Winter Sun in a Landscape with a Brook. Motif from Strážky 1900 - 1910

Ladislav Mednyánszky made this painting, Winter Sun in a Landscape with a Brook, without a specified date, using visible brushstrokes and a muted palette to evoke a cold winter day. I imagine him layering thin washes of paint, building up the scene slowly, wiping away, and adding more. There’s this feeling of light trying to break through, that little yellow sun a defiant spot against the gray. I wonder if Mednyánszky was thinking about transience when he made this? It's like he’s captured a fleeting moment, a fragile balance between darkness and light, stillness and movement, life and death. It reminds me of Corot and the Barbizon School. Artists who were looking at the landscape in a new way, with feeling, trying to get at something essential about being in the world. Artists are constantly picking up where others left off, taking the conversation further, and I feel that in this piece.