Pretty, yes pretty!
This shop in Rome gave me a bit of beauty to capture and pass along! May 2008
“To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.” ― Pierre-Auguste Renoir
With that view of art, no wonder Renoir left us so many gorgeous works to enjoy. I realize there is a place for art that intrigues or even disturbs our complacent ways of thinking, but when I look at the world today, I think we need beauty more than ever before. Kudos to Renoir and the thousands (maybe millions) of other artists like him, who want to brighten our lives with images that soothe, uplift and delight us.
We are so fortunate to have the works of great artists online for us to enjoy free whenever we want, wherever we have an internet connection. The Renoir link above features digitized images of his complete works, and he was a prolific guy, with a wide range of lovely subjects. If you’d like to see a winter landscape to match your temperatures today, take a look at this lovely image. Or if you’ve had enough of winter, catch a glimpse of summer beauty here. Or visit the websites of other artists or museums, and give your spirit a dose of beauty to brighten your day today!
One year ago today
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: art, artists, attractive images, beauty, enjoyment, flowers, happiness, joy, pleasant thoughts, seasons
Defeat Despair 
Julia,
God is good. The beauty is always there. It’s just that we’re too often not paying attention.
-Alan
So true, Alan, and it’s our loss. Perhaps some of what we tend to think of as misfortunes are hidden blessings that force us to open our eyes a bit.
Amen!
-Alan
You find the most lovely scenes to photograph! This one, like so many others you’ve posted, gives such a happy feeling and draws me into it. It looks like all those flowers are on vines that grew from containers. It makes me wonder how someone takes care of all that abundance of growth and beauty. I haven’t been to Europe but photos I see of city scenes often show lots of flowers, more than I have seen during travels in America. Or is it that people just take more photos of the flowers there?
Loved looking at the Renoir paintings on your link and have bookmarked it as a favorite place. I had forgotten that he had such severe arthritis in his hands when he got older that he tied paintbrushes to his wrists, and that his painting style changed too, becoming more realistic. Interesting. Such a gifted artist.
Judy, I believe that much of Europe, along with Maine and Canada and probably some other places, definitely have more flowers and flower gardening than other places I’ve seen. I asked a woman in Maine why this might be so. She said she thought it was the long, cold winters that left people longing to spend time and effort creating a glorious season of refreshment during the relatively brief time they were able to do it. Whatever the reasons, I am happy to benefit from their considerable expertise!