Boomgaard 1917 - 1919

Joseph Posenaer made this watercolour called ‘Boomgaard,’ or ‘Orchard,’ around 1917, and you can almost see the hand moving back and forth as he laid down those washes of earth-tone colour. The painting is all about building up these brown, grey, and blue layers. What do you think the artist was feeling? I can imagine him trying to capture the light as it moved across the scene, and how he might have been trying to pin down the way the trees twisted. I love that soft edge between the land and the sky, and how the shapes aren't hard and fast, but bleed into each other. You feel the space between them and how there is an ambiguity in how we see the world. This reminds me of Cezanne's landscapes, where things are dissolving and becoming, not static. It’s like they're speaking to each other across time.