Willows by a Stream 1908

Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret captured this landscape with oil on canvas. Just look at the overall golden, shimmering color and the cool dark greens and blues in the background! I imagine the artist standing there in front of the motif. The painting emerges through these brushstrokes—shifting and evolving through the act of painting itself. There is so much intuition in that process. It feels almost like plein air painting. It's a pure material pleasure to see paint this way. The brushstrokes used to construct the trees are so evocative, loose and free. There's a constant conversation between color and brushstroke. You can feel that Dagnan-Bouveret’s mind was so full of other paintings that he had seen, all the other painters that he loved, all flowing through him, somehow! It's an ongoing exchange of ideas. Painting is an embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.