Tuft of Cowslips, Albrecht Durer
Gouache on vellum; roughly 8 x 7 inches (19 x 17 cm); in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, DC, which has zoomable and downloadable images. There is also a zoomable version on the Google Art Project.
Like his more well known but equally wonderful “Large Piece of Turf“, this is another example of German Renaissance painter Albrecht Durer’s keen observation of nature on an intimate scale.
Paintings like this are a reminder of how extraordinary and wonder-full the commonplace can be, and how art, at its best, can reveal the world to us in that way.
It’s also a nice example of the effective use of gouache.
