I was searching for a depiction of hell, instead stumbled on something more seasonal. I don’t know if there is an actual history between the two paintings but it surely looks like there is a connection. A boat, a canoe or a vehicle is a confining object, even more so in the water. There is also a sense that it’s an intermediate point of a travel. The golden sun and the contrasting figures, a father and a son and in both paintings there is a supporting character.
James Goodwyn Clonney (b. 1812, Liverpool?, d. 1867, Binghamton, N.Y.), Fishing Party on Long Island Sound off New Rochelle 1847, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
George Caleb Bingham (b. 1811, Augusta County, d. 1879, Kansas City), Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, c. 1845, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
But whom am I kidding? I wasn’t looking for the golden hue fishing post cards, I was looking for this. Daedalus watching his son Icarus falling back to Crete. Nobody really in the entire history of art could draw bodies as masterfully as Rubens, too bad his art is so superficial.
Pieter Pauwel Rubens, The Fall of Icarus 1636, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Images published with permission from the Web Gallery of Art
- Further Reading:
- 3 Games of Life you don’t want to play
- The Slaughter at Mount Sinai [not the hospital]
- Jewish Ceremonies – Germany c. 1700
consider free RSS subscription