Oddly enough, it actually took a couple of years of writing this blog to get going on painting analysis; I started writing mainly about film, literature, and other assorted cultural ephemera lesbian vampires ; I would continue making my own work in watercolour and oils, but painting remained outside my writing.
Rouen, a fabulous medieval city in Normandy, two hours north of Paris, is well-known as the birthplace of Realist novelist Gustave Flaubert, for its links to William the Conqueror and as the city which imprisoned, put on trial and then executed Joan of Arc in around , while much of northern France was occupied by the English a subject I have also written a lot about previously, as part of my Delphyne research.
The museum itself, in a large square near the train station, was a strange juxtaposition of grand and decrepit. Inside there was a tiny and disappointing gift shop they never have the postcards I want with some Normandy tourist tat; a slightly shabby sculpture court sitting between one wing dedicated to medieval and baroque art, and another to nineteenth, twentieth century and contemporary works.
The toilets were unspeakable; the wall labels were inconsistent. I meandered through the medieval and Baroque wing, drawing a few compositions I liked, having a great time. These works somehow managed to be strange, unsettling, erotic, farcical despite operating within the genre of 19th century French salon painting.
St Isidore in his painting looks strikingly contemporary, showing off his action hero physique, before a cinematic landscape bright with sunshine. There was something very lighthearted or comedic in this one compared to the grisly scenes of blood and death in the rest of the room; he is so casual in posture, looking not unlike Sylvester Stallone, tanned and naked apart from his low slung green shorts; meanwhile an angel who is dressed in pristine white with shell-pink wings drives his plough and oxen for him.
