La France accueillant l’Abondance, projet de plafond pour le palais de l’Élysée 1907

Henri Gervex imagined France welcoming abundance in this painted ceiling design for the Élysée Palace. The swirls and figures emerge from a cloudy sky, rendered in soft blues, pinks, and earth tones. It feels like the painting came into being through touch—the artist adding and subtracting, shifting the figures until they found their place in the composition. I can imagine Gervex up on a scaffold, brush in hand, figuring it out as he goes. Look at the way he’s defined the figures with loose strokes of paint, how the brushwork creates texture and movement, almost as if they're floating through air. It’s this kind of embodied mark-making that makes you feel something as a viewer. You can feel the artist's presence in the work. It’s like Gervex is chatting with other ceiling painters like Tiepolo, sharing a sense of freedom and movement, while also figuring out his own take on things. Painting, after all, is just a big conversation.