At the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University's graduate school of the history of art, Walter Friedlaender (1873--1966), the great art historian, had posted the saying 'LOOK AND THOU SHALT FIND' in the room adjacent to his office. I have never forgotten this maxim; it has guided my historical research and I have found it applicable to the pictorial study of nature.
Examining the image of the yellow flower after a nighttime rain, I discovered a drop of rain attached to a bloom: that drop had optical effects comparable to those depicted by seventeenth and eighteenth--century Dutch still-life painters, especially in pictures of glass vases half-filled with water. The effects include reflections, inversions, refractions, and more.
The "artful" rain drop is at the lower left.
How miraculous nature truly is; if only we could see it.
Examining the image of the yellow flower after a nighttime rain, I discovered a drop of rain attached to a bloom: that drop had optical effects comparable to those depicted by seventeenth and eighteenth--century Dutch still-life painters, especially in pictures of glass vases half-filled with water. The effects include reflections, inversions, refractions, and more.
The "artful" rain drop is at the lower left.
How miraculous nature truly is; if only we could see it.
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