They rose so slowly and they look's so pale 1913

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale made this fairytale scene, "They rose so slowly and they look's so pale," likely as an illustration, and it’s all about process. Look at the way she builds up the green of the grass with these tiny, almost scribbled marks. It's not about hiding the work, but showing the labor of making. The surface has this gentle, almost hazy quality, doesn’t it? Brickdale uses thin, washy layers of color, especially in the sky, which gives it a dreamlike feel. But then she throws in these details, like the shine on the knight's armor or the red of the horse's harness. There's this tension between the overall soft, diffused light and these sharp, bright spots. It’s in the lower part of the painting, where there is a patch of muddy ground, that the naturalness comes out, and where the artist is less concerned with idealism. I see a connection between this and, say, the Pre-Raphaelites, with their love of detail and storytelling. But Brickdale brings a certain looseness, an acknowledgment of the hand, that feels very contemporary. It's a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between tradition and innovation.