Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
The Refectory of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes
Artist: Charles Nègre (French, 1820–1880)
Date: 1858–59
Medium: Salted paper print from glass negative
Dimensions: 34.2 x 42.5 cm (13 7/16 x 16 3/4 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Gathered in the light-drenched refectory of a newly constructed convalescent hospital on the outskirts of Paris, patients and staff alike turned their eyes and attention to the man with the enormous camera at one end of the room, Charles Nègre. The resulting image, here in a rare unmounted and unretouched proof print from the artist’s studio, is the largest and most engaging in a series of photographs that Nègre was commissioned to make as documentation and celebration of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes. The hospital was established by Emperor Napoléon III to provide those injured on the construction site or in the factory—”the worker’s true field of honor,” in the words of one of Napoléon’s ministers—with care comparable to that given to the nation’s military veterans.
Trained as a painter in the same studio as Roger Fenton and Gustave Le Gray, Nègre was one of the era’s most skilled photographers of architecture, possessing a particular sensitivity to the ways in which light and shadow animate the surfaces of centuries-old monuments. Here, he seized upon the streaming sunlight as a vehicle to enliven the structure and texture of his picture and to suggest enhanced activity and health in the hospital inhabitants.
People are sitting in a room and sunshine is flooding through the windows on the right. But it doesn’t look like a hot summer day because everyone is wearing many layers of clothing. Is this a train station? Who are the men in the uniforms?
So many people are just looking at the camera expectantly. What are they thinking about?
Am I correct in saying that there are no women in the picture – only men? Also, why are the “official” looking men, in the uniforms, wearing dark jackets, vests and hats, but white pants? What kind of building is this with the ultra high ceilings and huge windows that let the sun stream in? Is it hot in the room because of it? It looks like a giant reflector oven.
I also note that there seems to be an air of expectancy, like the people are waiting for their train to arrive so they can board. Where could they be going? My guess is somewhere outdoors, as they’re all wearing hats to keep the sun off their faces and cool their heads.
It’s funny to think about earlier times when hats were more common, for men and for women.
The slanting sun pouring into the room is dramatic.