Bridge in the rain: after Hiroshige, Vincent van Gogh. Zoomable image on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikipedia; original is in the Van Gogh Museum.

Sudden shower over Shin-Ohashi bridge and Atake, Utagawa Hiroshige; file on Wikipedia.

About mid-way through his all too short career, Vincent van Gogh, like many of the French Impressionists he came to admire and associate with, developed a fascination with the Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints that were becoming widely available in Europe at the time.

Van Gogh copied two prints by Utagawa Hiroshige directly as paintings, one of a Flowering Plum Tree (see my post on Not the Usual Van Goghs), and this one of Hiroshige’s now famous Sudden shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake.

Van Gogh’s value relationships are quite different, and his painted version is of course very different in textural qualities, but the compositional elements, which appear to be his main fascination, appear quite true to the original.

Van Gogh created a painted frame as part of the image, decorated with characters from other Japanese prints.

Blue Interior, Harriet Backer

Link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikipedia, original is in the The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; the Norwegan online DigitaltMuseum also has a zoomable image.

Norwegan painter Harriet Backer, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was noted for her painterly, subtly lit interiors, of which this is a prime example.

Her colors often seem rich and vibrant without actually being bright, and light plays through her compositions in mercurial touches, highlighting some areas and leaving others in deep shadow.

I particularly enjoy the rough scumbled edges of her forms, which adds to the sense of harmony and unity with in the composition.

April Love, Arthur Hughes

Link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikipedia; original is in the Tate, Britain, with a detailed description here.

Hughes’s best known work, and one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite paintings in general, this visual poem to the fleeting nature of young love was first exhibited accompanied by an excerpt from Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “The Miller’s Daughter”:

Love is hurt with jar and fret,
Love is made a vague regret,
Eyes with idle tears are set,
Idle habit links us yet;
What is Love? For we forget.
Ah no, no.

Hughes has placed the young man in deep shadow, his face pressed against the young woman’s hand. She has turned away from him, shedding a tear, her eyes downcast toward a broken blossom and fallen petals.

The painting was not, as in the case of many Pre-Raphaelite paintings associated with literary works, meant to coincide with the poem; the verse merely continues the theme of the painting’s emotional tone and incorporated symbolism.

The intricate detail of the ivy is a prime example of the fidelity to nature so admired by the Pre-Raphaelite painters and their circle.

There is a pencil and wash sketch for the painting in the Tate’s collection.

The model for the young woman was Tryphena Foord, who Hughes married around the time this was painted.