My garden is now officially shut. I glimpse it darkly as I feed the morning birds and sense it fleetingly as I peel the potatoes for dinner, but the rest is darkness between work.
So I turn again to representations of the green I cannot see on a work day in November and the most wonderful of all is Albrecht Dürer’s Great Piece of Turf.
This water colour was painted in 1503 in Germany and the detail and precision surpasses any digital photo I have ever seen. Dürer is more often remembered for the remarkably messianic self portraits of his undeniably commanding and attractive face; but this small picture contains the whole natural world in all its multifarious, magnificent complexity. Here are the grasses; the lace edged tansy leaf; the seeding dandelion flowers and fleshy clasping plantain leaves. Here is the view from the ground, the vole’s eye view; an unnervingly clear eyed botanist’s view, who understood how marvelously interlinked and nuanced the living world is and reproduced it in this unassuming slice of perfection for ever.
Durer was an excellent painter. it’s kind of sad seeing the garden done for the year.
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I love the clarity of all his work, but especially his pictures of plants and animals.
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What a pretty painting, I hope it will help you through winter, until you can see the green in your own garden again.
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It is good to have time to admire a bit of art during the winter I guess!
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Good post and wonderful picture. It won’t be long before both the plot and myself take a winter break. xx
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winter is a good time to curl up with a good book!
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another lovely post-I love Albrecht Durer
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Just lovely – and he also shows the roots of the plants in situ – as if the soil had become translucent. The composition of this work – suggests to me this clump is on a ridge – and beyond there’s a meadow, and perhaps a township in the distance – where perhaps some armoured rhinoceros is being paraded in the town square 🙂
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All watched over by Durer’s messianic face!
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