Charles-Francois Daubigny ~ Field of Poppies, Flanders Field & The Wizard of Oz

Poppy Fields seem to abound on the internet. One of the most delightful ones other than Monet's and Daubigny's is this one posted on You Tube. Your imagination can run wild with what L. Frank Baum, the Populist Democrat, intended when he created this poppy field scene in The Wizard of Oz.



And of course there is Flanders Fields dedicated by John McCrae to his friend and others who died in World War I.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

Sleep and death both seem to be symbols of the poppy.

And just so there is some reference to Daubigny on our final day, here is a compendium of images of his work set to Mozart. You Tube is quite wonderful, isn't it?

Daubigny's Horse and Rider

Today I spent some time really looking at our painting up close. There is a figure, female I believe, on a horse. The horse seems to be facing forward and to the side at the same time. The figure seems to be facing the viewer, coming toward the front of the painting or across the poppy field. The plow on the horses is so faint it doesn't give a clear depiction of which way the horses and rider are really facing. If you take it from the tails the horses are facing away from you and if you take it from the arm and face of the figure they are coming your way. The reason I got so close was because there is a black blob on the right, all alone. LaValle said she didn't know what that was, so I looked with my nose a few inches from the paint. It is actually green and I think it is a tree bent in a wind storm. This tree gives the water an even faster flowing feeling.

When you get close to a painting it is like you enter a new world, each little square inch becomes a whole new painting. Sort of like sentences in a wonderful book. Or lines of poetry. Each one taken on it's own is worth a moment of contemplation and as a whole you might give it hours.

Speaking of hours, this week I am taking a stab at reading Ulysses, a book " in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes." if you've read James Joyce please chime in now and give me some advice, let me know I should keep slogging through. It is not an easy beginning.

Charles-Francois Daubigny ~ Another Poppy Field and Work by Van Gogh

Here is a larger oil of fields of poppies done by Charles-Francois Daubigny in 1874. Daubigny chose to paint Fields in the Month of June using direct sunlight as opposed to the moonlit Field of Poppies owned by the Portland Art Museum. He effectively juxtaposes brushstrokes, highlighting spots of brilliant color. He is definitely moving away from the classical polish sought by the Salon. He paved the way for Pissarro, Cezanne, Renoir and Monet, Even Van Gogh. Van Gogh was transfixed with Daubigny's house and gardens in Auvers-sur-Oise fifteen years after he had first seen Daubigny's paintings in London. Shown below is one of Van Gogh's paintings of Daubigny's home and garden. As a side note, there are at least two versions of this painting. The one shown here is the one with a black cat streaking across the canvas.


Many tourists make the trek to the Parisian suburb known as Auvers-sur-Oise. When Daubigny and Van Gogh went there it was much more rural – wheat fields and flowers. Today most tourists go Auvers to see Vincent Van Gogh's grave. However, you can also take in Daubigny's home and garden. David Downie writes in Salon of his trip to Auvers and tells of visiting with Daubigny's great great grandson at Daubigny's home. Shown below is a video taken at that home by another blogger. The last few minutes show the expansive drawing rooms with beautiful landscapes on the walls.

Comparing

The Monet Daubigny challenge had me examine the two poppy field paintings, and what I noticed were ladies with their little girls and parasols in Monet's field, and men and women hunched over and at work in the moonlight in Daubigny's. One is a poppy field on a sunny Sunday afternoon and the other a poppy field at harvest on a darkening Monday. In Monet's painting the field of poppies is off to the left, a hillside of weed seeds scattered for the people to enjoy upon passing. For Daubigny, the poppies are the subject, the point of the work and the reason for the painting. Both artists use a green hedge of trees to break the canvas across the middle, Monet's trees are individuals and Daubigny's are an unbroken chain, a flow of trees.

Monet's painting is interested in the individual experience, Daubigny's interprets the field, the land and the people as a single organism bathed in the single light of the half moon.

There is a determined class difference and within the paintings are characteristics of the classes themselves, I think. But as O'Keefe pointed out, I am hanging my own associations of these"classes" into the paintings, to give them context, which they do not need. Nor does this beautiful poem by Carl Sandberg:
Poppies

She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.

In a loose white gown she walks

and a new child tugs at cords in her body.

Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,

A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:

She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.

Carl Sandberg could be writing about women in either painting, some things are universal.

Sandberg was married to Lilian Steichen, sister of Edward Steichen the photographer. Steichen's photograph is the image in this post. I chose it because it spoke to me about Monet's poppy field where I see a sunflower the size of a giant tree, towering over everything. In this Steichen photograph I see what remained of that sunflower in the winter.

Charles-Francois Daubigny ~ Field of Poppies and Georgia O'Keeffe's Red Poppy

An image of a poppy can be small because it is small. Many poppies can be smudges on a canvas and become a poppy field – remember that only about twenty percent of the connections to the visual cortex come from the retina. We saw that happen in Daubigny's Field of Poppies and Monet's Poppies, Near Argenteuil. Or we can do what Georgia O'Keeffe did and create a large poppy. This large poppy was to make us stop and look at it, sink into the flower and become part if its redness. Georgia O'Keeffe had a way with images and a way with words. Here is what she said about Red Poppy that she painted in 1927.

Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.

If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

...Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.

Years ago in 1996 I bought many sheets of the commemorative stamp that the USPS had issued in honor of Georgia O'Keeffe. I used them for everything, hoping to spread the joy of this painting to anyone who who would come in contact with those envelopes, my bills, my letters, my cards, even my postcards. Here then is a field of red poppies thanks to the USPS and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Charles-Francois Daubigny ~ Field of Poppies along with Monet Poppies

Impressions of Poppies could easily have been the title of this post. Charles-Francois Daubigny had a way of painting that looked very sketchy. In the mid-19th centurty, the public was used to artists who painted in such a fashion that brushstrokes could not be seen. Imagine then an artist who comes along and begins to paint with small visible strokes of paint that leave the impression of a flower. In this case the dabs of red in Field of Poppies create the image of a red poppy. There were fields and fields of poppies in France at the time so these splotches would have been easily identified – remember that the visual cortex in the brain only receives about 20% of its input from the retina. Take a look at that white smudge in the upper left hand corner of Field of Poppies – it's no wonder that Daubigny's works were known as impressions - that is clearly a moon. The light from that moon draws you across the room, compels you to look at this painting. It is only a brushstroke of white. Your brain has created poppies and a moon. Daubigny was definitely twenty years before his time.

1874 was the year Claude Monet first exhibited his painting Impression, Sunrise that rocked the art world. Dancing and shimmering light. A painting that didn't look quite finished. Louis Leroy dubbed Monet's work and that of his friends Impressionism and the art world was never the same. These artists painted outside, not in the studio. Daubigny had been doing his painting outside for years. The Impressionists work looked not quite complete. Daubigny had been criticized for this for years. Daubigny it turns out became one of the champions of the new art. So much so that he resigned his position from the Salon in 1870 when it refused to accept one of Monet's paintings. Monet credits Daubigny as being an influence on his work. The two artists spent a great deal of time together including days on Daubigny's barge that he had outfitted as a studio to make painting out of doors easier. So it's not surprising that later Monet followed suit and had his own studio boat. In it he hung a portrait of Daubigny to honor his mentor.

Poppies, Near Argenteuil is one of Claude Monet's famous impressionist paintings. Take a moment to compare it with Field of Poppies. Little dabs of red become poppies. Daubigny lead the way for the Impressionists to turn the art world upside down. Monet was always grateful for the support of his friend and mentor Charles-Francois Daubigny.

Charles-Francois Daubigny ~ Field of Poppies

It's Thursday and it's time to change out the image of the week here at Fifty Two Pieces. We decided not to move far from last week's piece by Gustave Courbet. His The Violoncellist is situated in the northern end of the European galleries and can be seen from a distance as you walk towards it and is almost larger than life. Field of Poppies by Charles-Francois Daubigny hangs on the same wall but to the far right. You'll find it hanging beneath Camille Corot's The Ponds of Ville d'Avray. Both Daubigny's and Corot's paintings take up less gallery space than Courbet's. What all three have in common though is each of the painters being considered part of a group now labelled pre-impressionists. For more on what that means come back tomorrow and each day between now and September 2. Seven days of Daubigny and what we are inspired by after viewing Field of Poppies.