Often art-books covering an artist's whole career contain delightful surprises like this: Whistler's Nocturnes , or his famous Japanese pictures, or the Falling Rocket picture are reproduced ad nauseam, but I have only ever seen this wonderful painting in this one book. Here, his approach is fairly conventional, as opposed to his later, distinctive style, but the sense of light and open space, and the fluidity of the brushwork all stand out., as does his subtle use of colour, the warm browns of the bridge against the cold of the blue sky.
The initial idea of uploading this and the following images was simply to reply to the art trail questionnaire, but I have since become engrossed in the whole process: just by finding the pictures in the first place I am re-visiting books that I have not opened in years, in some cases; also, scanned book illustrations look brilliant when lit up on a computer screen. The picture order is random, and I do not pretend that my comments are those of a scholar: they are simply what comes to mind when I look at he pictures. What should come to light is my attitude to art, in particular to art education.
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