A Boy Fishing 1919

John Linnell created "A Boy Fishing" in oil, at a time when landscape painting was all the rage. But there's something different about this one, something looser. Look at the way Linnell builds up the image with small, feathery brushstrokes. It's all about the surface, the materiality of the paint itself. This is particularly evident in the foliage, a tapestry of layered color that evokes a hazy summer's day. The artist is not trying to show off, or render any photographic reality. The physicality of the medium becomes part of the subject, as if the painting itself is a record of the boy's experience, not just a representation of it. There’s a definite nod to earlier landscape painters like Constable, but Linnell is taking it somewhere new, where feeling and process take center stage. It’s less about what we see, and more about how we see.