Breakfast-Time, Hanna Hirsch Pauli
There is an often overlooked sub-genre of painting that I particularly enjoy; for lack of a better term, it might be called “outdoor still life”.
I’m hard pressed to think of a better example than this stunningly beautiful painting of a 19th century breakfast table in a sun-dappled garden by Swedish artist Hanna Hirsch Pauli.
Richly painterly, with color that is at once understated and vibrant, it catches that magical difference of presenting still life subjects in the colors of sunlight.
The link is to Google Art Project. There is a high-resolution downloadable version of the file on Wikimedia Commons.
The original is in the Nationalmuseum, Sweden, but their version of the image seems over-saturated. I haven’t seen the original, but my feeling is that this is one of those examples where the Google Art Project got the color right and the museum got it wrong.
