Palestine 1906

John Singer Sargent made this painting, Palestine, with oil on canvas. Look at the earth tones and creamy whites. Can't you just imagine Sargent standing there, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the light as it bounces off the hills? The paint is applied in these short, confident strokes, building up the texture of the landscape. He's not trying to give us every detail, but rather the feeling of being there. I think he must have wanted to capture something real and visceral, in all that dry heat and open space. There's a sense of immediacy in the way he's worked, a directness that feels very modern. You can feel the kinship with other landscape painters, like the Impressionists, but there's also something uniquely Sargent about it. Isn't it amazing how artists keep talking to each other across time? He was always absorbing and reinterpreting what he saw, making it his own.