3 Inspiring Paintings That Will Win Your Heart and Mind
Contemplating human relationships in art
Why do we look at art?
Speaking personally, I often turn to art to refresh my perspective. I enjoy letting my eyes flow over a painting, just looking and taking in the way the artist has chosen to reproduce the world.
Take this captivating painting, made in 1892 by Toulouse-Lautrec. Titled In Bed, The Kiss, it features two women enfolded in bedclothes, lost in a momentary embrace.
What I really like about this image is the way Lautrec has hatched and scribbled the paint, creating not only a visual excitement on the surface of the work but also adding to the sense of spontaneity — and so the impulsive, uninhibited kiss is given added freshness by the very medium in which it is painted.
Lautrec made more than a dozen paintings like this — his “Bed Series” — all based on the women who worked at a Paris brothel on the rue d’Ambroise.
The artist had been commissioned to decorate the brothel’s salon. He became a friend and confidant to the prostitutes there, which is how he was able to make such an intimate observation as this work. Through his deft handling of paint, Lautrec was able to arrive at a portrait that articulates the women’s mutual affection and individual personalities.
The Last of England (c.1855) by Ford Madox Brown
Here is a painting that takes on a completely different subject matter: the life-changing challenge of emigrating in search of a better life.
The painting shows a husband and wife sitting side by side on the outer deck of a boat. Her pink scarf is rippling across them, whipped by the sea breeze. The pale-green waves race towards the side of the boat relentlessly.
They are a family of at least three: husband, wife, and if you look very closely, the…
