On the Beach#92012 40 X 30″ oc
On the rosy beach of French-colonized Tahiti, a young girl posed with her hoop while strolling around her several horse-riders of the native tribes-a happy sight of the belle-epoque when Renoir and Gauguin were matured in their artistic adventures.Renoir is surely a “bourgeois” painter of his age as the middle-class prospered in French society and he witnessed it with his soft brush-strokes and delicate coloring. Gauguin, on the contrary, cursing the rotting Western civilization, preferred to live and paint beyond the confine of Europe and in the wild purity of nature and man. Under his synthetic and harmonious coloring, Tahiti becomes an evocative paradise with fragrant orchards, evergreen forest, peaceful peacocks and men and women in their simple dignity and beauty.In this painting by Chen, Renoir’s Western young girl appeared quite naturally amid the Tahitian riders, both are well painted according to their social and cultural traditions. She could be a daughter of a French colonial officer there escorted by a group of indigenous guard, or, as you like, she was playing on the beach freely while some Tahitians were equally riding their horses as a morning exercise in a free society in the post-colonial era.
– T. F. Chen |
On the Beach
American Spirit
July 28, 2015