Park scene from Sevilla, Hugo Birger, oil on panel, 10 x 16 in. (26 x 41 cm). Link os to past auction page on Bukowskis.

In this small panel, !9th centiury Swedish painter Hugo Birger, who was likely influened by time he spent in the company of some of the Barbizon painters, paints a park secne in which he employs fresh, painterly brush work and naturalistic colors.

Canal View at Wilders Square, Ole Ring, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. (60 x 76 cm). Link is to Uno Langmann art dealers for a sold item. Presumably this is currently in a private collection.

Danish painter Ole RIng, active in the early to mid 20th century, here takes a simple white boat, and by careful placement and the arrangement of surrounding colors, makes it irresistible to our eye.

The boat is positioned on the canvas with the bulk of the hull just to the left of center and at it’s own height below vertical middle. Centered – but not quite.

He then places the light value of the boat against darker values, and muted orange-browns that serve to highlight the delicate blue of the shadow on the side.

Portrait of Mrs. J.P. Morgan, Jr. (nee Jane Norton Grew), John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas, 58 x 36 inches (147 x 91 cm), in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, NY.

The Morgan Library’s collection centers on rare books and manuscripts and a fantastic collection of old master drawings, but it does include a few paintings, and it’s fitting that this portrait of the founder’s wife should be one of them.

Sargent here displays his astonishing economy of notation. Look at the string of paint splotches that our eyes read as a golden chain, the seemingly simple brush marks that create swirls in the diaphanous fabric, or the gestural swoops of paint that make a graceful hand.

Not to mention the “whites” of her garments and how many subtle shifting colors Sargent has managed to let us see in them.

The boy could paint.