The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot), William Holman Hunt

Link is to a larger version on The Athenaeum, original is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The version on the Ashmolean site is likely more accurate, I’ve lightened the slightly larger version from the Athenaeum to match it in value.

I usually like to have higher resolution images for these Eye Candy posts, but this is the largest I could find for this work, and I find the painting particularly engaging.

The alternate title of “The Dovecot” (or Dovecote) refers to a small house for domestic pigeons; the reference to the holiday is likely just to place the time of year the painting was to represent.

The Ashmolean site indicates that Holman Hunt — one of the premiere painters of the Victorian artist group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — designed the composition for his sister Emily to paint. She started but then abandoned the project. Holman Hunt finished it himself a year later, calling it the most highly finished painting he had done (which is saying something).

View in the Bentheim Forest, George Andries Roth

Link is to original in the Rijksmusem, which has both zoomable and downloadable versions (with free Rijksstudio account); additional downloadable version on Wikimedia Commons.

In this wonderful 19th century landscape, a shaft of late afternoon light slices through a break in a German forest, illuminating some objects, casting others into deep shadow, and gently warming trees in the distance.

I love the contrast between the dramatic lighting on the foreground tree and the more subtle modulation of value in the groups of trees behind it. There is also a visually fascinating layering of planes of dark and light as your eye moves back into the depth of the landscape.

The workers, horses and their activity give the scene focus and scale. My eye comes in on the foreground tree, shifts down to the middle left foreground, travels back along the path of light through the figures, up through the shaft of the lighter background, curves back through the sky and drops down into the foreground tree — ready to make the pleasurable passage again.