Still Life with Fruit and a Cup on Cock’s Legs, Abraham Mignon

In the Rijksmuseum.

Ostensibly a still life, Mignon’s not-so-still composition is actually teeming with insect, arachnid and mollusk life, in addition to the beautifully rendered plant forms and man made objects — not to mention the cock’s leg base for the decorative cup (say what?).

There’s enough detail here to entertain Mignon’s patron for hours, just finding the little treasures the artist has painted into the recesses of his assortment of forms.

Personally, my favorite elements of the painting are his beautifully handled leaves and vines.

The Trout Pool, Worthington Whittredge

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One of the younger generation of the Hudson River School painters, Whittredge often favored intimate forest scenes as much as large dramatic landscapes.

Here, through the framing device of the dark mature trees, their leafy canopy and the fallen log, we are invited to enter a rocky glade; and further — through the break in the rock wall where the creek enters into the pool with a modest fall, we can venture into the space of the dark creek bed beyond. The painting is a nested composition — almost a landscape version of a Pieter de Hooch interior.

I love the way the dappled light against the large foreground trees is repeated in the light-against-dark trunks of smaller trees around the falls.