Hood Museum of Art

Ignorance or impatience?

by Angel Xie 

I gave up on a painting that I had no idea what it was about at the first time. But later when I noticed that the bread is oddly as big as the pot filled with congee next to it in this painting and I started to laugh at it inside myself, I wondered whether the reason why the painter did that because he was not careful or there was a deeper meaning of this picture. So I spent some time observing it.

It was showing the daily farming life. In the foreground, a young couple were hugging and whispering to each other; a dog and a cat were staring at each other with anger. In the background, there was a milkmaid busy working and there are also some other domestic animals, like goat and goose. In the center of the picture, a boy was playing with the animals. This was a really harmonious scene but the painter’s design of the characters and animals were more than that.

As I said before, there was an oddly big loaf of bread and a pot next to it. These two things were the only food in the scene so concerning about the location was in the farm, I think the painter wanted emphasize that those are the only food they had at that time. After realizing that, I could find a reasonable explanation to all the human characters and also animals painted in the picture.

The dog and the cat obviously looked angery and that was because they had a conflict with the food that was among them. I recalled how people in the real life had talked about dogs and cat. Dogs are viewed as diligent and faithful and cats are usually viewed as lust and lazy creatures. In this painting, the dog was probably preventing the cat to eat the food. They were used by the painter to correspond to the two different kinds of personalities of human beings-diligence and lust. In fact by analyzing those human characters in the painting  you could also see the contrast of contrast of diligence and laziness.

The boy and that young couple contrast to the milkmaid because of the their different behaviors, the former ones’ behaviors represent playfulness and laziness, however the milkmaid’s behavior shows diligence and responsibility. The boy, the young couples and the milkmaid were the symbols of different kinds of personalities existing in real daily farming life.

I appreciate how the painter uses contradictions and symbolism in this piece. I realize that not only in the daily farming, but also in the whole society there are people who are hard working and meanwhile people who are not. That was a really usual phenomenon and also a problem that we need to solve. This painting was a meaningful one and also intriguing, for the painter’s prudent wisdom and implicit way of expressing the theme. 

From this painting, I think I learn more than just art but the right attitude to appreciate an artwork. The reason why a person couldn’t appreciate the art must not be ignorance but impatience. Next time, I will take my time when I am looking at a piece of artwork because the process of finding our the artist’s intention will be enjoyable.