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You're looking at Lotus Lillies by American Impressionist
Charles Courtney Curran,
and they seem more like an imagined fantasy
due to the size and profusion of the flowers which surround the boat
which is painted in the centre of the composition.
Blooms of American lotus encircle the artist's new bride
and her cousin in their boat.
Curran's bride, haloed by her leaf green parasol,
becomes the finest of Lake Eyrie's blossoms
and the object of the painter's love and affection.
By the 1890s Impressionism was firmly established as a valid style
of painting for American artists.
And Lotus Lilies provides a good example for the bright colours used by Curran,
typical for Impressionist canvasses
which were shocking to eyes accustomed to the more sober colours
of academic painting.
Many of the impressionist artists chose not to apply the thick golden varnish
that painters customarily used to tone down their works.
The paints used by Curran and his contemporaries were more vivid
and usually un-mixed,
applied side by side with as little mixing as possible,
they created a vibrant surface.
The optical mixing of colours was meant to occur in the eye of the viewer.
I find this painting enchanting
and would very much like the visit a similar lake in the USA
to be able to see first hand these superb yellow lotus flowers.
These look like water lilies, raised on long stems above the water,
catching the light and making reflections.
The big leaves give shade under water for fish and other creatures.
With all that nectar and pollen there must be lots of pollinators about
as in the painting the large botanic pond has a surrounding of trees,
shrubs, flowers and reeds.
We have willows, conifers, roses and
amongst them some American species.
The parasol is repeated here in two kinds of large roundish leaves,
those are the giant gunnera manicarta and also
a European butterbur petasites;
the former is dark green and the latter paler.
When the sun is out you get the light showing on and through those leaves
and also the somewhat upstanding leaves
are the unusual yellow water lily here.