the basic shapes and composition with thin washes of color. Then he’s gone back in, layering the paint, building up the forms of the fish and the basket. I wonder if he was thinking about mortality, like the fragility of life, or maybe it was just about capturing a moment in time, like a still life. What really strikes me is the movement within the stillness. Each fish is unique. There is a liveliness in how Enckell captured the light reflecting off their scales. It reminds me of Manet’s quick brushstrokes. I think artists like Enckell and Manet are always pushing boundaries and figuring out ways to translate the world onto canvas, and that's what inspires us to keep going.