Artwork of the Week: August 24
Dogs and Wild Boar Fighting is a painting that bursts with dim and muddy colors sweeping across the canvas. Hasty brush strokes tangle up inside, blending each other on the coal-black surface. The dirt and the darkness swallow the animals, blurring their boundaries. Small bloody drips of bright red and pink, evidence of the on-going violence, shine prominently on the surface. Howls echo with their fierce hostility.
As a landscape painter in the 1890s, Julian Alden Weir became a key founding member of the American Impressionist movement. Before practicing impressionism, he studied in the National Academy of Design and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, honing an academic art style in the 1870s. Dogs and Wild Boar Fighting was painted in 1885, between distinguishing periods of his artistic journey. It was neither an impressionistic glimpse into nature from his future work nor a canonical portrayal and composition from his past work. The painting's racing brush strokes seem to be an experiment that emerged in his transitioning period.
