Two Women Fishing, Daniel Ridgway Knight
On Wikimedia Commons. Original is in a private collection.
Speaking — as I was in this Eye Candy post on Peder Mønsted, about paintings that look smoothly refined from a distance, but are wonderfully painterly in detail — here is a summer scene by Daniel Ridgway Knight.
I’m long overdue to write a dedicated post on Knight, who is a personal favorite of mine, and I’ll try to follow up on that before long.
Link: Two Women Fishing, Wikimedia Commons
What a beautiful picture! The greens are so neutral and accurate! I am intrigued by the social context of the picture though. What social class are these women – upper, middle, lower? Are they fishing for leisure or to put some trout on the table?
They are a somewhat romanticized version of peasant women, and represent Knight’s primary subject matter — peasant women in landscapes, often at the water’s edge.
A nice selection here: http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/list.php?m=a&s=tu&aid=213
My favorite is at PAFA.