The Japanese Scroll, James Tissot, oli on panel, roughly 15 x 2 in. (39 x 57 cm). Link is to image page on Wikimedia Commons, Original is in a private collection, image sourced form past Christie’s auction.

The soft light, informal pose and seemingly mundane subject matter might tempt us to think of this as a casual sketch, but it actually looks caresully ocmposed and executed. Tissot, noted for his paintings of society life, was well versed in the depiction of coltherng draperies and incidental furnishings.

I love the way he’s suggested the upside down and foreshortened. images on the scroll.

The Swans, Frank Brangwyn. I don’t know the size or present location. The image is from William Morris Gallery, posted during an exhibit; large image here.

Like many art images, you will see versions of this one on the internet in which someone has put it into an image editor and cranked up the saturation to make it more “pretty”.

Brangwyn’s sense of color and value is actually quite subtle here, particularly the way he’s handled the shadows on the swans. THe “white” areas are not “white”, even though our eyes read them that way; they’re cool in the shadows, warm in the highlights. However, even the cool areas have worm colors in them.

Spreewald Village in Autumn, Walter Moras. Oil on canvas, 24 x 39 in, ( 60 x 100 cm). Link is to MutualArt, larger image on GoodFon.

Yes, I know it can initially look a bit, um… picturesque (and yes, I know there are ducks), but I like it. The more I look at the large reproduction of this painting, the more it reminds me of the atmosphere and feeling of bright overcast Autumn days.

Moras has nicely controlled his values, and arranged the atmospheric and linear perspective of the scene like discreet planes to create an inviting sense of depth.

The nicely shadowed left and right foreground elements look a bit similar, but different enough, much like nature itself. They and the dark silhouetted foreground house frame a composition that uses every element to draw us back to the house in the middle ground, and then further back to the house in the distance and the trees beyond.

I found the pull of my eye into the background hard to resist.