Garden Idyll
This November scene by Walter Gay is traveling the nation as part of our exhibition The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.In Novembre, Etaples, Gay suggests the nobility as well as the travails of peasant life while avoiding being strident or saccharine. In this simple French scene, a lone figure hoes the household plot in the garden of a fine farmhouse, discernible at upper right. With impressionist touches of subdued hues, the painter evokes the quiet light of a November day and the tangled growth and modest bounty of the late harvest. Gay emphasizes the essential dignity of the woman as she works the land.
Source: Elizabeth Prelinger. The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).
Pictured: Walter Gay, 1856 USA–1937 France, Novembre, Etaples, about 1885, oil, 43 1/2 x 64 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.
This November scene by Walter Gay is traveling the nation as part of our exhibition The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.In Novembre, Etaples, Gay suggests the nobility as well as the travails of peasant life while avoiding being strident or saccharine. In this simple French scene, a lone figure hoes the household plot in the garden of a fine farmhouse, discernible at upper right. With impressionist touches of subdued hues, the painter evokes the quiet light of a November day and the tangled growth and modest bounty of the late harvest. Gay emphasizes the essential dignity of the woman as she works the land.