Hermes and the Infant Dionysus 1900 - 1915

Arthur Bowen Davies made this oil on canvas painting of Hermes and the Infant Dionysus, and it looks like he was really going for it. The composition is really dream-like and ambiguous. I can almost feel Davies in the studio layering the paint, blurring and blending the figures into the landscape. The blue seeps into everything. There is a great deal of tension created by the use of the warm flesh tones against the cool blues and greens; figures are frozen in motion like classical sculpture, and there is no single focal point. The paint is thin, and in some parts of the painting, the canvas is visible through the translucent layers of paint, which gives it a kind of luminous quality. The light is magical and full of classical figures; it reminds me of other painters like Puvis de Chavannes and Odilon Redon. He’s really participating in this long conversation painters have over time. What does it all mean? I have no idea, but I'm so glad that it exists.